We've been fairly busy lately. If we're at home, we have still been doing projects here and there. Last week Reed and I made green slime.  You make it with borax, food coloring, and Elmers glue.  I found the recipe here.  Reed thought it was great.  Here he is with his slime necklace he made. :)

Where was Hudson while all of this was happening?  He was here...


... NOT cleaning up.  I asked him to clean his room and if he wasn't finished by the time we made the slime, he wasn't going yo get to do it with us.  Well, he messed around for that 2 hours and didn't get to make it.   Ugh... I think we have our work cut out for us with this kid.

We went to Ft. Worth to get Reed a patterned swim cap for his swim meet on Saturday.  (The boys look all the same when they're in they're black swimsuits and white caps, so it's great it they have a cap that has stripes or something on it so you can easily pick your kid out from the others.) We were doing our shopping and as soon as Brian said "Reed, do you want to look at a bicycle?", I figured we would be leaving with more than a swim cap.



Reed hasn't learned to ride a bike yet because we just really haven't had a good place for him to ride one.  We took an easy approach and he tried for about 15 minutes and decided he wanted to take a break.  We came in and played Skip-Bo and cooled off in the a/c and he decided he wanted to try again.  We went back out and with a tiny bit of instruction and encouragement, he was riding around our driveway in about 20 minutes!  It was pretty awesome. Hudson, however, fell over on his bike and hasn't been a fan since. Guess we're gonna have to work with him a little. :)  I've been wanting a bicycle too, so I was pretty excited to get one.  It's super fun being able to ride around with Reed.

Reed has been doing great in swimming.  In this last meet, he placed 3rd in his 2 individual events (50 freestyle and 25 freestyle) and 1st in his relay (100 freestyle).  He loves the meets and even enjoys the practices 4 times a week.  I'm so grateful that he's found something he loves and it is a really neat and positive environment - coaches and parents alike.

We're having a great summer - I'm loving spending time with my boys!

Tie-Dye Project

Today was supposed to be a swim day, but Reed was tired after swim practice so we decided to do a craft instead.  I saw on Pinterest how people were tie-dying shirts with sharpie markers and thought it looked fun (and non-messy).  You take Sharpie markers and draw on t-shirts.  Here are the boys making their masterpieces....

 Then we took rubbing alcohol and dripped it onto the sharpie causing it to bleed.  They had an absolute blast doing it and it was fun to watch what the different designs we drew turned into after the alcohol was dripped onto the shirt.  I also did it with them - my shirt was an experiment to see what happened with different things, so it's a bit of a mess.

This is a fun project to try if you have little ones - it doesn't make a mess and anyone can do it!

Reed's First Swim Meet

Last night we went to Reed's first swim meet. It was all very new to us, so I wasn't sure what to expect but we had a great time. Reed signed up for a 50 freestyle and a 25 backstroke. The coaches make the relay teams and he accidentally got put on one. I wasn't sure he would want to do it, so they had a person to swim in his place if he decided he didn't want to. After swimming his first two events, he decided he wanted to give the relay a shot and he did a great job.

His first event was the 50 freestyle. There were three heats and he came in first in his heat! That boy gave it everything he had and I was so proud of him for that! Here he is being congratulated by his coach- she is so sweet and awesome!

Next he swam the backstroke. He had just started the race and his goggles came off. He didn't stop and just swam the best he could - essentially one handed because he was holding his goggles in his hand. :). Even with that going against him, he came in second in his heat.
This is what he did in his time between events... :)



His first two events were early on in the meet so we had to wait awhile for his relay.  He was the first swimmer of the relay and he did a great job. Here's Hudson and Brian waiting to see him swim.



After all was said and done, Reed placed 2nd in his age group for the 50 freestyle and 5th in his age group for the 25 backstroke. His relay team won (there were only two teams that competed). I knew he was a good swimmer, but I didn't know he was so fast. He had a great time and is looking forward to his next meet. I'm so proud of my sweet boy!

Today we made rainbow pudding pops. :)

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A little running, a little swimming and a little Oobleck...

This has been a busy day already! I got up to run early this morning and just had to stop and take a picture of the gorgeous sunrise God made for me!!

Some mornings it is SO hard to get out of bed when everyone else is snoozing... And I almost didn't go this morning... But I'm so glad I did. I came home and showered and got the boys up. Today was Reed's first swim practice for the Seals. He looked so cute in his swim cap (he's in the middle with the orange goggles).



He did a great job and more importantly, he really enjoyed himself. He decided to sign up to compete in the first meet this weekend in a couple of events. I really think that he'll enjoy the Seals.
We came home and the boys wanted to do another project since they enjoyed the foam so much yesterday. I decided to forgo my 'schedule' and we made "Oobleck". (Cornstarch, water and a little food coloring) Again, they loved it and played in it for half an hour.







They are now outside with the water hose again... :)

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Summer is upon us...

The weekend before school let out for summer, we spent all day Saturday at home.  Hudson and Reed were not playing well together and I could tell it was because they were bored. I knew that if I didn't have anything for them to do this summer, they would drive me batty.  So after doing some looking on the internet, I came up with a system for this summer (and let me clarify when I say "came up with", I mean "stole from Pinterest").  So I've assigned each day an activity - Mondays and Wednesdays are water days (either we go swimming or do some type of fun water activity).  On Tuesdays, we do some sort of project or craft, Thursdays we go somewhere fun and Fridays we do some kind of treat in the kitchen.  Of course this is not at all set in stone because of things that will come up here and there.  But we do have a calendar filled with activities if we need them (and I'm sure we will).  Anyway, our first day was today and for some reason I thought today was Tuesday, so we did our project this afternoon.  Here's the video-

If you're interested in trying it  I'm sure there are a lot of websites you can use, but I found the "recipe" we used here.  As you can tell, the boys thought it was quite awesome (and I was super pleased with their reaction).  They played in the foam until it all disappeared and then they spent the next 3 hours "cleaning" off the foam with the water hose. :)  It was a really fun way to start our summer.