Road Trip Activity Box

My brother's family is planning to stop through here this weekend on a family vacation to California, so I thought I would put together a road trip activity box for his 2 girls.  They are ages 4 & 2.  The first thing I did was cover a couple plain clipboards so they would have something hard to color on.

Before:

Cut the scrapbook paper to size.  Brush Mod Podge on the clip board and lay the scrapbook paper over the glued section.  Make sure there are no air bubbles.  It helps to use a ruler to smooth it over.

Then brush a coat another coat of Mod Podge over the scrapbook paper.

One for Kelsey and one for Kaley

I cut out their names in vinyl.

And stuck it on the top.

Then tied some pretty ribbon around the clip.

I found some printables online HERE

And ran them all through my laminating machine. (Your Story brand)

 All the loot...

 Twist-up crayons, pretty pens, clipboards, and laminated games

 Magnetic doll dress-up, wet wipes, Shout wipes, Frog snack container

 Curious George mega book, white-boards, dry erase markers, notepads

 magnetic go-fish, hand impression with plastic needles thing (no idea what its actually called), stickers

 Heart sticky notes, learning cards

 and glowsticks for night time traveling!

And of course, snacks!!!

Bovine Babysitting

I get a call at work on Monday morning...

Jake:  What would you say if I ruined your electric blanket?

Me: Umm... well... that depends on what you are going to ruin it for.

Jake: A $1000.00 calf.

Me:  You BETTER ruin my $40.00 electric blanket!

This was a new first for this farm wife.  I have never had a calf in my shower before, or under my electric blanket.  We named him Jack Frost because he was born on a bitter cold morning and had to fight for his life.  Jake brought him in and ran through all our hot water, dried him off, put a plastic tablecloth over him, and then put the electric blanket on him to get him to warm up.  His temp was 70 degrees when he was brought in.  Normal is 101.5.  He was near death.  Jake had to go to work that night... my new job title became bovine babysitter.  Or you could just think of it as a farm wife duty.  Whichever you prefer.

 Jake even got out my hair dryer and blow dried him in all the small crevices.

 Then he built him a place on the floor at the bottom of the stairs in our basement.  I had a big fear that Jack would decide to get up in the middle of the night and be roaming around the house, or come lick my face in bed... I am being totally honest here!  Jake assured me this would not happen and left for work.

He set up a heater on the stairs, which made me extremely nervous given the close proximity to the hay.  If the calf got up and bumped our old rickety stairs and the heater fell over, I would have a problem.  SInce this made me so nervous, Jake said I could shut the heater off if Jack's temp got over 100.  So I dutifully used a rectal thermometer every hour.  I couldn't sleep anyway for fear of the fire, so I got a lot of reading done.  I shut the heater off about 12:30am and went to bed.  Jake got home at 6:30 and his temp was 100.8 so we took him outside to Mama.  Mama Bessie decided she wasn't all that interested and Jack was too weak to stand up and Jake needed to be leaving for Salina for a conference.  Jake didn't think this calf would still be alive when I got home from work.  I left work early since I was feeling extremely bad for baby.  Jack was still alive, but his temp was back down to 94.  I couldn't get anywhere close to him with Mama in the pen so I ran her to the chute and frantically called Jake to see what I needed to do.  Milk her??? What???  So, I tried.  And I tried again.  And again.  All I got was messy hands and an upset cow.  What now?

Call the father-in-law to the rescue!  Dad came over, milked her and fed Jack.  We set up a heat lamp and warm pen for him in the milk barn.  He got up a few times on his own and we thought it was promising.  He was still good this morning.  This afternoon Dad fed her a little bit, went to finish the rest of the chores and came back to feed him a little more.  He was dead.  This is not how I imagined this story ending and I will admit I got a little teary eyed.  We had bonded over those feedings and rectal temps.  I thought maybe, just maybe I would be that great farmers wife that had a special touch with the animals.  Alas... it was not meant to be.

Sorry this got so long and I commend you if you read the entire post!  Have a blessed day!

Custom Orders

I made this to fit on a tile for a custom order.

I designed these thank-yous for another custom order.

Front

Inside

Colton's Birthday

Colton turned 7 on Sunday and we celebrated Minion-Style...

He waited so patiently to open his gifts while supper was getting cleaned up.

Liz made an adorable Minion cake!  

 I LOVE this picture :)  Colton trying to mimic the Minion.

 One of Colt's gifts was a guitar.  He looks like he will be a natural.

 Getting to tear down all the streamers has got to be one of the funnest parts of the party!

Happy Birthday Colton!  We remember when you were just a little bitty baby.  Little did I know when I first held you that you would soon become one of my "nephews".  Love you to the moon & back!

From the Land of Kansas

I just had to share this video.  It made me smile!  Check out their other songs on youtube if you enjoy this one :)

Cutting Firewood

Jake decided we were going to cut firewood on one of the windiest days of the year!  At least it was 55 instead of 25!

The before pile:

 We took turns with the chainsaw... I mean... I cut 2 pieces just to make him happy, then he did the rest.  I mostly did all the stacking.

 This was hedge and do you see the bright greenish yellow color all over his clothes and the chainsaw?  We even had it in our hair, eyes, nose, ears, etc...  In other words... it was really windy (think 45mph)

 The after pile:  Yay!!!!

Haley's Birthday

We went to Haley's birthday party Friday night and had a great time sharing this big day with her!  Her momma did a fabulous job (once again) on her cake.

 She made a red velvet and vanilla cake covered in this masterpiece of marshmallow fondant.  Isn't that owl just the cutest?

 Miss Haley

 Beautiful girl...

or maybe a wee bit scary.  Sorry Haley... I just had to :)

Comments

Anyone that has tried to comment before and it gave you a weird response, I think I have it fixed now.  Sorry for the mix-up.  I do love comments!

Knapp Family Christmas (Pic Heavy)

Friday night we got in to Dad & Mom's just in time for pizza.  The kids had fun playing and the rest of us had fun catching up and doing some food prep for Saturday.

Photos:  All Rights Reserved

 I caught the boys telling secrets and thought it was so cute!

Mom was the creative one here.  When she was babysitting some of the kids earlier in December they made this paper chain.  On all the red ones they wrote something the kids had to do.  For example:  Give dad a kiss, tell someone you love them, give one of the uncles a hug, act like a squirrel, sound like a cow, etc.  You get the idea.  They  got to tear the paper chain apart and read what it said.  They had SO much fun with this!

 Some of the men playing Settlers of Catan and the women did some knitting and crocheting.  My Sis-in-law taught me the basic stitch and it could be really fun once I get the hang of it!

Then the kids played some Minute-To-Win-It games.  I had everyone bring already wrapped random gifts that they had around the house as prizes.

This one they had to see how many M & M's they could get from the table to the cup using only a straw.

The prize he picked? cross stitched pillow cases

His reaction? "Seriously?!?!"

Here they had to see how many cheerios they could string onto a piece of dry spaghetti that they had in their mouth.

 Stacking Starburst on a tongue depressor that you held in your mouth.  It was harder than it looks!

 This one was so much fun, but now I get to use toilet paper that is all unrolled for the next several weeks!  2 of the kids held the roll of tp still with a wooden spoon inserted in the middle, and 2 of the other kids had to see who could unroll it the fastest.

This one was probably the hardest. And the funniest.  They had to put an Oreo on their forehead and move it to their mouth using only their face muscles.

And this one is the cutest!

 Say "Cheese!" Grandpa

 Awww... aren't uncles great?!

 One of the littles found some gifts that hadn't been put out yet... looks like a mouse got a hold of it!

 I miss my brothers so much!  It was good to see everyone again!

 Dad always reads the Christmas story and one of the grandkids gets to place Jesus in the manger in the nativity set before we open gifts.

 I had Trevor's name, lucky him... :)  He got Obama toilet paper, and a shotgun plunger... plus some wild game shears and a Tupperware marinader.

I made these bacon and green bean bundles for supper Saturday night.  I had never done them before and they were kind of time consuming, but they looked pretty.  

 My oldest brother did an incredible job on the onion strings!  They were so good!

 No heart attack here!

Yep.  The diet started Monday.  Hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and may 2014 be a year of joy for you all!