Caleb's Island project

In third grade, the children are asked to make a map of an island for a project.

I guess it should not come as a shock that Caleb has a theme to his island based upon Star Wars.

His imagination was on overdrive (once again) and so I taped his explanation of his map for you to enjoy:





*as always you must visit the blog in order to see the video!

The Winter Doldrums

Birthday and holiday mayhem is all over. It's cold & wet outside and so we're just finding ways to make the weekend less boring.


First we sorted through the kids bedrooms and pulled out clothing that no longer fits & Toys that are no longer used were put in a pile to be given away. And while we were dropping off our excess stuff- I was taking a walk around the Salvation army. Not only did I find no holes in the knees pants for Caleb (which is a rare find in boys his age when you are looking at used clothing!) but I found this:



A Kate Spade purse that doesn't look like it's been used at all! The price? 5 Bucks! I could not believe it. I never find good bargains like that.

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My supervisor at work got me a three month subscription to Netflix. (Can you believe we've never had one???)

We decided in Shunk 101 that we were going to watch all of the star trek movies in order together as a family and so this was a perfect gift to get started on that goal.



We just finished movie 2: The wrath of Kahn. Or as Caleb says "Shock-a-kahn" Surprisingly- I am enjoying them more than I thought I would.

We've also watched 500 Days of Summer and Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs too. Both were pretty good movies!


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Our family got plenty of games for Christmas.

Sorry Sliders:




The crazy old fish war game:


And our personal favorite? The Mr. Men and Little Misses Twister Game:

A tale of a fail-y cake

The boy chose his birthday cake.

He had it all worked out. He was going to put chocolate icing on the outside and call it his triple chocolate surprise. From the outside it would look like a regular chocolate cake, and then when you cut into it- surprise! It's a rainbow cake.

*note this is not our cake- this is our inspiration from the internet*


And so Caleb and I set to work yesterday to concoct our Triple chocolate surprise.

He insisted on baking the cakes by himself- and scoffed at me for trying to help him.

He especially loved mixing the food colorings to make sure each layer was just the right color.

Round about this point, I called him my own little personal Duff Goldman.

Yeah, I was so proud- and so wrong.


It was time to icing the cake, this is where it all fell apart- Literally.

The cake just crumbled




It was so sad to see the boys face. He worked so hard on this cake.

After the cake ended up in it's final resting place (i.e. the trash can) Caleb said rather pathetically that he was going to go upstairs to read a book and take his mind off his ruined masterpiece. He moped upstairs & we didn't hear from him the rest of the night.


The birthday festivites must carry on, and so this morning Jim and Caleb made a trip to Wal-mart for a nice non-faily kind of cake:


After all of that, I'm still glad we did our own cake. I enjoyed spending the afternoon with the boy- who rarely wants to help me in the kitchen. And I'm pretty sure that soon, we'll be able to look back on this and laugh at our fail-y attempt at a triple chocolate surprise cake.

Happy New Year!

We've been busy. Getting people married, having new babies to snuggle with and all the mayhem that comes along with the Christmas season- it's been a busy few months on our end.

But with all the Christmas Madness- we've been plugging away at Shunk 101. Here's our progress so far on the list:

9. Go on 3 Mommy/Daddy/Lilly Dates (1/3)
Nutcracker 12/19/09

* read this post for more details of our nutcracker adventure

10. Take 8 trips to new places (1/8)
Planet Trog

18. Play Lazer tag (12/28/09)

Mally came along with us for this lazer tag expedition. Our local lazer tag arena was not open- so we had to improvise and found this spot instead. Instead of just shooting at each other- we worked in a team and valiantly defended our Red base.

Unfortunately we had 4 children (and me) on our team and the blue team was made up of what seemed like professional lazer tag players and so it came to be that the red team was pummeled by the blue team. But we had fun none the less.

An interesting fact though- Caleb's pack stopped working and he missed about 2 minutes of the game. And even with those two minute gone, his individual score beat everyone else. That boy might have a future in the army. :D

46. Do 10 Instructables (1/10)
1-up mushroom Ornaments 12/09

I made these for the video gamers in our life for Christmas. :D they did turn out adorable if I do say so myself.

53. Visit 10 area restaurants we've never been to before (1/10)
CiCi's Pizza Buffet 12/28/09

Mac & Cheese pizza sounds weird, but is actually very delish.

91. Learn about Hanukah 12/20/09

We broke out the mennorah and dreidle at the New song Christmas party this year and now Lilly's curiosity about the holiday has been satisfied.

100. Have a Christmas tree campout 12/27/09

Mally got to be here for this one too. They camped out by the light of the Christmas tree and stayed up too late and got up way too early....

80. Make a year in Review Video 1/1/10

*email people must visit the blog to see this video!

And so that is what we've been up to.

Have a very Happy New Year to you all!