Hanson Party of Five

Things we learned last week

1.  Will likes onion rings.

2.  It's possible to drive 875 miles in 15 hours with our kids in one day.  As long as you have at least one Mickey Mouse DVD to watch over and over again.  "Meeska, mooska, Mickey Mouse!"

3.  The twins don't like chocolate milk.  And I'm pretty much convinced that kid's meals at restaurants are a sham.  

4.  A 4 year old could sit through an entire church service if she has enough things to keep her busy.  2 year old twins cannot. Even with fancy animal crackers. 

5.  Bubbles can keep my kids (and my dad) busy for a long, long time.  

6.  Texas has two different speed limits - one for daytime and one for nighttime.

7.  I'm not sure what age kids really get competitive at Easter egg hunts, but it's not 2 or 4 years old.  At that age, they just want to know what's inside each egg they are picking up and how quickly they get to eat it.

8.  Swim diapers are expensive.

9.  In general, I think people think it's weird to have 3 kids.  We stopped at Wendy's for lunch (alas, we could not find a Chic-Fil-A with a playground) and I felt like people were thinking, "So you're the ones who are bumping the average number of kids per household over the 2.0 mark."

10.  There are some sweet spots out there to live when you get older.  My grandmother is in a community that's got a pool, outside fire pit, shuffleboard court, and more social activities than you can do in one day.  

Trying something different

I'm trying to figure out different ways to shoot our everyday life - in this case, the post bath ritual of jumping on our bed.  Just the kind of thing to get the kids relaxed and calm to go to sleep, right?  

Anyway, I slowed my shutter speed down so that I was getting enough light into the camera without a flash, and then followed a moving object (i.e. one of my kids) to see if I could get them in focus while showing motion.

The secret under our sink

When we got married, my sweet husband moved straight from a college dorm room that he shared with two other guys into our first house.  Everything he owned fit into his car.  

There is  a box in the corner of our closet that has some type of sports stuff - the kids like to hide in there before bathtime and periodically they'll run out of there holding a random baseball card. 

With 3 kids, we tend not to keep things that we don't need anymore - and we're far from being hoarders - but each of us has our "thing".  Mine happens to be CDs, mentioned here.  Josh's hides under our kitchen sink - he uses these to catch grease when he cooks:

What's your secret stash?

 

Free entertainment

I love me some free entertainment.  Especially the kind that wears my kids out so that they take good naps.  We're all about some face painting:

And jumping.  I seriously wish I had thought of the whole Monkey Joe's idea.  That, and the Snuggie.

This was the twin's first snow cone.  Sno Cone?  Whatever.  

Will REALLY liked them.  Lexi, not so much.  A bit too messy for her.  Which explains why I would be THAT mother with not one, but two children temporarily running around in public with no pants on.

Composting

Considering the number of diapers we've put in landfills over the last 4 years, I'd hardly call us a "green" family.  This composting venture is more of a science experiment than an effort to reduce waste.  The big time composters can run you a couple hundred dollars, so I was stoked to see this little counter version.

So, what happens now?  It took us about a day and a half to fill this thing up.  (Note to self: one bag of navel oranges lasts about 36 hours in our house.  One isn't enough.)  I haven't made the effort yet to research what I'm supposed to be doing now, so I'm being lazy and putting it out here on the blog to see what you know. 

I was really surprised that there weren't instructions on the label - I mean, it tells you what to put IN the thing, but not what to do after you put it in there.  Of course, I haven't taken it off the container, so now I'm thinking it might be on the back of the label.  Hmm.  I'll go check.  In the meantime, let me know what I'm supposed to be waiting for.