Very Organized Hotdogs

Very Organized Hotdogs
Originally uploaded by The Mac Momma.

Ok, I swear this is not how I gave her the hotdogs. I give them to her in a big jumbled mess. She organizes them. BBQ sauce, pickle relish, and some saltines round out the meal. Yum.

Hammering snow

Hammering snow
Originally uploaded by The Mac Momma.

A small snowfall over the Thanksgiving holdiays was absolute heaven to the kids. Here, they hammer (so fast you can't even see the hammer!) a chunk of ice/snow that was dumped out of a wheelbarrow.

Traveling with Bookmarks

While away for Thanksgiving, and not at my usual computer, I experimented a bit with the site del.icio.us. It's basically social bookmarking, where real people get to submit sites that were interesting to them, plus tag them with relevant keywords. So, you can share your favorite (and presumably useful in some way) sites with others, plus be able to acceses those bookmarks from any compuer. You can check out the Mac Momma's bookmarks here. As you can tell, I was very much in Mac-geek-mode over Thanksgiving! :)

Why I Love Running Errands

Ok, there's a lot of running around you do as a mom. But, some days, I really love running errands. Here's my list why:

• If the kids are in the car, they aren't at home dumping out a bin of toys and making a mess.
  
• The kids actually like to ride in the car, so they're usually not fighting if we're out riding around.
  
• I get to listen to audiobooks. Granted, they're usually for the under-10 set, but a lot of those stories are still quite entertaining.
  
• I can take up an entire morning or afternoon just by driving around and getting stuff done. And, generally, the kids are pretty well behaved in stores, etc.
  

We went to the post office the other day, to mail stuff and buy Christmas stamps. DD was fascinated by where the letters would go when she put them in the slot, and since we weren't in a rush, we could stand there for a minute or two and debate *why* there was a basket there and *why* the letters had to go there. Then, there was the fun of explaining the concept of a single line, multiple tellers to DS. The man in line ahead of us was very amused by the whole conversation. DS just couldn't understand why we chose to stand in the longest line, instead of those other nice, short 1 person lines at the other windows. :) And finally, there was the purchasing of stamps themselves, and the Questions. One was easy - DS wanted to know what the little toy mailboxes were for (stamp dispensers), and then the Big One: "How do you deliver letters to Santa?". "We have a special delivery to the North Pole.". "But how do you get through all the snow? Do you use snowmobiles?" "It's a secret." And, sensing the rather long line behind us, we moved on. But it was still a lot of fun. :)

Oh, and since this post is missing a link to something, we're currently listening to a) The Key to the Indian and b) Lazytown (and more Lazytown, and Lazytown yet again).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful holiday! It's almost 9am, which means it's time to spend the entire morning watching the the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. (Or rather, watching snippets of parade between the commercials!)

Oldie but Goodie

DS has a project to do for school that requires pictures of the entire family. In searching through the archives for pictures of everyone, I found this fun one from many Christmases ago... poor DD has been tortured from the start! Here's DH and his brother and DS attempting to cut her in half with a new toy chainsaw.

Mac Momma Art Project

Well, Google may be trying to scan in the world's library, but I have a more modest goal: scan in all of the kid's artwork and schoolwork. However, I 'm finding that keeping up with this task is a bit more work than I anticipated. On any given day, at least 3-5 pieces of artwork come home, or are created. On Tuesdays, when both kids have school (DS for the whole day), I can get over 10 in a day! I'm finding I need to dedicate time each day to keep up, or quickly get overwhelmed. It is fun to have copies of all their stuff. Most of it fits in the scanner. Some of DD's larger easel paintings will only be partially scanned - I think we get the gist. To handle some of DS's larger stuff from school, I take a digital picture instead. My dad likes looking at the art - especially the more "abstract" stuff. He thinks it looks as good as some of the modern art he's seen in museums! Go, go, glitter glue!

In future posts, I'll show my true geeky colors and write down all the steps I've come up with to catalog their copious output. But the best part about this whole project? After it's scanned, I feel no guilt in letting it all go. (Don't worry, the really special stuff will be saved until the kids are forced to throw it out when they turn 60!)

Loose tooth!

DS has a loose tooth!!! It's the first one for us, and is strangely exciting! He only discovered it because a friend on the bus today looked into his open mouth and determined that the crooked looking tooth on the bottom must be loose. She was right - we've wiggled it ourselves!

Fun Mom Reading

Ok, one last post before bed. Another site that I love to read every week is the Ben and Birdy journal over at ParentCenter. It almost always makes me laugh out loud, or shake my head and completely agree with the mom writing it. She's also got a kindergarten boy, and a toddler girl, and it's so much fun to read about their trials and tribulations as a family. This site gets updated late Friday, early Saturday each week.

Big Knight

Big Knight
Originally uploaded by The Mac Momma.

A larger version of the picture. If you click on it, you'll go to flickr, and by choosing "all sizes", you can see a much larger version. Neat.

Knight Time

Knight Time
Originally uploaded by The Mac Momma.

There hasn't been a picture of DS yet, so here he is in all of his knightly glory. He was a knight for Halloween, and of course still loves to play with the sword.

Exotic Bird

Exotic Bird
Originally uploaded by The Mac Momma.

I'm attempting to post the picture of the bird from my newly created flickr account. Kind of a slow way to get the picture up to the blog, but it may just work. :)

New blogging tool

So, this post is being made from the desktop blogging tool named Ecto. The previous posts had been made from the browser interface of Blogger. I'm trying this one mainly to make it easier to import pictures from iPhoto to the blog. So, here's a test image from iPhoto, to see how well this tool works. One of DS's projects from school was a bird of his own making. Here it is, in all of its' glory.

Ok, well here it isn't, since the attaching an image feature doesn't seem to work in this program if the blog you're connecting to is blogger.

Calendar time

It's getting close to the time to start ordering photo calendars as gifts for the family for next year. Last year, we used Shutterfly for one calendar, and made another using a pre-made template one from Oriental Trading Company. The Shutterfly one was very nice, although we didn't really get to put in a December 2004 picture, since we had to order it so early to get it in time. The homemade-ish one could be made a lot closer to the holidays, and was cheaper too. The online one was probably a bit easier to make. The real time is just choosing the pictures. I should get started on that soon - no excuse, since I already have 10 months of pictures to choose from! :)

I, Cringely

Well, to try and balance kid posts and tech posts, here's my favorite thing to read on Fridays: I, Cringley, from PBS. He's always got something mean to say about Microsoft, and who doesn't need that on a Friday morning?

Too many cups

3yo DD decided today to help empty the diswasher and fill most of the cups with water for her "friends". Amazingly, no water was spilled during breakfast. (Breakfast was pancakes... because as 5yo DS said "I know you have buttermilk in the fridge, so we want pancakes."