100 Day Project

Tomorrow is Sami’s 100th day of Kindergarten! They have been counting the days until this fun milestone, and will be celebrating tomorrow in class! As part of the celebration the students were asked to complete a “100 Day Project” to bring in.
The teacher had given a few ideas to get our creative juices flowing- 100 toys cut from magazines and pasted on a poster board, 100 legos built into a creation, 100 sugar cubes made into an igloo….
I asked Sami if she wanted to glue 100 pennies onto a poster that we could make into the shape of a piggy bank. She informed me that sounded “lame”…hmm…well…after I picked myself up off the floor from shock I asked her what SHE thought would be a good project.
“I want it to be about Disney” she said…
Oh BOY! I’ve corrupted her and now she is thinking Disney all of the time!!! She bounced around a few ideas then asked if we could do it together and use the Cricut….
Disney and the Cricut???? That’s my girl!!!!
She came up with the idea to have 100 Mickey balloons that she would be holding! So…we took her picture…

And we cut it out and put it on the poster board. I said “How many colors do you want the balloons to be?”
Her reply: “We should just use 10 colors because we can do 10 Mickey’s on each sheet.” I stared at her for a moment…and she said “Ya know…cause 10 by 10 is 100???”
Her little mind amazes me sometimes….
So I taught her how to use the Cricut…and she was off!
She was able to figure out doing all of the Mickey heads, and I helped her with cutting out the castle….

Pay no attention to the mess that surrounds her!!! Ha!


And the finished product…

Happy 100th day of school!!!!!

Silly Sami…

Twice tonight Sami had me giggling so hard I had tears in my eyes!!! She kept singing this song…”Come and get it….supper’s ready” I thought it was cute. She is always making up songs. Then I listened closer and realized she was singing it to the tune of Madonna’s “Holiday (Celebrate)” , so I asked her if that was what she was singing. “Yeah mom…but she says Come and get it…supper’s ready!” He,he,he….no no! She says…
Holiday Celebrate    Holiday Celebrate
If we took a holiday      Took some time to celebrate
Just one day out of life       It would be so nice…
“Oh…” Hahahaha! We both laughed hysterically!

Then tonight as I was walking out of her room after tucking her in she said “wait…I forgot to pray for baby Canaan…can I add a P.S. to my prayer???”
After I nearly died laughing I said…”yes honey God takes P.S. prayers!”
Who knew she knew about writing a P.S.????
I love you Sami! Thanks for the laughs!

Disney Family Movie Night- Dumbo

I haven’t watched Dumbo in so long I had a hard time remembering what it was all about!  I did remember that Dumbo is part of the circus, so planning was pretty fun for this week!
We started with our craft. We decorated lunch bags to use for popcorn while we watched our movie.

The finished product…

Matt found some circus music online that we listened to while we put on our own little circus.
Sami was a tight rope walker…
 Like the outfit??
Matt and Skylar tried their hand at juggling. Matt was pretty good at using two…and Skylar just thought we were throwing balls around! It was fun…

Then the girls dazzled us with their “ring of fire” tricks…

Then we played Wii Carnival Games

For dinner we had fun food you might eat at the circus. I made WAY too much, but it was fun!
On the menu:
Hotdogs
Peanuts
Popcorn (for the movie in our bags)
Cotton Candy
Soft Pretzels with Cheese
Elephant Ears (tortilla shells cooked in vegetable oil sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar…yummy!)
Clown ice cream cones for dessert

And these are our ice cream clown cones. My ice cream had started to melt by the time I found the camera…poor guy was looking a little sad!


A friend from dance will be taking her family to Disney this fall as well and they have started Disney movie nights! She asked me how I came up with what movies to watch. There were rides and characters we met that we weren’t 100% familiar with. So I went through the list of every Disney movie and picked out ones with rides and character encounters that I wanted us to freshen up our knowledge on!
Here is us after we rode Dumbo this last year…

My tip for Dumbo:
Ride it FIRST thing in the morning! It is a slow moving line, and a favorite amongst kids of all ages. Be sure to grab a fastpass for Peter Pan first then head straight to Dumbo! You won’t be sorry! =)
We had a lot of fun this week! Up next week…Bambi!

Relief for Skylar

Our precious 18 month old little Skylar finally got her ear tubes yesterday!
This is what Skylar’s hair looked like at the end of October…

A few weeks later she started to pull out her hair….

You can see in the above picture she started on her right side. It was determined she was pulling her hair due to pain from ear infections. She had 12 ear infections last year. She had none in the summer, so as you can imagine she had a rough time. In November we noticed she was in even more pain. She had pulled all of her hair out by this time. She went from saying about 18 words to only 3 or 4. She was laying around ALL the time, and banging her head against us.

Poor baby…just little peach fuzz left…

The pediatrician and I had discussed the possibility of seeing an ENT for tubes in late Spring. I didn’t want to put her through surgery if it wasn’t necessary. As I previously mentioned all summer she was infection free, but once fall hit it was all down hill.
I had been doing research on my own, and asking friends whose children had tubes on who the best ENT would be for us. When the pediatrician recommended the same physician I had been looking into I knew he was who we wanted. The week before Christmas we met Skylar’s miracle. Dr.Baroody who practices at Comer Children’s Hospital at The University of Chicago. We are lucky he has an office about 30 minutes from our house. He agreed that she has been on too many antibiotics in her short little life, and we scheduled her surgery that day. He was so sweet and kind with her. When I told him about her hair he held her little hand…looked in her eyes and said… “You poor sweet baby. We will fix you right up!” I think he may be the kindest doctor I’ve ever met! Then he gave her a Tigger sticker…and Skylar decided she liked him too!
Surgery Day…
Thankfully he schedules surgery from youngest to oldest, so she didn’t have to go a long time without eating or drinking anything. The only down side…we had to be at Comer (in Chicago) EARLY! We were supposed to be there at 6:30 am!!! YIKES! We left our house a little after 4:00 am. We knew this was way too early, but we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time. We stopped for some caffeine and still got there around 5:45. For those who know me I would much rather be 45 minutes early than 45 seconds late to anything so this was fine with me!
We filled out paperwork at 6:30 a.m. while Skylar flirted with another little boy who was there to get tubes. A little after 7:00 a.m. we went back and changed her into her little gown.

They took all of her vitals and put on her little id bracelets. We chit chatted with the nurse a bit. She went on to tell me that Dr. Baroody is the best at what he does…. I said oh yes that’s what I’ve heard!!! Then she said “Kids come from other countries to have him perform their surgeries!” I’m pretty sure my mouth dropped to the floor. I KNEW she was in good hands now.
Skylar checks out the guys parking cars down below…

By 7:15 A.M. Dr. Baroody came in and went over everything with us one more time…asking if we had any questions. Next we saw the anesthesiologist. I could not believe how kind he was! He wasn’t only great with Skylar, but he was good with me. You know…the bundle of nerves mom who was about to hand her child over to him to put her to sleep! YIKES! 
Just after 7:30 A.M. we walked her to “the big red line” and then handed her over. She of course cried. I knew there was nothing I could do…so I turned around and booked it for the waiting room. I texted with my friend Michelle almost the whole time we waited…sadly her children are at Comer all too often for surgery so she knows the ropes. I was so relieved when she said Skylar’s anesthesiologist was one of her daughter’s favorites (so sad that they know them THAT well…) so I knew God had a hand in that. It brought me a lot of comfort. Michelle was great at distracting me…and before I knew it they were calling us back to her bedside.
As I was walking down the hall I could hear her crying…so I did the only thing I could think to do. I RAN to her side. I’m pretty sure the nurse thought I was a crazy woman! “It’s ok Mom…she isn’t actually awake!” Matt and I took turns holding her as she fought off the anesthesia…and boy did she fight! Once she started to wake up she let the nurse know she didn’t want her anywhere near her by shooting her some majorly evil looks! They were actually pretty funny!
It took about 45 minutes of her fighting to fully wake up enough to take a drink, and change her clothes. Her nurse went over all of our at home instructions, and Dr. Baroody came over to check on her one more time before releasing her. He said “alright…you little cutie…go home and feel better now!” We were in the car by 9:00 A.M. It was a whirlwind of a morning!
Here is a picture of her sleeping on the way home…
She slept it off yesterday, and today when she woke up it was as if nothing ever happened.
She learned a new word today… “down” which we have been trying to teach her for weeks! A sign to me that she really needed this…and finally has some relief.
If you ask her what the doctor fixed she will smile and say…”eeees!” =) Too cute!

Mummy Deals- GIVEAWAY

One of the blogs I regularly read Mummy Deals is hosting a giveaway for 4 tickets to see Disney’s Toy Story on Ice!

When Sami was two she went to see the Princesses on Ice, so I think this show would be a lot of fun!!!

The contest ends January 17th, so be sure to check it out HERE and enter to win!

Check out this GIVEAWAY!

One of the blogs I like to read Disney Dreamers Designs is having a giveaway for a 2010 Love Struck Solutions Cricut cartridge!!! How neat is that???

You can check it out HERE

Good luck! 

Counting Down…

I love my little countdown ticker until we are back at Disney World,but I wanted something the whole family could see change everyday.
I thought about making a paper chain, but we are at 259 days as of today…that would be A LOT of strips of paper! Ha! Plus I wanted to make something that could be reused year after year (or however often we go back) so I didn’t feel like I was wasting paper.
This is what I came up with:

I think it will be fun to move a Mickey Head each day and watch the number shrink…at least I will enjoy it! He,he!
I have some blogging friends who are GREAT at giving tutorials…I didn’t think to take pictures as I was making it, but it was pretty simple.
1. I used the back of an old picture frame (the glass was cracked) to make the easel part so it would stand up. I used black paper to cover it then cut the cute Mickey paper down 1/4 inch smaller all around and mounted it on the black.
2. The Mickey heads, excited Mickey, numbers and letters were made with my Cricut Expression. I used the Mickey and Friends and Mickey Font cartridges.
3. My calendar can count down from 365 days…well…399 really, but I thought any numbers higher than that would just be cruel to countdown from! So there are 23 Mickey heads and they each have a number from 0-9.
4. I punched holes in the easel and numbers with my Making Memories tool kit. I tried to use a hole punch, but I couldn’t get far enough on the page.
5. The numbers are attached with binder clips.
That’s pretty much it! What do you look forward to and countdown to???