Cool Clay Kit

For Christmas, Uncle Kevin, Aunt Julie, and cousins Dana, Garrett, Catie, and Sarah got the kiddos a bag full of goodies. Inside the bag were the following goodies-Build-A-Bear Holiday Moose-one for each kiddo, 3 bunches of colored yarn, a sock puppet making kit, and a cool clay kit. Jules-sorry if I forgot anything, I just know that they love all of it! The Build-A-Bears are now part of the massive stuffed animal family in their room, we'll do the sock puppets sometime this weekend, and we've been playing with the clay almost every day this week and last week. Henry and Emma really dig the clay and all the things they can make with it! So a big thank you again to the family for getting them all the great stuff!

An ice cream sundae made by Emma using the clay from the clay kit that Aunt Julie, Uncle Kevin, cousins-Dana, Garrett, Catie, and Sarah got for her and Henry for Christmas.
The ice cream queen creating her masterpiece:)
Henry's cherry tree-the white around the trunk is rocks/stones, the orange is a bird, and the black and one red are the actual cherries.
Henry's bear and little orange man.
This was Emma's first ice cream cone made with the new clay.
A closer look at the bear Henry made. He did this one all on his own! I'm so proud of him!
This was the best I could get from him. He kept on closing his eyes on purpose...silly boy:)

You Paint, Then I Paint

Sunday after we had finished lunch and finished working on our homemade books, we decided to paint in the kids' room. Sunday's in the Fall are football days so I try to keep the kiddos occupied so that Daddy can enjoy his game(s). So we spent a couple of hours Sunday afternoon painting together. I painted some and they painted some. The only downside...we are running out of wall space.

Monster Mutt and Blue Thunder monster trucks from Henry's collection.
Henry's biiig dragon complete with dragon rider.
Emma's E and M-this may become her signature one day when she is famous:)
Emma worked on jazzing up one of the butterflies I did a long time ago.
Dora and her pink chariot.
A second princess/fairy doll for Miss Emma.
Every princess needs a pony or ponies preferably in different colors and with flowers.

Another Henry dragon-we've been experimenting with mixing colors and he really took to the skin tone color.
The artist admiring his own work-three smaller dragons.
Grave Digger monster truck. This was the first one I painted for him on Sunday, the other two I did yesterday.

Homemade Books

Friday afternoon after school the kids came home, had a snack, and then after playing for a little bit asked if we could make books. I remember doing this as a kid and thought that it was a great idea. So we started on their homemade books late Friday afternoon. Saturday morning came and we continued working on their first books and then they both wanted to do another. So Emma, Henry, and Mommy spent the first couple hours of our Saturday morning making books. They loved it(and so did I)! And they have each made three books. Here are their creations.

Emma's first homemade book.

Emma's book cover. This is how she signs her name on most of her school work. We are working on letter order. I'm very proud of her as well. She's doing really well with her writing.
Not sure what this is suppose to be,but I think it looks pretty neat:)
Red is her second favorite color and squares are one of the many shapes that she learned at school this past week.
More abstract artwork from Emma.
Practicing her lower case Es. And she asked for red hearts and an apple just like her bubby.
Emma's palm tree and her name in orange on the side. They learned about palm trees in one of their stories at school.

Emma's second homemade book.

Emma's book cover-not sure what these are.
She combined drawing and cutting and pasting for her second book.
Emma did all of her cutting and pasting herself.

Henry's first homemade book.

Look closely and you will see three capital Hs written by Henry. He writes the best Hs and yes, I am VERY proud of him!

Henry played art director on this book. He told me what he wanted and what color and
I cut and pasted each piece where he told me to. A blue kite and a green grasshopper.A brown wolf and a red apple. And he wrote his name with only a little help from me.
A blue helicopter and a tree. And his name again, bigger this time.
A black T Rex and a green shark.
A blue spider and a green bear.
And finally, a brown dragonfly and a yellow eagle.

Henry's second homemade book. This is Henry standing outside in the sunshine.

I believe he said that these were dragons.The picture on the left is of Uncle Philip(figure on the left) and of Mommy with Henry in my tummy(figure on the right). I kindly reminded him that he shared Mommy's tummy with Emma. He said that he'd put her in there in his next picture. I want to say that the green drawing is of a dinosaur(a T-Rex perhaps).
Drawing of some sea life on the left and people swimming on the right.
Bugs and aliens:)
Not sure what this is.
Or this.
And there's Henry in Mommy's tummy again.

Lincoln Logs, Legos, and Paint

Emma's waterfall. Emma is our little painter. Out of the two of the kids, she is the one that likes to draw, paint, and color.
Henry's spider. Henry has really started to get into painting with Emma and Mommy. He still asks me to paint pictures for him, but has really started to create his own little masterpieces. He's still our music man though. I think he'd choose music over painting any day:)
Yesterday's artwork. The two in the upper left-hand corner are some that I was commissioned to do.
The first pictures of the day. Emma was working on her jet plane painting and Henry was working on his dragon that breathes fire.
You can bet that Legos will be on the Christmas and Birthday wish lists this year. Henry has developed a passion for Legos. When we went to Disneyland in April, we stopped at the Lego store in downtown Disney and I think Henry would have been perfectly okay spending the entire time there. The kid loves to build with Legos! So this is his Lego city. Designed by Henry, for Henry.

Early morning snuggles with the pup.
Looking down on Henry's Lego city. His city comes complete with flower garden(upper right corner), a spider sculpture(right side middle), fountains (lower right side gray and black), parking spaces all around, several high towers, and regular and recycle trash bends(three round discs in the bottom center).
Making a silly face at Mommy.
Emma used Lincoln Logs to make "cameras". Not sure how she came up with that one, but here they are.
Henry and I constructed a garage for one of his cars. You would think that with two large boxes of Lincoln Logs we could have made a garage big enough for both the car and the hummer, but we didn't have enough of the bigger logs to make it happen.