Plaster...

I have come to the conclusion we will never be done with plaster.  Our houses keep getting older and bigger and the plaster in a greater state of disrepair.  We have just about finished with it downstairs - there are still a few rough spots in the foyer --
 but now we are headed upstairs - and it is really  bad upstairs.


The stairway needs a good bit of help, too...



By the time we are finished I think we will have probably replaced 25-30% of the finished plaster and maybe 15% of the foundation plaster.

I'm pretty sure this is why we never hang pictures...

Helping Daddy

Doug is helping out at Winchester Montessori by patching their circular driveway.  

Clearly, Reece is helping, too.

Making Ornaments

Once again, I am borrowing ideas from the Play at Home Mom blog and trying some of their activities with the boys.  A few weekends ago I bought a bunch of random little Christmas trinkets and some clear plastic globe style ornaments.  Now that everyone has recovered from the stomach bug that knocked the whole house on it's butt, I decided to give this activity a try after school today.

I set out all the goodies on the table and invited the boys to come and see.  I showed them how to get the salt (snow) in the globes and then told them they could put what ever they wanted in them.  This turned out to be a GREAT activity.  They were very engaged for over 30 minutes.  If I had had more ornaments to fill, they would have kept going!  Once they ran out of materials they were very excited to hang their creations on just the right spot on the tree.

When Doug got home later in the evening, they both raced over to tell him that had made "Beautiful Ornaments" for the tree and wanted him to come over and see what they had done.

I'm pretty sure we are going to have to do this again.

One week later...

Well, it has been one week since Reece mangled his fingers at the store.  The doctor at the ER told to have him wear the splint for 5-7 days then take it off.  Reece is still really, really worried about the state of his fingers and/or having anyone touch them - but we did manage to have him go without it after his bath.

He still doesn't want you to touch his hand at all, so I snapped this picture after he was asleep ;)  The little red dot is where they gave him the digital block in the ER.  No nails on the middle two fingers.  :(

And to further make me feel like a terrible mom, yesterday while brushing his teeth I noticed that his front right tooth was ever so slightly grey!  (Holy crap!)  I have no idea when he bumped it hard enough to make this happen, but clearly he did.  After a Google search (note to self - this is never a good idea) and a night stressing over it, I called his dentist first thing in the morning.  They told me it was a bruise, not a big deal if it wasn't loose (it isn't), and that at worst it will be a little discolored.  Whew.