Where should we put the play structure?

Our yard isn't huge.  We have great views of trees and expansive yards and common areas around us, and it all feels pretty private, but the fact is our property itself is on the conservative side.

We recently decided to get a play structure for the kids' 4th birthday present.  One of our favorite parks is a five minute drive away, but there are no parks within walking distance.  To make the most of our home, we are going for it.

After discovering that new ones of good size and quality run upwards of $3000, and knowing that having Mike build one would likely cut into a lot of spring and summer play time (that was a nice way of putting it, wasn't it?), I started hitting Craigslist.  We were thrilled to find a good deal on this guy and got ball rolling last weekend:



Mike took a look and gave a deposit, and he will be going out to take it down and bring it home in pieces this weekend.  The next step is the one that's causing me to stare out windows and wander our yard quite a bit.  Where should we put it?



This area above is what we consider the convenient one.  It's the flattest part of our yard, so leveling will be minimal.  It's right behind our driveway, so one kid could play there while the other swings and slides--no location compromise to be made during play time.



Above is another view of that same spot.  The trouble with it is it's closer to the main road that runs alongside our subdivision (the SUV in the distance is just beyond it).  The further from that, the safer I'll feel, but is the other end of the yard really that much safer?  And should it really concern me with relatively compliant four-year-olds who have never headed toward that particular road so far? 

That other end is below.



The space to the left of the trees is a large common area where the kids can run around.  To the right is our neighbor's yard.  The foreground is our property where Mike would have to do some extensive leveling (and yes, that's snow--almost gone).  I like this more secluded space because it feels safer and just more pleasant to me.  But if one kid wants to do sidewalk chalk on the driveway while the other wants to swing, I would have to position myself pretty strategically to keep an eye on both. 

The third option is right outside our family room window (kind of in between these two locations).  It would break up our backyard quite a bit, especially since we hope to put in a patio next year right beside that.  But being able to watch the kids from the couch someday might be nice...

Mike is going to get out there with stakes and string so we can really visualize these options and the work that could go into both.

What do you think?  Should we go with the area that requires more work but is more secluded or the one that is more convenient for driveway play and easier for installation?

The other question that we ponder is ground cover. Should we go all the way and build a play area with wood chips/recycled rubber for safety and easier lawn mowing?  We're leaning no on that one, but I could be swayed.

Highlights

The kids were very excited to get some mail the other day.  Grammie sent them High Five magazine!  We had a fun Saturday morning doing all the activities and reading the stories. 

Winter Adventures

It's no secret that this winter has been a rough one weather-wise. Along with taking advantage of our backyard snow, we have been keeping busy with some of our favorite local attractions.

Last month we went to the U of M Museum of Natural History.  We've been there before as a family, but now that dinosaurs are more interesting to Michael and Sophie, it was even more of a thrill.  Check out my saber tooth tigers.

Apparently the museum will be moving locations, so we'll have to get back a couple of times before the mastodons pack up and move out.  I really love that old building.

One of their buddies from school had a birthday party at Tiny Town.  We hadn't been there in a couple of years either, so it felt brand new again to the kids. 

We took the kids to their first movie in a theater a couple of weeks ago.  Like every other kid we know, they loved Frozen (and so did I).  We didn't take them sooner as the reviews mentioned the death of parents, a snow monster, and nearly freezing to death.  Michael especially is not a fan of scary scenes, but a little YouTubing beforehand to prepare him for that "big marshmallow" did the trick.  It also got us pretty excited about Olaf!

I have not mastered the art of taking a photo with my phone in a dimly lit theater, so this was the best I could get.  Little buddy.  :)

Most photos in theaters look like this:

This was taken at the Fox Theatre when we surprised the kids with Sesame Street Live again. 

They said it was a good surprise!  I know I loved it.  Getting tickets and Mike taking the day off (my mid-winter break) was a somewhat last minute decision brought on by all the photos of friends and their kids in warm places and mouse ears.  We aren't going on any big trips this year, so little adventures are in order!  And these kiddos will only love Elmo and Abby for so long.

Afterwards we went to lunch at Traffic Jam and Snug. 

I'm not sure if they were more excited for the show or the ice cream...looks like the ice cream!

 

We also went on a twin club play date to The Scrap Box where Michael and Sophie made creatures (a butterfly and a bird) out of recycled materials.  After talking more about recycling, they now also help me take our cans and boxes and so on out to the garage.  Having an attached garage makes that more possible than in the past, and Michael especially loves that job!

 

Check out Sophie outgrowing those 3T's.  Spring mom-to-mom sales, here we come!

Other than that, we've been having a great time with weekly lessons like Sophie's ballet:

and their shared swim classes:

Looking  back on all of this makes me feel a little better about Michael and Sophie watching two shows on Netflix while I typed this.  :S  Maybe we'll put our sad snow people out of their misery after nap today.

Before:

After:

That pretty much sums up how we all feel about winter at this point.  Come on, spring!

Valentines 2014

This year's valentines are done. Check!

Michael is giving bouncy balls, and Sophie is giving little puzzles. The puzzle idea came from Craftiness is Not Optional, and the ball idea came from Less Ordinary Designs. I even downloaded the printables but later decided to customize the labels.

I came up with a way to keep from totally doing the double duty of creating separate valentines for both kids to give. Their first year they just gave one together (the crayon hearts), but last year Sophie gave bubbles and Michael gave silly straws. Although they are both giving something this year as well, they are delivering them in the same package.

See...



...Sophie on one side...



...and Michael on the other.

The puzzles and balls both came from Oriental Trading. I found the bags at Target. I created the card labels using PowerPoint, cut them with a paper cutter, then folded and stapled them to the bags. Knowing a couple of punches with the hole punch and ribbon tied in a bow would be cuter than staples, I did pick up some colored string at Target as well. I gave in to ease, though, and stapled away. As I predicted, I wasn't thrilled with the look of the staple, the potential for scratching, or the fact that Michael or Sophie would appear to be on the "front" depending on how I stapled. Solution: I broke out the foam stickers I occupy the kids with occasionally and had them help me fix the Valentines up.

A few classmates will even get Valentine's adorned with Sophie's signature layered sticker technique.



These don't look nearly as polished as the pretty little printables out there, and they surely take a little more thought and effort than the boxes of valentine cards out there, but I'm pleased.  And I love that Michael and Sophie helped a bit for the first time!

A is for Apple....

Between the kids' nap last Sunday and their playing pretty peacefully together on the morning of a snow day (we've had a bunch this year), I was able to knock this out!

This same artwork was in the kids' playroom in the old house, of course.  It was inspired by a photo I saw in a Pottery Barn catalog that had the same concept on the wall of a nursery.  I didn't keep the catalog, and this is the only photo I could find online of the inspiration.  You can see the bird, but you'll have to trust me that the apple and caterpillar are up there, too.

It's funny to think back to making this for the old playroom before the kids were born.  We bought the frames with a gift card from the shower on the same shopping trip that I bought the pants I wore to the hospital.  I painted the chipboard letters and craft paper backing in our old basement with no distractions at all, aside from a big ol' belly.
 

 

I sketched the stencils with my feet up on the couch, the way I spent a lot of afternoons back then.  I thought I kept the cut-outs just as keepsakes. Turns out it was so I could do it all over again!

I don't have a very vivid memory of painting the design in the old house (pregnancy brain?), but I'm sure later on I'll remember the kids playing around me this time around as I tried not to mess up.  Mike pointed out before I began that we have no more yellow paint for the playroom, so touch-ups would not be an option.  The pressure made me feel all Michelangelo.

I believe I will also recall Sophie telling me I'm very good at painting and asking, "When I grow up to be a teacher, can I paint on the walls like you?"  That teacher thing came 100% from her, despite my suspicion that she has it in her.  I told her yes, by the way. 

Above is a photo I took from my painting perch on top of the toy shelves.  Later I discovered that I dripped paint in Sophie's hair.  Better there than on the walls!

While it was certainly easier to paint with two munchkins peacefully rolling around in my belly, this was admittedly more fun and rewarding, especially when Michael came down from his nap to see what I had started and declared it a "Great idea!" 

Sophie exclaimed that my work was "just beautiful" when it was done.  Best patrons ever.

 

Mike and the kids also added a shelf to the kitchen area this weekend.

 

I can't believe how much better this playroom feels to me now.  It's all warmed up with memories of preparing for these two, of infants crawling over my legs, and of a couple of toddlers stumbling around gumming teethers.  We're filling the space now with games of Candyland and Memory and all sorts of imaginative fun, of preschoolers making observations and playing contentedly by my side.
 

Like father, like son. Like mother, like daughter.

We try to keep from comparing or labeling the kids too much, but as they grow older their individual personalities and talents surface more and more.

For instance, there's a side of Soph that we refer to as Ms. Sophie.  When playing in this mode she speaks like a preschool teacher, saying things like, "Michael, you have two choices.  Either we can play with your trains, or we can make a puzzle.  What's your choice?" She also seems more mommy-like at times as she takes care of her Sweetie (stuffed bunny or doll or our cat) and says things like, "Sweetie, let's go get you a bath before we go to the museum."  The other day when we took Michael for a haircut, she walked up to him as he approached the chair, put her hands on her knees and said, "Aren't you excited?  You get to have your haircut!"  That's Ms. Sophie.

Michael has a very similar Mr. Michael/daddy-like side as well, and it's incredibly sweet.  However, Sophie is in that mode a lot more often.

Sophie is also quite the student.  She will practice something and practice it until she gets it right, urging you to quiz her again and again until she's there.  This happened with learning to spell her name (back during the summer, I believe) and recently as she learned to play "Twinkle, Twinkle" on her toy computer in piano mode.  She now plays it on Grandma's piano and anything else with a keyboard of that kind.  She also followed my verbal instructions on how to draw a cat the other night and wanted to "play that game" again and again.

The kids learn at the same pace for the most part, but Michael is more likely to sit on his own and figure something out while Sophie pushes you to be her tutor. However, they both enjoy an enthusiastic celebration of a new skill or discovery, no matter how they reach it!

Speaking of figuring things out, Michael is especially drawn to anything car/train/gear/machine-related.  Today he climbed out of the pool at swim lessons and just stood there staring at his feet.  Confused, I told Mike I hoped he wasn't peeing or something.  "No, he's watching the water splash in and out of the drain."  I hadn't even noticed the drain around the edge of the pool, but no doubt Mike himself had at some point considered how that whole system worked.  That's the kind of thing his mind will wander toward while I'm thinking about how obvious it is that the rec. center was built in the late nineties (greenish-teal and purple accents everywhere).  Michael also loves to look around, inside, or behind any barrier to how things work, and he'll ask all the how's and why's that are necessary.

This is why it made me laugh the other morning when I made Michael's bed and found this:

Apparently when he came downstairs to get something from the playroom, it wasn't exactly a snuggle buddy.  (It's a toy motorcycle that can be taken apart and put back together with little tools.)

Again, we try not to compare or pigeon-hole our kids, but they are who they are, and like it or not, who they are is often a lot like us.

Our own Toy Story

 

 Heading out to the backyard to sled...

Sophie: Do we have two of these new sleds?
 

Me:  Yes, we do.  Do you know who gave them to us?

Sophie: Who?
 

Me:  Aunt Sharon.
 

Sophie: Aunt Sharon?!?  I love Aunt Sharon.
 

Me: Well, she and her two sons had these two sleds that they didn't need anymore, and they thought of two little ones who would probably have a lot of fun with them.

 

Sophie:  (thoughtful pause) Sophie and Michael!
 

Me: You got it, peanut butter.

 

 

Snowed in with my buddies

Like so much of the country, we spent several days last week hunkered down at home waiting out the cold and snow.  Sadly, Mike had to drive in to work, but I was given the gift of three snow/cold days at home with my kids tacked onto the end of our holiday break.  When the holidays fall in the middle of the week like they did this year, I tend to head back to work craving more lazy weekdays at home.  These extra days were just what I needed.

Along with getting a few home organizing projects, phone calls, and general housekeeping taken care of, the kids and I tried out a few crafty activities such as playing with snow indoors...





...making snow ice cream (we used 4 cups snow, 1/4 cup 2% milk, 1/4 cup flavored coffee creamer, and chopped hazelnuts)...



...making and playing with gingerbread play dough...





...and obviously hanging out in jammies a whole lot!  Movies and snuggling by the fire were key to our winter survival as well, of course.

Speaking of jammies, just check out how cute these peanuts were on Christmas morning.



Precious.  So glad I got some extra time with them!

Living in During - The Blog

I took a step yesterday that I have been considering for a while.  I started a second blog, Living in During, which is devoted to our DIY and decorating projects.  I have imported posts on those topics from Shared and Doubled and have a couple of new ones scheduled to post on Living in During this week and next.  From this point on, that's where I'll share updates to our house, organization projects, and crafts that we undertake.  Shared and Doubled will now be devoted to posts about our family.

I believe this will allow me to write more personally on Shared and Doubled and to work on monetizing and increasing traffic to Living in During (I felt strange embarking on that for the family blog in the past).  There is likely to be some overlap here and there, of course, but I hope Shared and Doubled's regular readers will follow both! 

The Laundry Closet

I'm not sure if I should be relieved or disappointed that I planned a wedding and had babies before Pinterest entered my life.  Knowing how much I relied on message boards and blogs for ideas and support for both, I know pinning would have entered into those experiences had I recognized the possibility.

I have, however, bought a new home that begs for DIY remodeling and creative organization in the age of Pinterest.

"Pinspired" by Ana White's design and others like it, for example, we turned our hall linen closet that already had some shelving into a laundry organizer.  Our big laundry baskets from the old house didn't fit in the shallow closet shelves, but I found that Ikea carries smaller ones, the $4.99 BLASKAs.  They are actually the perfect size for a load as we tend to load baskets with as much as possible.  That was $40 well spent.

We store our sheets on the top shelf, and the clothes steamer, iron, and ironing board to the side.  We keep our towels and all other items that might otherwise go in a linen closet under our bathroom sinks.

As one might predict, I labeled the baskets.

I waited a couple of months to see what our loads tend to really be, and we now have a basket for Mike, Carrie, Sheets, Michael and Sophie, Dry Cleaning, Delicates, White Towels, and Colored Towels. Clearly we do laundry primarily by person rather than colors, but that works fine for us. The kids have easy access to the closet as well and know where to put their dirty clothes.

Mike also has a basket in our spare bedroom closet for clothes he wears to the gym.  Distance from that one made sense.  ;)

Of course, if you wish to do this but don't already have shelves in a closet, this project would require a little more time and money.  I would probably look into putting one or two $15 HYLLIS shelving units in a closet.  These baskets would stick out about four inches off the front, but that could still work, I think.

Our system keeps the laundry routine moving smoothly--if a basket is full, throw it in--and with little accumulation around the house, it's exactly what I hoped for!

I linked up to Love of Family and Home.  Go check out some more inspiring projects!