Cute as a Button...

...is the title of my review and giveaway over at Northwest Mom Finds! My little Etsy shop got some press! Head on over to this post to check out their kind words (*blush*) and enter for your chance to win.

Bug's 3 Year Old Check-Up

For you grandparent-types...

Bug finally had her 3 year old check-up this last week (only 3 months late!) She's 31.5 pounds and 39.5 inches tall. I have no idea where that puts her in terms of percentile-- sorry! Her doctor did mention that she's on the slender side but that she seems very healthy, active, smart, and social. None of that was news to us!

Just one concern (aside from her umbilical hernia, which is getting smaller): she seems to have some chewing/swallowing issues still, so we'll be getting a referral for the feeding clinic up in Portland to see if there's a physical cause. We'll be sure to keep you posted...

So Where Have We Been?

OK, so the Christmas pix aren't up yet and we never formally wished you all a happy new year, but hopefully you at least saw our Christmas card-- better late than never, right?

I'll get some catching up posts in soon, but until then, yes, we are all alive and well! Mugger got his first black eye at school-- no, not a fight but an errant scooter in PE. Bug has now taken to drawing "birthday spiders" on cards (starting with her one for Baby Jesus), but we have no idea where she picked up that idea!

We spent last week in Montana for an unplanned vacation. Papa's Grandma had remarried almost 4 years ago at the ripe old age of 91, but her husband, Guy, has preceded her on the journey Home. The memorial service was Friday, which also happened to be my birthday. Bug decided to make it memorable by puking all over the second we stepped foot in the church for the service! Oh well, at least they were both healthy enough for most of the visit to enjoy their time with their Montana family, especially their new cousin, Rogan. Pics coming soon, I hope...

So what's been keeping Mama from the blog? Well, if you see these posts in an e-mail or feed reader, you may not be aware that my little Etsy shop has been up and running. It's start to take off, so I've been making hair accessories left and right! If you'd like a chance to win some, I'm hosting a giveaway this week over at my shop blog at this post-- and yes, family and friends can enter!

Hope all are well!

Prayers Please!

Well, the snow is mostly gone here in Corvallis (though more was falling this morning), yet we just talked to friends in the Portland area who have 19 inches on the ground!

So why does this matter to Mugger and Bug? Well, Nonnie and Gramps' flight from Orange County this morning got rerouted -- instead of landing in Portland, they just landed in Yakima, Washington. Given that the major highways around Portland are closed, we're hoping they can get a flight up to Seattle and then down to Eugene.

Please keep their travels in your prayers!

update: After sitting in Yakima on the tarmac for the rest of the morning, they were finally able to land in Portland. With all the snow on the roads, it was almost 7 before they got here tonight, but they're here, safe and sound. You never saw 2 kiddos run so fast out a front door as they did when the car pulled up!

Friday morning: Snow Day #3!

Well, Mugger had no school Monday or Tuesday due to the snow in the last post, but here's what greeted us this morning!And here's my first attempt at posting a video:

And no, I won't post pictures out our front and back door every time it snows, but for a California girl who never saw it fall from the sky until she went away to college in Nebraska, it's still pretty cool!

PS-- For all of you who read M&B by e-mail or in a reader, I think you'll actually have to visit the live site if you want to see the snow fall in all the pictures...

Snow Day!

Look what we woke up to this morning!Yes, Greg was very happy to see his Jeep this way-- now it just needs a heater...And I thought this palm tree covered in snow was a fitting image for our family of California transplants...Before lunch, we headed out to play in the snow...
And Jewelpup loved it too!
Look at those pink cheeks!
And they say we're in for more this week-- who knows, Nonnie and Gramps, it may be here when you arrive on Monday!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

So we took advantage of living in the Pacific Northwest by stopping at a tree farm last week to select our own Christmas tree. Here's the "before" shot next to Mugger and Bug's "perfect" tree. (Thank goodness I talked Bug out of the Charlie Brown tree!)
And here's the "after" shot:
They decorated it themselves (with help from Papa.) I think they did a fantastic job, don't you?

Anybody home?

Wow, it's not often I write a post (or 3) for Mugger and Bug and don't hear from any of their family or friends. Everybody OK out there?

For those of you who get Mugger and Bug in a reader, just wanted to let you know that I've added a new button to the sidebar. This is the Kiddos' personal blog, so I've never done this before, but I'll leave it up as long as necessary. It's a link to the "Save Handmade" page, in case you're curious. If you missed the earlier post, thanks to the CPSIA (see the Save Handmade page), my fledgling Etsy shop will be closed come February 10. I've even been featured here at Endangered Whimsy, a blog to showcase all the products that will disappear thanks to this legislation. I had a pretty decent local Christmas bazaar season (in spite of the economy), so it'd be a shame to shut down just as I'm getting started...

Leave a comment and let us know how you're doing!

Fall Portraits, Part 2

For those of you who subscribe to Mugger and Bug by e-mail or in a reader, click on through if you want to see the slide show of all of their fall portraits if the collage in the previous post isn't enough Mugger and Bug for you.

Yeah, there are more pix, and yeah, the slide show in the left sidebar is tiny. But if you click on it, it will take you to my Picasa web album page and then you can see all 28 shots in their regular-size glory. Enjoy!

Mugger and Bug's Fall Portraits...

Help Save Ladybug Limited...

I'm guessing that most of Mugger and Bug's family and friends don't know that their Mama has been selling hair accessories for over a year now. I even opened my Etsy shop last week.

However, that may soon be coming to a close. Hop on over to this post at my Ladybug Limited hair accessories blog to see what's up...

Once I'm done with my little grass roots campaign, I'll be back to post some new photos of the Kiddos!

Only 25 Days till Christmas!

In case you wanted them and missed this post, here are Mugger and Bug's wishlists for Christmas-- just click on their names for the Amazon link...

Yes, many of Bug's items are off of Etsy-- we're going for more handmade holidays in our house, hence Bug's gift of a flannel board for her birthday. If you need a little sampling of why Etsy is so awesome, check out some of the links in this post from Rocks in My Dryer!

If you're new to Etsy, you'll have to sign up for a user name, but you can check out with Paypal without a Paypal account by just clicking to pay by credit card. One of these days I'll get my Ladybug Limited hair accessories in my empty store there!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

We had quite the excitement at our house this morning when we saw that Mugger's kindergarten class made the front page of our newspaper, the Corvallis Gazette-Times (aka, the GT)!

Mugger spent last week doing extra chores to earn money for yesterday morning's field trip to the grocery store-- he spent his $6 on oranges. As for extra chores, I paid him $4 for folding and putting away 2 loads of laundry (his and his sister's) and $2 more for unloading the dishwasher twice all by himself (with some help from the kitchen stool.) He was excited that Papa got to drive for the field trip and help him with his purchases.

The second part of the field trip was the newsworthy part, though. Rather than having the kindergarteners walk all their groceries the 3 blocks to the soup kitchen, they loaded them up on llamas! Mugger even got to lead one of the llamas for a bit and was so excited to learn about how to pack them.

For all the details, according to the GT, click here. We're saving our paper copy-- the online edition doesn't have the photo that was on the inside where you can see Mugger's back as he learns about llama packing.

UPDATE: Found the inside pic in the GT's online gallery! Mugger is in the red coat:

Back to Corvallis

We made it home at 10:15 last night-- and no, I don't regret the decision to drive all the way to OC and back! Mugger and Bug are great travelers! So great that we drove almost 9 hours yesterday with only 1 stop. (And yes, Papa got to drive all the way home from the Bay Area since I had done the other 3 legs solo.) Of course, it helped that Bug fell asleep for the last 3 hours of the trip...

We'll post pix of our great California adventure soon, but I know the kiddos are happy to be home and have the whole family together again. Bug is currently dancing around the living room for her Papa!

And Corvallis must be growing on Mugger. As I drove him to school this morning, he gazed wondrously at all the fall colors and said, "Corvallis sure is prettier than where we used to live," and then asked me, "Does Oregon have more trees than anywhere?"

Sure is good to be back in our "tree house" (named because about all we see out any window is trees!)

Bug's Birthday at Disneyland

Yes, I'm backdating posts now as I'm finally getting pix loaded...

California, Here We Come!

In case we hadn't told you...

Next week, Mugger only has a 3-day school week, due to Parent-Teacher Conferences, so I'm doing the unthinkable (at least in my former-life-as-a-teacher mindset): I'm pulling Mugger out of school for the week so that we can squeeze in a road trip to our former home. It's the only time before Christmas that Nonnie and Gramps' schedule and ours could meet, so off we go.

Of course, it also helped that our godson is being baptized in the Bay area on November 2nd (the day on which I can technically start referring to him as my godson!), so it's actually a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone trip. Papa gets to meet us at the Maschke's, and I'm sure that I will be more than happy to let him drive all the way home!

Ask me in 2 weeks if I was totally insane to think that I could drive 2 kids by myself to CA and halfway back to Corvallis...

Bug's Birthday...

... will be here in 3 weeks! And since Grandma asked for it, here is her wishlist. (Just click on the word "here.") I used the universal wishlist from Amazon for the first time, so it has things from Etsy (my new favorite site-- it's the handmade version of eBay, more or less) as well as some gear from Lands' End. I'll keep updating it for Christmas, too, so this will be her all-occasion list. (I'll get Mugger's updated and posted soon for you early shoppers...) Let me know if you need help with Etsy-- if you have a PayPal account, you only need to register your e-mail to create an ID.

If you get her something that is similar to something on the list, you could leave a comment on this post so she doesn't get duplicate items. I don't know if the list will show purchases from Etsy or Lands' End-- I think it will if you click through from the list.

And in other news, today is her first day in Big Girl underwear-- hooray!

UPDATE: I haven't added the winter gear Mugger needs yet, but here is his list, too...

Bug the "Big One"

For as long as we can remember, Bug's definition of a "big girl" has been one who is potty-trained. She's said, more than once, "I don't go in the potty, so I'm not a big one." Well, almost overnight it seems, she's a big one! On Tuesday morning when she got up, Papa told her that there were no more diapers, and for once, she agreed. (This isn't the first time we've tried potty training...)

She had a few accidents on Tuesday, but since then, she's made it to the potty every time. Hopefully next week, we'll be reporting that she's in her big girl underwear as she knows that she can have it as soon as she goes a week without accidents. And yes, her big girl underwear has ladybugs on it!

By the way, being a "big one" has its perks as Bug now uses markers and scissors (with supervision, of course!) Apparently being a "big one" also brings other changes as Bug has told us that now that she's a big one she likes butter on her bread and whipped cream on her waffles!

And doesn't she look old with those ponytails? Her hair is long enough that she asks for them all the time now. How is it that she'll be 3 next month already?

Mugger our Sports Maniac

Mugger started AYSO soccer this fall and LOVES it! He's already had 2 games and 1 goal! (The Flyers haven't had any wins yet, but that doesn't seem to bother him.) As you can see, 5 year olds take their soccer very seriously:
Elsewhere in the wide world of sports... last night was the big OSU vs. USC game and we just had to let the little sports nut stay up when the Beavers were ahead 21 - 0 at the half. He was ecstatic when the Beavers held on to win it and had to talk football with his kindergarten teacher first thing this morning, since he knew she had been lucky enough to attend. Don't worry-- he's had his Beaver fix as he got to go to the Hawaii game the week before!

We're now convinced there must be a sports nut gene, as this thirst for sports certainly isn't anything he learned from us. It extends to school, too, by the way-- every day he comes home and talks about nothing other than what sports he played at each recess!

Mugger's First Day of Kindergarten (*sniff-sniff*)

OK, first a little note... yes, I know I've basically missed the entire summer-- I was downloading pictures from MAY tonight! BUT... I promise to catch up soon, so brace yourself for a bunch of back-dated posts when I do. Now back to the topic of this post...

Yesterday was Mugger's first day as a "Zion Lion" and he LOVED kindergarten. Of course, being the outdoor kiddo that he is, when I asked him how his day went, the first thing he said was, "We had THREE recesses!" Trying to get further details out of him didn't get me much more, as the next thing he had to tell me was that he went across the playground rings 6 times!

Anyways, here's some Day One pix, the first two taken before school and the last one after with his teacher and the beloved rings:It sure was hard to leave him that morning as our good-bye felt like I was putting him on a bus to summer camp: at the end of the opening chapel, they called the kids up to their classes, one by one. No hug, no wave good-bye, just a scamper up the aisle to join the other kindergarteners. With as crazy as our life has been in OC the last couple years, it was hard to see him go-- part of me wishes I could keep him home, yet I also know he's more than ready and will have a ball. Now if we can just get them to let him into the 5th to 8th grade Chess Club... (Yeah, our little Mugger has become a bit of a chess fiend over the summer, but that's a whole post of its own!)

So what did Bug do with Mama all to herself all day? Well, once we walked home, we decided to bike to the post office to mail Gramps his cookies-of-the-month. Bug loves her bike seat!After the post office, we stopped by Riverfront Park for a picnic lunch (thanks for the lunchbox, Nonnie!) since Bug had decided we should go to a park while we were out.
She definitely loved being out and about: she told me she wants to ride the bike to a park and walk to school (a mile away!) everyday! The morning walk and bike ride wore her out-- luckily Papa was home so she could keep sleeping when it was time for me to walk Mugger home.