happy birthday to my niece and nephews!

Part of our summer vacation took us for to my SIL for her kids birthday! Hard to believe they are already two, hand to believe Carson is already two! She threw a cute little ice cream sundae party with pools for the little kids to splash around in. The weather was amazing! My SIL is planning on home schooling (God grant her the patients and strength for that one!) so I jumped at the chance to make them something educational. For their birthday last year I made them a cloth book about colors and one about shapes. The down fall is there are three of them and sharing at that age.... well you all have kids and you can all relate! I really liked the idea of a busy book, partly because I never finished Coltons and partly because I always have so many ideas running though my brain that its hard to nail down one design for anything. I came up with a basic idea of an ABC book  but I really didn't want to make 3. So I came up with this :

The thought it that they can either read it like a book on mom and dads lap or they can lay it down open on the floor and all 3 of them can play at one time! The pages were a combination of fabric printing and and fun interactive thing. Here are a few of my favorite pages.

The connect the dots is fabulous! It makes a bone for the dog! (I imagen sometimes I will do a whole book like this!)

The rocket slides up and down and Im pretty sure Carson did this page a few dozen times before I wrapped it up.

This one the rain moved up and down like an abacus, but my favorite part is the traffic light because it is a pocket that holds a bunch of felt vehicles that drive around the S page.

Im hoping to make a few and put them on Etsy. We will see I always make things as gift but never seem to find the motivation to put them on Etsy. I think I have a hidden fear of failing. Here are the kids enjoying time with their cousins.

We had a really good time up there. Hope we dont have to wait another year to get the kids together... now how am I going to top this cool book for Christmas :)

Yeah summer is almost over!

I know I know where oh where did I go?! I feel like it has been summer forever and for that most every moment of my life has been spent watching kids! My kids, your kids, his kids, her kids. There hasn't been one day where it has just been my kids at my house. Im not complaining, I heart kids (let me clarify when they arnt being piles of mouse poop!) Then we did the vacation thing and that was tons of fun. We went and saw my SIL and her babies (wait for the gift post coming up!) and then up to Port Angelst for visit more family and there we did mounds of things and on the way back we stopped at Forks :) yup we took our twilight loving kiddos to Forks :) to bad the parent in laws rushed us through it but seeing Brooklyn's eyes huge and giddy the whole time I honestly cant complain to much, well on here at least if you are a friend who listen to me complain I love you and you love your forks swag so its worth it :) We went fishing and to Mt St helens to do the ape caves and lava tubes. If you are from the area you totally have to make a trip up there it was so worth it! We also enjoyed an awesome night of glow stick swimming with a movie on the side of the house and that was crazy fun, it should also be noted that we watched The Lorax about 20 billion times, so much the baby sings all the songs all the time. So with out further ado here is a glimpse at our summer!