today: crafting, cooking, and fighting over legos

D's school is out for winter break so he's home with Q and I all week. This is pretty much what it's been like around here:

HA! Just kidding. They were at each other's throats most of today so that was great fun.  Q is fully growing into his two-ness, which includes awesomely adorable stories and imaginative play and SO MUCH PERSONALITY, all of which goes hand-in-hand with very strong opinions and equally strong reactions to when those opinions differ from Mom's (or brother's). Overall they get along pretty well as siblings, but we've certainly had our fair share of yelling and tears. 

When not fighting, we spent a lot of our timer today doing rescue missions with D's lego monster trucks.  For the first few weeks after he got his lego sets I tried to keep Q away from them, then quickly realizing there was no way I was gonna win that battle. So now I'm just trying to limit the damage of how often pieces fall off and get lost (I think we've already lost a small flag and a teensy gear shift). We'll see how long it lasts before I give up on even that.

One of my goals for this year is to cook more and get a bit more comfortable in the kitchen. So I was pretty excited (and a little nervous) when my friend Jeremy offered to help teach me how to make a few things. We had our first "cooking lesson" today, making a red lentil soup which, as promised, was both really simple and tasty. D loved helping peel and cut carrots and onions, and was so excited to try the finished product...till it was actually done and decided he didn't really want to try it after all bc he didn't like how it looked (it's funny how much he reminds me of myself, I was the exact same way about food as a kid). What's that advice about how kids are more likely to eat foods they help prepare? Oh well, at least us grown-ups like it.

As a second fun new thing to try today, I went to the TP crafting meetup tonight where we attempted to make these. Mine turned out ok, it may be the sort of thing I keep in our room so I can look at the cute pictures of my kids but no one else has to see the crooked tape lines. But it was fun to try, and was my first experience using mod-podge. And, I got to break out my photo/paper trimmer which hasn't seen much use since I stopped scrapbooking years ago...

To finish off the night, I just completed 2 more months (July and August) on my much-neglected 2012  family photobook, so perhaps I'll get around to finishing this book sometime in the semi-near future after all. I'm a little frustrated with it because after starting I realized I don't like the new size format I chose, but it's too late to start over so I'm trying to push through and finish it and try for something different for the next one.