Awesome Magazine Deals

I was searching through Amazon this morning and came across this AWESOME deal, The Parents magazine 1 year subscription for only $5...1 year = 12 issues, that's only 42 cents an issue!! Check it out at this link I also thought this could be a great Christmas Gift for a friend or family member. You gotta hurry though, offer ends tonight at midnight.
I also found Family Circle for only $14.97 for 1 year. 1 year = 15 magazines, so you basically get it for $1 magazine. You can't beat that!
My personal favorite Disney Family Fun is currently only $9.95 for a 1 year subscription. 1 year= 10 subscriptions, which again is only $1 magazine.

Past the "parenting" magazine stage?? I also found Good Housekeeping for only $7.97 for 1 year subscription. 1 year = 12 issues. That's only 67 cents an issue!!!
And you can't beat this AMAZING deal: O, The Oprah Magazine has a 2 year subscription for $24. 2 years = 24 issues...that's right, only $1 an issue for Oprah's magzine. =)

The Great Pumpkin

This week Brayden had a family project for school: decorating a paper pumpkin. Unfortunately his preschool does not celebrate holidays (wish I would have known that ahead of time). For this project we were reminded that they do not celebrate holidays and asked for no jack-or-lanterns and to be creative as well. =) Of course, Brayden wanted to put a sCaRy face on it and had a hard time understanding why we couldn't. So I knew I had to get pretty creative so he would enjoy it. I went to the handy dandy google.com and looked up painting techniques for preschoolers. I found a great idea using of all things shaving cream and Elmer's glue (1 part of each) with the result of "puffy paint". I thought it would be fun to try out....shaving cream is always fun. =) I decided to add some yellow and red food coloring to make it orange, then I mixed it all up in a bowl and it was ready to go.
First he painted the background brown with his watercolors.


Then he was ready to apply his "puffy" paint. (He decided he needed to take his shirt off so he wouldn't get it messy.)

If he looks a lil distracted, it's because we were also watching:

***I must say I was a lil disappointed in some of the language in the show that I guess I just overheard before. Brayden is at that age where he is very observant to what he hears...well they said a "naughty word" (stupid) SEVERAL times and he of course had to point it out EVERYTIME.

Here is our final product of The Great Pumpkin

(not quite sure if it looks exactly right or not)

After it had time to dry for several hours, I added some fall leaves to add just a little extra fall decoration.

He was excited while watching the movie because he also got to do this at school today:

Of course he wanted to do it again when we got home, but we're going to wait until Saturday. =)

Road Trip to OKC and Stillwater

Finally back to blogging world! Last weekend we went to visit my oldest sister and her family in Oklahoma City. Well, we had SUCH a great time that it completely wore me out!! In fact, tonight is the first time I have even brought my laptop out of its bag! For a computer/internet-addicted gal like myself, that says alot. =) So finally here is a recap of our weekend (a weekend late) and hopefully I didn't set a world record for the world's LONGEST post. =)

Friday: First, I had parent teacher conferences non stop all day until about 3:15. Then I quickly went to get Brayden and after a quick stop at our house we were off on our 3.5 hour road trip to Oklahoma City. Let me give you a quick bit of background information....I have not drove a car by myself for more than 60miles in over 2.5 years...so it was a drive I was sort of dreading and to make matters worse, Brayden started asking "Are we there yet?...This is taking FOREVER!....How much longer?!?" about 10 minutes into our trip AND on a 15 minute rotation. Unfortunately, no exaggeration! Let's just say I thought I was going to go a lil cRaZy before we got there...especially since I was running on about 3 hours of sleep from parent/teacher preparation. Luckily, we had PLENTY of "cowboy" music to keep us entertained. I was amazed how practically every other station after we crossed the Oklahoma border was country music rather than our regular spanish music. I sort of amazed myself how well I could remember a lot of the ol country tunes from back in my country music listening days. We also got to see LOTS of casinos, something we aren't used to seeing. Brayden was amazed with all the sparkles and glitter that he wanted us to pullover and check them out. We also drove through the "Arbuckle Mountains" in which Brayden started bawling his eyes out thinking they were so scary. (I think he thought the rocks were going to fall on us.) After a LONG drive we thankfully and safely arrived just in time to head over to my nephew's highschool football game which he plays in the pep band. It was so fun to watch....people watch that is, along with a lil football watching and Brayden had fun watching the "band" Just to clarify: it was not a marching band-but a "band" with amps and guitars and drum sets, etc...
Photo courtesy of Brayden... Saturday:
I started the day off with my sister taking me to get my haircut. I hadn't had my haircut since March, so it was definitely LONG overdo. Haircuts/manicures/pedicures are those simple pleasures in life that I just rarely treat myself to. I would much rather save the money for something both Brayden and I could enjoy than pampering myself. Next on our agenda was to head to Stillwater, Oklahoma for a few of Oklahoma State's Homecoming festivities. First stop was the parade...we got there just in the nick of time. We had about 5 minutes to spare before the Grand Marshalls (Garth Broooks, Barry Sanders and Robin Ventura) started the parade off...I snapped a few good pic's of Garth and Barry but of course I found out afterwards that I had "no camera card". Hopefully, I will be able to figure out how to get them from my camera to computer one of these days. Here is a slideshow of the parade:

After the parade, we parked on campus and just started walking AND walking. My sister and I were both amazed at how many people were already tailgating and how involved it is these days..we saw several flat screens and satellite dishes.

We stopped in the Student Union to check out the stores and grab some lunch. Brayden LOVED this hat but I was afraid we would end up carrying it all day long so I just took his picture so he could "remember" it.

Then my sister made the BEST purchase of the day...an OSU football for Brayden. It was a GREAT bribery tool to use all day. =) We also stopped a few times so he could catch and throw his new football.

(Not quite sure that I have a future football star on my hands...gotta first get over the fear of it first.)
Aunt Angie encouraged him to do this fun trick:

I then took them a lil down memory lane:
The OSU library (with an orange fountain for Homecoming)
Theta pond (You can't tell from the picture, but they had orange Christmas lights all around the pond. So pretty!!)

Side View of the Chi Omega house

He LOVED the trophy room in the Chi O house and thought it was fun to see mommy's picture:

Front of Willard Hall, the College of Education building. I spent a LOT of time in here....

Back view of the College of Education...

Then we went to see the "House Dec's". One of OSU's major Homecoming "sights to see" is the Greek House Dec's. Each sorority is paired up with a fraternity and together they create a design and then implement it by doing COUNTLESS hours of "pomping". If you are wondering what pomping is....it is basically sticking a TON of tissue paper into chicken wire to create an amazing design that usually covers the front of the fraternity house. Here is a link to a video I found on youtube that helps explain it a lil better.

Here is a slideshow of all the AMAZING work that was put in by the different Greek organizations this year. As you watch, please remember this is all made by college students (no outside help or consultation), chicken wire and TISSUE paper....it truly is absolutely AMAZING!!

We were amazed by this HUGE tree and swing in front of one of the fraternity houses:

Here is a closeup of the winning house dec:




After we finished with all the house dec's, we went back to the library lawn to watch the band. They had a lil pep concert before the game (the game didn't start until 8:15pm). Since Brayden has a new love of drums/bands we of course had to sit and listen for a lil while.


Brayden gave himself a front row seat... Then the two batton twirlers came and sat by him. He was SO excited! (He's already a lil girl crazy.)

Once they got up, he watched them toss their baton and then they let him try to toss it...

Here is the band playing "Oklahoma" with the twirlers in the background doing their thing...(it was getting dark outside so the video might be more for the wonderful music instead.)


We finished our Stillwater trip off with my favorite local, authentic mexican restaraunt, El Vaquero...LOVE the queso blanco.
All in all, we had a FUN day. I was very proud of Brayden, he did such an amazing job walking everywhere we went all on his own. Thanks to both my sister and him for being such troopers letting me go down my college memory lane. (In case you are wondering, YES I do miss Stillwater/OSU.)


Sunday: Our trip home was a little more peaceful, should I say? =) Here is what Mr. Brayden did for most of the trip:


Since he was sleeping, I also took a picture of the "sCaRy Arbuckle Mountains"
As soon as we got home, we had just enough time to eat lunch before we had to rush out the door to a friend's birthday party. It was a tae kwon do party and Brayden LOVED it! Here he is taking a kick at the pinata. (I think he looks so cute in his lil gym clothes.) He's able to kick that lil leg pretty high!

We had such a FABULOUS (yet exhausting) weekend!!

The Letter Can and the Letter S

This last week, I discovered Brayden apparently has a new LOVE / Obesession...

....it's The Letter Can!!

It's such a simple thing, and I'm sure when his sweet teacher came up with the idea she had no idea the impact it could have on a 4yr old. Well, to Brayden, this last week it was his WORLD. He brought it home on Monday for the first time. In fact, this was the first time I have ever heard of it or seen it. As we walked out of his preschool that day he walked out with a lil extra pep to his step. (No exaggeration!) He was so excited about it, he had to tell everyone that we walked past "I'm the letter can helper." The letter of the week was the letter S....so we discussed some possible things he could take in to show his friends. One of us thought of Seashells and then I remembered the Dollar Tree has packages of Seashells. I thought it would be fun for him to take one in for everyone, plus a good excuse to check out their cheap Halloween decorations. While we were there we picked up our Seashells and I also noticed some Spider rings so we picked those up too. He was so excited to take them both in the next day.

On to Tuesday, when I picked him up guess what the first thing was he wanted to show me...The Letter Can. Yep, he chose The Letter Can as his helper job AGAIN. And he was just as excited about it. We had to think of another S item to put in the can. The day before we also picked up some cute Snowflakes at the Dollar Store so I thought we could use one of those, plus we could make a quick stop into Hobby Lobby for their half off Stickers. We picked up some Snowflake Stickers. He was excited to give a Snowflake Sticker to each of his friends. So we came up with this:

We also talked about how he could tell his friends that his Aunt GiGi lives in Colorado where it snows all the time.

Well since this was two nights in a row, I also tried to have the discussion with him that he might want to share this job and let another friend have it the next night. OMGoodness, you would have thought something TERRIBLY traggic had happened to him. He instantly dropped to the floor and started BAWLING his eyes out, I had never seen him act like this before. I think he was truly heartbroken over the possibility of not bringing this "paint can" home. When he finally composed himself, he managed to tell me with an attitude "Well if I can't be the letter can helper than I'm not going to be ANY helper." I told him that would be a really sad choice and I would hate to hear that choice was made when I picked him up...So fast forward to Wednesday pickup. Before he could even say the words "Hi mommy" he said in a very determined toned "Come here mommy and look at this helper chart!" So I followed him to the lil chart and he says "Do you see my name anywhere mommy? (as I looked) "Nope! You don't see Brayden. I didnt do a job today because I couldn't be the letter can helper." Apparently, he was so distraught because two other friends chose to be the letter can helper before him and he couldn't take it home. So just like he promised, if he couldn't have his way, then he chose to not have a helper job at all. Absolutely NO compromising.

On our way home, I tried to comfort him and told him I had another fun project planned for him to take in the next day for his show and tell. We were going to go on an "S hunt". But first he had to write an "I'm sorry" letter to his teachers for his sad choices from earlier in the day:


He wrote his name all on his own and drew himself...isn't it cute?!?

After he finished that, I pulled out some old magazines that I started saving. Then we started our "S hunt." Thankfully, he had a blast!! I cut out a big S from a posterboard. Then I let him cut out S's and other pictures of items that start with an S from the magazines. We glued all his things down and then we had a fun little discussion about all the S words we found. Here is our finished project:

He practiced all night and on our way to school in the morning recalling all of his S objects so he could share with his friends. I think it was almost as exciting as the Letter Can for him.

On to Thursday pickup...I'll let you take a wild guess as to what he had in his cubby on Thursday when I picked him up....

The Letter Can

This time I was fresh out of ideas and time for multiple S items so I thought we would just find something in his room. He decided on his Snake and music Shaker.

I can't wait to find out this week if the letter can is still going to be as big of a deal to him. If so, I think we might be making a trip to Lowe's to create our own home letter can. =)