Kids Live Here

I stumbled upon a photography project recently called "Kids Live Here."  As I was looking at other people's images of the little details that you often overlook as a parent, I found myself nodding in agreement.  Kids do crazy things.  Period.  But we never stop to take photos of all of the nuances of childhood.  Sure, we capture the birthday parties and Christmas...maybe even the occasional family picture - but what about the day to day stuff?

As a mostly organized mother, my blood pressure skyrockets when company is on the horizon.  Because we're busy, tidying up the house is usually at the bottom of our priority list because we are mostly just trying to SURVIVE THE WEEK!!

So I've been taking pictures of what a "normal" house might look like with kids scampering around.

Tiny chairs.

An old rusty swingset that provides hours and hours of fun.

A basketball that's been left outside for over a year has almost turned white from the sun damage.  

It's also flat.

Dinosaurs.  Just everywhere you turn.

A random horse parked in her stall (sandwiched between the dresser and the wall).

Piggy banks.  We've learned kids will do most anything for a penny.

Tears of frustration while learning a new sport.

Snuggling up with classic books.

Downloading the pictures from the camera to find Emma had been experimenting in the mirror.

Oh.  The constant mess.  Don't worry though - eventually you don't even notice it anymore.

Starting marshmallows on fire while making S'mores.

I'll never understand kids' obsession with straws.  But I'm adaptable - if they won't drink their milk, put a straw in it and I guarantee it will disappear.

Garden hoses provide lots of free entertainment.  Our kids like to put the attachment on "mist" and then they spray each other with it and call it sunscreen.

S'mores have to be one of the highlights of childhood (and adulthood).  I'd love to take a survey of how many people put peanut butter on their S'mores.  For the record, we do.

Morning hair.

Shoes EVERYWHERE!

This is Owen's outfit of choice in the summer.  Cowboy boots with shorts.  Classy.

Fresh out of the swimming pool.

Random arts and crafts projects on display.

Bathtub toys.

Full notebooks that have scribbles on EVERY SINGLE PAGE.

What crazy things do your kids' do that often get overlooked?

Instagram + Printicular = Ornaments

I'm guessing we are like most families, in that we take a million photos of our kids, vacations and special activities throughout the year but then the photos simply live on our computer.  We usually only print a family photo here and there because there just isn't a place to display the informal, yet just as important, special event photos.

One of our kids' favorite pastimes is to get out their big books full of baby photos we made for them several years ago.  When they were little, it was still totally normal to print gobs of photos instead of creating digital photo albums.

But why not create some special ornaments for the tree commemorating some of their favorite memories from the past year?  If we make just a few per year, at some point our tree will be full of all the little moments that shaped their childhood.

The materials for each ornament add up to about $2.50 each and were very simple to make!  We found these metal lids in the venting department at the home improvement store.  They are called round tee caps and come in all different sizes, 2" - 8" diameter.  Here's a link for something similar from Home Depot, although not the exact same as ours, these would work just as well.  Sometimes when I purchase candles, they have lids on them similar to these caps - so those would also be a perfect substitute.

The 4" seemed like the best size for the photos I was going to use and they cost just over $2.00 each.

I found a glass pyrex dish in our cupboard that was ALMOST the same size as the cap, which would mean once my photos were traced and cut out, there would be a small metal border around each photo.

For my photos, I downloaded the Printicular app to my IPad.  Printicular easily uploads your Instagram photos to Walgreens and are ready to pick up in an hour.  Walgreens is only blocks from our house and it's where we always have our photos printed, so this was a no-brainer!  Prices are about $.39/each.

I positioned my glass bowl on top of the photo and traced around it.

Cut out the shape....

I practiced my positioning to make sure they were going to look good before the glue went down.

And if you can believe this or not...this was my FIRST time using Mod Podge - pretty crazy, right!?  I brushed a coat of Mod Podge on the metal and then a coat on the back of the photo and stuck them together.  When that was dry, I brushed another coat over the top of the photo to seal it all in.

I asked Brent to drill a hole through the top of the ornament so I could attach my twine to hang it on the tree.  To do that, he used a nail set to make an indentation first.

And then he selected a drill bit, this size looked like it was going to work the best.

Before I put twine through the hole so they could be hung on the tree, I labeled the back of each ornament so we could remember the dates and special reason we had chosen that particular photo.

We love having these small tokens on our tree!  If our refrigerator wasn't stainless, I would have also attached magnets to the back so we could put them on the fridge year round.

5 Vacation Travel Tips

Well, the yoga sessions have increased in frequency and intensity, the fruits and vegetables have come out and the cupcakes have been put away (just kidding on that last one – I can’t banish cupcakes from our house for ANY reason), which can mean only one thing…SUMMER VACATION IS ONLY A FEW DAYS AWAY!

Our destination again this year is the Wisconsin Dells...where we'll be staying at not just one, but TWO different resorts.  Two nights at the Great Wolf Lodge and then two nights at The Wilderness.

This is the one big thing we look forward to all year long, so it would make sense that we spend lots of time preparing for it.  Here are some of the Kruse's vacation tips:

#1  Set a Vacation Budget

Booorrrriinnngggg – I can already hear your whispers.  Look, vacations are expensive, whether it’s just a little out of town weekend trip or a 2 week hike through Europe.  I’ve found that if I come to grips with how much the WHOLE thing is going to cost in advance, we can adequately save for it all year and then not feel guilty or overwhelmed when the vacay expenses start adding up.  Not even kidding here, I actually figure out on paper how much all of our expenses will cost.

We don’t make enough money throughout the year to throw caution to the wind and enjoy a $10,000 vacation, so for us, to make a summer vacation work, we still have to manage our dolla’s.  My list includes hotel, gasoline, food and fun money.  Before our trip, I fill 2 envelopes with cash – a food envelope and a fun money envelope and throughout our vacation, it’s easy to see how much we’ve spent and how much we’ve got left to blow.  There’s nothing worse than coming home from a relaxing vacation and feeling terrified to pull up your online banking account to assess the damage.  Just thinking about it makes me a little lightheaded!

#2  Pack Healthy Snacks 

Vacations are meant for splurges – so for each family this is going to be different.  Eating out at restaurants is not a splurge for us but riding go-carts, going to the movies, and walking to the ice-cream store for a treat are.  Spending $50 for a meal we could have prepared at home isn’t worth it to us.  Plus, let’s be honest – if we do go out to a restaurant, the kids just order chicken strips.  Not exactly gourmet fare.  So to save our bucks for entertainment, we pack most of our meals and snacks.  Here are some samples of our vacation stash: String cheese, individual yogurts, trail mixes, sliced cheeses, peanut butter, fruit, veggies, homemade hummus, greek yogurt dip & bottled water.

If it isn't obvious...we REALLY like nuts.  

This granola is incredible - plus no high fructose corn syrup!  It's great mixed into trail mix, sprinkled onto yogurt or as a breakfast cereal.

Overall, our main goal is to give the kids high protein snacks to hold them over between meals, since the waterparks require so much energy.  When we do eat at a restaurant, Emma and Owen will share a meal and Brent and I share a meal – that way we aren’t trying to bring left-overs back to the hotel where they are most likely not going to get eaten.  Plus, if you don’t stuff yourself like a turkey at dinner, there’s room for ice cream or some other dessert afterwords!

#3  Get in Shape! 

Since our vacation revolves around waterparks, the thought of spending 7 solid days in a bikini (no, not Brent) is a huge motivator to undo the damage that was done over the winter.  Our weight doesn’t fluctuate much, but its easy to get a little, shall we say, softer, over the winter.  During football season, cream cheese and sausage make up the bulk of our diet, which doesn’t exactly make for a svelte physique.  And so enters our Summer Slimdown in late March to shape up for swimsuit season.  No, it’s not a diet, we just try to increase the amount of fruits, veggies, lean protein, nuts & water while cutting back on the desserts and starches.
Nothing crazy, but we found if we consistently do this for about 2 months before summer, we can slowly but surely squeeze back into our Speedos.

Incorporating some serious yoga has been our other secret weapon.  Brent started hearing rumblings about a yoga program with a nod towards the gentleman in the household.  Commonly referred to “Bro-Yoga”, “YRG – Yoga for Regular Guys” and the official tag line – “This ain’t yo mama’s yoga!”  I would describe it as yoga on steroids.

Totally for women as well as men, but I’ve found that Brent really relates to it since it’s former wrestler Diamond Dallas Page that created the program.

#4  Check In With the Chamber of Commerce

Before your trip, check out the websites for the Chamber of Commerce and the Visitor & Convention Bureau.  They will mail you a vacation guide full of area attractions and coupons to use when you visit.  Last year, we were mailed 4 free passes to a waterpark that would have cost us $120 to purchase - that was an amazing value that we definitely weren't expecting!

#5  Enjoy the Drive 

Luckily, we only have a 4.5 – 5 hour drive, which is incredibly manageable.  Even for someone like me that doesn’t enjoy long car rides.  Our best tip here is to take advantage of REDBOX!  As a treat, we check out a few new movies for the kids at the REDBOX kiosk near our house and as we’re chugging along the interstate, we’ll stop and return them at another kiosk when they’re done watching them.  Sometimes we pick up another one, sometimes they are sick of watching tv so we’ll give them other activities.
***Important Irrelevant Side Note - the kids didn't even flinch when we marched them up to Wal-Greens to have their photo taken next to the REDBOX machines.  All of these odd picture requests are becoming a normal part of their childhood.  Fail or Win?

These Elephant and Piggie books are the best for our family right now because Owen thinks they are super funny and Emma enjoys reading to her brother in the backseat.

Brent and I pass the time by listening to podcasts.  Some of our favorites are Dave Ramsey, Jillian Michaels, Dan Miller & Andy Stanley - I guess they sort of cover every aspect of our lives...Finances, Health, Career & Faith/Family.

So we'll be checking back in next weekend with some preliminary vacation photos.  Where are you going on vacation this year?

Before we visited the Dells last year, we exposed the true cost of our vacation after we returned.  If you're curious...check this out!

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Cake Happens

As it turns out, Brent and I can't possibly work all the time.  Every weekend and many week nights, the kids watch as we tinker around on some sort of project...sometimes big, sometimes small.  It keeps us off the couch and engaged with an activity we can all learn something about, but it's exhausting.  The kids are usually right along side us, either helping out or playing nearby.  They do such a good job making up imaginary games and inventing stories while Brent and I keep busy that we wanted to reward them for being such good kids.  So without telling them, we planned a surprise day trip to Omaha, Nebraska to visit the zoo and our special friends that just had a new baby.  

Even though Owen is just about ready to turn 5, we still brought our stroller because we know our child and that if he has to walk too far, he will complain about his legs hurting.  Plus, this way, we didn't have to carry our snacks, camera bag and jackets!  WINNING!

In this photo, Emma and Owen's faces are actually saying, "hurry up, mom - the last thing we want to do right now is stand still for a photo!"

I'm not sure what happened here, but it looked like this gorilla just tipped over and fell asleep.  Kind of like Brent on a Saturday night.

His guy appears to have a pleasant demeanor.

The best part of the day came after we left the zoo.  Conveniently, we needed to pass by my favorite cake store on our way to visit our friends.  That's a lie...we took a detour to pass the cake store.  But you must understand, this is a special cake bakery.  The first phone call I made after our daughter was born in Omaha was to the Cake Gallery to order up two cakes.  That probably didn't help with the whole "shedding the baby weight" deal.

I always always always order 2 layer white cakes with white buttercream frosting.  This time, I was determined to get a chocolate cake for Brent and the kids, because I'm generous like that.  So we walk in the doors and drool over the selections for a few minutes and decide on the Oh Ho cake.  It is basically an inside out ho-ho covered in chocolate ganache.

Brent and the kids went off to a different side of the store to look at the other cakes as I waited for the clerk to finish boxing up the cake for us.  When done, she politely asked if there would be anything else today.  And I froze.  Mind reeling.  And my finger pointed at the small white cake you see below.  She boxed it up and I turned, holding two big cake boxes to tell Brent we were ready to go.  His jaw dropped and he said, "Heidi, why are you holding two cakes?"  And I shrugged and made my way out to the car, snuggling the cakes safely in my arms.

We were then headed over to our very good friends' house to snuggle their new baby and play with their adorable toddler.  Unfortunately, the cakes are supposed to be refrigerated so as I was holding the baby, I heard Amber in the kitchen trying to clear out like, half of their fridge to make room for all of my cakes.  Sacrifices.  As I was telling Mike about my cake store debacle, he simply said, "cake happens."  Some people just get me.