Crayons and Scrubbing

Last night my little girl learned a valuable lesson on how to clean crayon off the walls.

She was sitting at her picnic table innocently coloring her pages (so I thought). I was cozy on the couch watching whatever I was watching. A familiar "scratch scratch" got me up off the couch and into the dining room to inspect the damage.

I decided to test out the stuff we learned in our Love and Logic classes that we've been taking.

First, she had to sit on the stairs (her timeout spot) for a minute or two. Then I told her that she's going to have to figure out how to clean the crayon off the wall.

Her first idea (a dry paper towel) didnt work. So what's better than a dry paper towel? A wet paper towel! Nope, didnt work. We even tried the Green Works cleaner. Honestly, I think the dry paper towel may have had a better effect.

The next plan was for her to call Grammy and ask her if she knew how to get crayon off the walls. I dialed Grammy, put it on speaker and let Lily do the talking (with a little prompting). Grammy gave her a suggestion, and she proceeded to scrub the crayon off the walls (Mommy helped a little).

I think it worked. Even though I think she kind of enjoyed figuring out how to fix this, she learned some lessons.

I mentioned it again this morning and asked her what she learned from the experience and she said "Don't color on the walls, or you have to scrub, scrub, scrub!"

Success? In my opinion, yes!

5 Years

5 Years ago, I married this crazy, kooky guy. We've had quite the adventure together so far.

I've been blessed to have him in my life. He's an amazing husband.

And a fantastic father to our beautiful little girl.

I wouldn't have it any other way. Here's to many many MANY more! I love you!

Happy Halloween!

Lily has been talking about how she's going to be a kitty for Halloween for the past week or two. She's been so excited. Especially since it was her first Halloween all over again.

Honestly, those first couple Halloweens don't count. You know, those ones where the parent carries around a baby in an oversized lobster or something and the kid just becomes an accessory to the parent's costume?

So she was really excited when she got to have makeup AND ears on. At the same time! She really did turn out to be the cutest kitty of all time. (Not biased. Nope. Not at all.)

We went downtown Newberg to Trick or Treat on First Street. We got there right at 5pm, right when it started. I wanted to try as hard as possible to miss out on the big crowds that seem to accumulate as the night wears on.

We all ended up wearing black and drawing whiskers on our faces. One of us had a little more fun with the makeup than the other two (girls) did. But we won't linger on that.


It didn't take long for Miss Lily to get into the Halloween spirit. The first couple stops, they got a tight-lipped shake of the head when we said "Say Trick or Treat!". But she quickly caught on that if she said the magic words, she'd get candy, candy and more candy. We went home with a grocery bag full of candy, mini pumpkins, glow bracelets, and stickers.

Next stop was the church's Harvest Party. We chowed down on hot dogs, chips, and grape Koolaid. There were games, bouncy houses, and a cake walk (which she won).

There was a special section for kids under 6 that had slides and other fun things to play on. We had a hard time peeling her away from the slides to do some more trick-or-treating around the church.

This kid will not be lacking in candy for the next couple of months. Yay for potty training treats!

Hope you all had a great Halloween! We sure did!