lovin' lowe's!

we are always looking for fun and frugal things to do with the kids. our new activity is lowe's build and grow clinics! lowe's hosts these free saturday morning workshops for kids twice a month, and we have had perfect attendance for the last 4 clinics. :) the kids have built a racecar, tabletop basketball goal, a rain gauge/lawn ornament, and a birdhouse! on our first visit, the kids received a work apron and goggles. each kit comes with blueprint directions and all the materials needed to build it. after completing the building project, the kids receive a patch specific to that project to go on their aprons (mommy's favorite part! ha!). we enjoy this special time with our "big kids", and my mom unloads my dishwasher while amelia naps watches amelia. they love marching through lowe's with their aprons on. one week, an older gentleman stopped caroline and asked, "do you work here?" her curls bounced and bounced as she confidently nodded yes! as we near the back of the store, you can already hear a dozen hammers pounding away on plastic tables in a tiny room. music to ethan's ears! :) ethan has shown great improvement in his hammering skills. this last time, he was able to nail in one whole wall of the birdhouse all by himself... he'd pick up the tiny nails, put them in the pre-drilled holes, and hammer them all in totally independently. i was pretty impressed, considering the fact that my nails make it in straight about half the time! ha! some projects are easier than others, and really, this kind of thing is more geared for ethan's age or older... but caroline enjoys "helping". we usually start her nails and then let her bang them in a few times. we have yet to walk away with black and blue thumbs, so that's worth a patch, don't you think?! speaking of patches, when we came home from our first visit to lowe's, the kids were so excited to have their race car patches in hand. they came back and showed the cars and the patches to gram. we told them that she'd take their patches home and sew them on their aprons. (yes, i could do this, i know. but gram is wonderful and loves to help out this busy mom...) well, when she brought their aprons back with the unremoveable patches, ethan and caroline went ballistic. they wanted to play with their patches! (who knew!) so if there's lots of extra patches at lowe's, we take a couple more for the kids to play with. and everybody's happy... well, here's a peek at our little woodworkers.

building the racecar...




building the basketball goal... you can see that ethan got tired of hammering and asked daddy to finish.




caroline loved making the flower lawn ornament/rain gauge. the irony was that we built this in the middle of the worst two weeks of storms i can ever remember us having. and of course their rain gauges are still in their room... we need to paint them and get them outside!



caroline was proud of her work.



really proud.



and finally, the birdhouses.



we painted the bird houses the next week with kristie and karina, and we plan on putting them in the back yard soon. i know that lowe's does these clinics for kids as a marketing technique. they get our family into their store twice a month, and there is more than likely something we will need to buy on our way out. WELL, they may have us fooled, but not our son! the night before we were going to build the bird houses, we were telling him what we'd be doing the next morning. he got so excited and said, "and we can go to home depot to buy bird food!" sorry, lowe's. that kid loves home depot, and his love cannot be bought.

i'll end with a little video of ethan hammering all by himself. he's getting so so big.


the next lowe's clinic is tomorrow morning, so if you're reading this before 10:00, grab your kids and go make a hang glider!