Friday, October 24, 2008

Hobby Lobby--good or evil?

First of all, I luuuurve me some Hobby Lobby. I could spend hours in there every time I go, but I usually have at least one child with me, so I try to limit it to 20 minutes or less. The place is so huge, I generally stick to one side of the store on most visits.

I've noticed something about Hobby Lobby and my children: the big section in the middle of the store (you know, the big area that has all of the breakable stuff) has some type of magnetic field to it, because as soon as we walk in, my kids gravitate straight towards all of the breakable stuff, and their little fingers just can't help but start touching all of it! Now, Hobby Lobby has all of this stuff placed so that it's almost impossible to navigate around it. But the choices for going around include the artificial flowers (can we say ACHOO??), or the holiday/seasonal stuff that my kids also love to touch! Hmmm....do you see my problem here?

Gannon's favorite thing in the breakable section is the display with all of the vintage-looking firetrucks and motorcycles. He could spend hours just looking at them and gently caressing them.. I always have to promise him that we'll come back around to them on our way out of the store, so he can bid them farewell. The last time we were at Hobby Lobby (just the 2 of us), he declared that Hobby Lobby is his favorite store. Get this: we can get in and out of Target--even the toy section most times--without my kids begging me for a toy. But, Hobby Lobby?? They just have to have an art/craft project EVERY TIME! I have to admit that I'm a bit of a closet crafter. I secretly LOVE to do crafts, but I don't feel as though I'm terribly creative, so I don't do crafts very often. I do well with ready-made kits with a picture of the finished product on the front, so I can tell what it's supposed to look like when completed. I secretly love to paint, and glue, and cut things out. Okay, so it's not a secret anymore, but what can I say? The bottom line is, sometimes I indulge the kids so we can all get elbow deep in some fun craft. The GREAT thing about Hobby Lobby is that you can get really neat craft kit things for kids for a very good price.

Tonight the whole family took a trip to Hobby Lobby. I have officially come out of the crafter closet because I finally bought my very own glue gun. Yes, I did. No longer will I suffer with those less-than glues that never quite do the job, and no longer will I have to borrow my Mom's glue gun. You can't really be a true craft-o-holic without one, so there you go. I feel very special now.

So, all in all, I guess it's worth the possibility of that big, pricey something in the middle of the store getting broken in order to explore and let our imaginations go wild with the next great craft project!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Tennis, Anyone?


I'm a bit late posting this, but my only excuse is that this week has been Fall Break for the kids (no school), so I've had my hands full. No time to blog!!

Jamie's been talking for a while about getting the kids (namely, Melody) out on the tennis court. There's a great club in town that offers lessons for a very reasonable price, but for some reason Jamie had his heart set on buying racquets and going out to play. So that is what he did. We loaded up the kids, their new racquets and balls, and went to our nearby park to the tennis courts. Melody took to it like a fish to water; she did great for her first time! I was simply amazed.

Gannon was interested for about 5 minutes, then in normal Gannon fashion, proceeded to try to collect everyone's racquet for his own pretend game of something-or-other!


Melody also enjoyed learning the fine art of "pocketing" your tennis balls when you don't have pockets!



Now that the weather is just perfect, I'm sure we'll be out on the courts again soon! It was so much fun!
And, this is random, but the kids have also been enjoying the fall by coloring pumpkins! The big guy will be a jack-o-lantern soon, but I'm waiting a couple of weeks so he won't rot. Have a great October, everyone!