Skylanders, Storybook Characters, and Tomatoes

*Originally written on 5/22/13*

I thought I’d write a bit about the past week in the spirit of having something on here that is “at home”. Perhaps I’ll do it weekly as long as I have something to write about…we’ll see.

The boys are big Skylanders fans. If you are unfamiliar with Skylanders it is a video game and it has a portal that connects to your game system. You then put your Skylander toy figures on the portal to play them in the game. The boys love it and we have most of the Skylanders. The current game out is Skylanders Giants and the last giant to be sold was Ninjini but she sold out quickly and we missed her. However, there is a variant figure for her, Scarlet Ninjini, and she just arrived in stores this past week. Since we were unable to get Ninjini I was hoping to get this one. I keep up with a site called Portalflip that always posts updates on all things Skylanders. Portalflip posted that Scarlet Ninjini was supposed to arrive at Gamestop by the 14th and the other stores were going to start selling her on the 19th so on the 14th JT and I went to GameStop just about right when it opened and we were able to get her so the boys were very excited. She really is pretty cool and I like the fact that since she is a genie and doesn’t actually walk she can go on ice without sliding.

In other Skylanders news, I actually won a giveway that was on Portalflip. The giveaway was for a Skylanders Sticker Starter Set and we received it on Thursday.

We also received a bunch of loose stickers that are not in the picture, I think I counted 79 stickers total including the packs. Connor loves these types of sticker books, unfortunately though he’s never been able to finish one. We are never able to buy enough sets of stickers. Connor says that he wants to finish this one by July because the boys are having a Skylanders birthday party then. It probably won’t be possible though, we were able to get him a few more sticker sets on Sunday and today I went to target and only found one and he still has a lot of stickers left that he needs.

Moving on to storybook characters…Connor had a Storybook Character Parade at school on Friday. We had at least like three weeks to come up with a costume but of course a decision wasn’t made until two days before. He had been telling me that he wanted to be Batman but I kept telling him that Batman isn’t an actual storybook character. He had to take the book that his character was from with him to the parade so I ended up looking through all the books that I could find. I wanted to find something that would be a simple costume to make and also something that no one else would probably be. So, I picked a few books out and then finally decided on Buzz from the Fly Guy series of books, specifically the first book Hi! Fly Guy. Buzz wears a yellow shirt and jean shorts (or maybe they are just blue shorts). In this particular book he also has on a safari hat. Connor already had a yellow shirt and jean shorts so I thought this would be really easy and cute. All I had to do was get him a safari hat and then I also wanted to make him a jar for Fly Guy. JT and went to Michael’s on Thursday to get the safari hat and a jar. We bought one of the foam safari hats and then I used some fabric that I had to make it look similar to Buzz’s hat in the book. I was hoping to find a bug jar craft or something at Michael’s but they didn’t have anything so I bought a jar of colored sand. I was originally planning on just putting a picture of Fly Guy in the jar and putting his name on it but Connor wanted Fly Guy’s bed in the jar like in the other books. So, I drew a picture of the bed, Fly Guy, and his name and then glued the bed inside the jar, the name on the outside of the jar, and I glued Fly Guy on to look like he was sitting on his jar.

Now onto tomatoes…JT has several little tomato plants. They’ve been doing really well and all have started to grow little tomatoes. Today his first tomato was ready to be picked. It’s small but I was able to cut it in tiny slices so we could all try it. He is very proud of his tomatoes and says that he is going to grow lots of fruits and vegetables.