Easter 2010

I'm sitting here with the windows open for the first time this year. It puts me in the mood to add some "spring" pictures. This year Curtis and I went on an anniversary honeymoon of sorts over Easter so we celebrated early. (Stay tuned for details of our trip.)

Anyways...

Xander picked the egg dying kit from the store. It was called "mini-monsters," complete with eyes and mouth stickers, pipe-cleaners, two colors of 'hair,' and glue for gluing all this stuff on. He was super excited. Surprise, surprise, the glue didn't work at all! Regardless, this is what he came up with...

With the help of this...

(There is something sexy about a man wielding a glue gun, don't you think?)

Tayla was unimpressed with the mini-monsters kit. After she decorated her eggs with all the stickers her attention-span could handle, she resorted to making them ugly with her bare hands...

That was so much more fun! And she learned first-hand about what actually makes up an egg. This is lots of hard work and about 6 eggs later...


(Also a good shot of the flower bows I've been making lately. Yes, I finally broke down and started making my own. It's about time the girl have some clippies to go with that long beautiful hair. Despite what you may think, she actually loves wearing gigantic flowers and butterflies and things.)

Then of course we had to do an egg hunt! But unfortunately we weren't blessed with the beautiful spring weather we're having today so we hunted inside.

She completely fell for the "monkey-trap" routine...

She was really upset about the egg being stuck in there. It was so funny that I had to snap a picture before helping her out.

Xander is admiring his finds. If you look closely you can see a yellow one stuck between the couch cushions. Egg hunts at our house last much longer than 30 seconds. Our kids certainly take their time.

All done! Happy Easter to all!

Snow fun!

I was devastated when I found out that our new place (just 50-minutes away) doesn't get much snow. I'm not exaggerating either! We had one snowfall back in December that stuck for about 1 week. Since that nothing has stayed even 24 hours -- including this day. This was a Sunday back in late January where it snowed all day so after church and after naps, we immediately went outside to make one snowman this winter.


The kids didn't really care about the snowman. Curtis and I worked on a snowman. And Xander (and Tayla too) threw snowball...


After snowball...


After snowball!!! I remember about how we had to help Xander make snowballs last year (unless he got lucky and found a chunk of snow on the ground.) But this year, he could make them all on his own. Here's our snowman. And I kid you not -- this monstrous beast was completely gone within 24 hours! There was not even a puddle left the next day.


And one more snowball!


Oh well. Now I can say that the kids used their snow pants once this year and their boots twice. And they will outgrow them by next year...bummer. See if I buy them again!

Crayon Rolls

I made these...


In one naptime!
I used fabric scraps that I already had. The only cost was a box of crayons to split between the two rolls.


I used them to entertain the kids (along with coloring pages of Jesus I just printed off the internet) during church today. And guess what!?! It worked! It kept my kids (age 2 and 3) entertained for the entire meeting (30 minutes -- I think).

For the instructions I used to make the crayon rolls check out "chocolate on my cranium."
Know that I didn't follow the instructions exactly. I didn't have interfacing so instead I used a piece of all-natural cotton batting to go inside. And if I had not had the batting on hand, I would have used felt.


We've had a battle with keeping the kids quiet in church. Until now, we've always loaded the diaper bag up with books, toys, snacks, you name it -- sometimes we even packed two bags. (I hang my head in shame.) I didn't understand why when we had so many things the kids still fought over toys. By the end of church there were toys spewed all over the bench and crumbs on the floor. The culminating event was a tantrum by my two-year old daughter over us bringing enough snacks. (She had just eaten an entire sandwich bag stuffed full of grapes!) Enough was enough! There had to be a change because these kids were out of control and I was getting nothing but stress out of church.

I scoured the internet for ideas about teaching your young ones reverence at church. Just about every mommy blogger out there said to take away all the toys and snacks. Once the children are over 18 months it just isn't necessary. My husband and I were apprehensive, but decided to give it a try the following Sunday. We went cold turkey with the toys and the reverence level increased dramatically. We weren't the best examples that week so we decided to try it a few more weeks. The reverence improved, but I still wanted my children to be able to learn about Jesus and feel of the sweet Holy Spirit during the meeting so that they too would get something out of it.

My plan: reintroduce appropriate things for the kids to do during church.

Rules: 1. It has to be church related -- to encourage reflection.
2. There has to be two identical copies -- to discourage fighting between by two kids.
3. We would wait until after the sacrament to get the activity out.
4. One activity a week (in hopes of finding 4 different activities to rotate through each month).

Today was coloring the internet pictures with their oh so cute crayon rolls.
Next week, two copies of picture scriptures?
Hopefully I'll get two more brilliant ideas for the rest of the month...
Stay tuned.

The 12 days of Valentine's Day

I know it's way past Valentine's day, but I did something rather creative and I wanted to share.

You know how guys are last minute planners and usually forget dates like these. Well, I wanted to give him plenty of notice -- 12 days to be exact. Using the 12 days of Christmas and one of my favorite blogs (http://www.loveactually-blog.blogspot.com) as inspiration, this is what I came up with. Each day my husband found a little gift or note like this one.

Instead of a partridge in a 'pear' tree...

These were my "Dove" chocolate turtles...


In addition to finding this silly card on the mirror in the morning,


I found three times during the day to do what the back of the card said.


Four calling birds were portrayed by the 4 flirty text messages I sent.

You get the idea. Not all of them were easy to come up with. I had to know who I was working with. For example, 6 geese-a-laying could be anything with eggs -- perhaps breakfast in bed. However my man doesn't like breakfast much less egg. So I had to stretch it to be a little goofy.

I "goosed" him 6 times that day and each time he endured my playful cheesiness, he got an egg filled with Hershey's kisses.

The second week involved dates together. It was just a great way to spend Valentine's week.

We went "hot-pooling" at Lava Hot Springs (7 swans-a-swimming). And yes, apparently you can do that 365 days a year.


And again I stretched it for day 10. This is the note he got:

"Lords-a-leaping are hard to find

So that left me in quite a bind

Ladies and “Lords of Film” you know

Are in this “Valentine’s Day” show"

As you can guess, we went and saw "Valentine's Day" on opening night. Which was an added bonus for me because they gave out carnations to all the women.

Day 11 was eleven "Pepper's" pepping. My husband happens to LOVE his soda. However he was disappointed to find only 11 Dr. Pepper's in the 12 pack. But hey, I had to stay true to the game!

And for the grand finale....

For the 12th 'lay' of V-day my true love gave to me...

LIVE drummers drumming.

(Tickets to a Daughtry concert in April!)

This turned out to be the best V-day ever...aside from 2004's when Curtis proposed. And it will live on until April because we have a concert to look forward to.

************

One day I awoke to find little love notes like these hidden all over the house! I found 17 and I'm still stumped as to why 17? I loved it!


Sunday, February 14th I got an omelet in the shape of a heart. It was much better than I make omelets too. Oh wait I don't make omelets I just scramble everything together.

I went to church early to practice with the choir. When Curtis and my kids arrived for church each of them had one of these to give me...

With their cute little hand prints for the hearts! So sweet!


Curtis claims the kids made him make one too...It's okay if you wanted to make me a card with your hand print on it honey! hahaha You can admit it.

Best Valentine's Day ever!!!!

Minnie Mouse cake

I made this for my daughter's second birthday. (She really loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse).

It is a 8 inch chocolate cake with white decorator's icing. I didn't have 4in cake pans so I baked a 9x13 and cut out 4 inch circles for the ears. I stuck crushed oreos on the side to make the ears black. The bow is a chocolate chip cookie with icing and pink sugar sprinkled. (Although I don't recommend using a cookie -- it is difficult to get such a big cookie firm enough without it breaking into bits.) The face is just frosting.

Happy Birthday Tayla!

Homemade Christmas

This year I tried to make many of my Christmas gifts this year. Here's a few of my projects this year:

Homemade tutu...adorable...

Denim rag quilt for my sister. She didn't have a quilt big enough to fit her bed before. My husband said, "well we have to take care of that this year." It became my labor of love this December. It's denim on one side, flannel on the other.
Every year I also make a few scrapbook pages of us and the kids for my parents and my in-laws to add to the little brag book I got them years ago. I include a CD with all of our digital pictures on it, so that they can do whatever they want with our pictures.

Cuteness update...

I should be finishing some Christmas projects, but I just wanted to take a minute to write a few things about the latest cuteness of my kids. First of all this is them modeling their new jammie pants I made for them:

Tayla: I'll tell you about our trip to the Dr. today because everyone there was ooo-ing and ahh-ing over how cute she was. I told her to go play with toys while I signed in. 1 minute later...I hear, "mom, it's okay." (That's what she says everytime she gets scared -- naturally b/c that's what we tell her at these moments.) I just love it. Again....at the scale..."honey just step on the stool so we can see how big you are"... "it's okay." (btw 28lbs...big girl)

Well she had a 102.6 temp, but for some reason she was happy as can be. Pointing at the picture of the moose on the wall (yeah, only in Idaho)..."moose, cute...moose, cool." The Practitioner was very good about "examining" our stuffed doggy we brought before "examining" Tayla. She check ears, heart, back, mouth...then Tayla says, "ouchy, nose." (pointing to the doggy) So she kisses the doggy's nose. Afterwards, we went out and Tayla burped...without prompting she says, "cuse me." Then the practitioner lets her pick out a sucker. Tayla immediately lets doggy lick it first. What good patients!

Last night we read "Goodnight Moon" before bed. Then it was, "Goodnight bed, goodnight Rainbow Rob, goodnight Xander, goodnight mom, goodnight light"...and on and on for about 5 minutes.

Xander: For some reason he is convinced that a head of hair is called a wig. So he says, "Mom I like your wig, it's very beautiful. You have a curly wig." I've tried numerous times to correct him on this one and assure him that IT'S NATURAL. But he still insists that it's a wig. hahaha