funny conversation

The kids say a lot of things that make me laugh.  But, this one made me laugh pretty hard.  Really hard.  We had just gotten some chocolate marshmallow bunnies from the store, and were driving in the van.  Almost had a hard time driving.  Here's how the conversation went:

 Aaron:  "I am going to put my chocolate in the fridge when I get home."
 April (very serious):  "I wouldn't do that if I were you."  
 Aaron:  "why?"
 April:  "Because last time I put my chocolate in the fridge Mom ate it."


Yep, it's true.  I can't resist the Chocolate, sometimes.  Especially with Marshmallow in the middle, it's my favorite.  I felt totally bad afterward.  I'll never hear the end of that one...

St. Patty's day fun

I always forget how fun it can be to have a little St. Patrick's day fun...

One of my friends mentioned on her blog how much they love St. Patrick's day, and she made this cute little sign for her mantle that says:  "We are a lucky family".  I thought it was so cute, and such a fun way to think of the family for St. Patrick's day.  So I made one too.  Thanks Emily for the idea.  Mine's not as cute as hers, but I threw it together real fast so we could have it for Family Home Evening.  All the kids really liked it.

so, I made that our theme for FHE this week.  I had the kids go through the house and find something that showed why we are a "lucky" family.  April brought back a picture of her and her brothers, and talked about how she's lucky to have brothers.  Aaron brought back his football cards (I don't think he really got it), but I helped him and said how he was lucky to have a sister who put together his Football card book.  Aric didn't get it either, but I had him grab the first thing he could find.  He brought back a truck that he got for Christmas from Uncle Marc, and with his we talked about how we are lucky to get such cool presents for Christmas.

After that, we played this game.  Don't eat Pete (or the leprechaun).  Emily is very inspiring for me this week because she also had don't eat pete on her blog, and I thought my kids would enjoy that too.  So, I searched and got "lucky" (ha, ha) and found a leprechaun version here.  It's hard to find games for ALL my kids to enjoy because of their ages, but this one was very fun.

Then we ate these...they were pretty yummy!

Now, it's the night before St. Patty's day, and the kids have made leprechaun traps!  So, they went to bed in hopes of catching themselves a leprechaun tomorrow.  Well, I didn't do much, but I staged a little visit from some leprechaun's.  Here's April's trap.  I just fiddled with the trap a little, emptied their bag of "leprechaun food", and made some footprints.  I also trailed green party string to show the path the leprechaun took.

This is what I put in their little clover bags that had  the "leprechaun food"... A note from the leprechaun, a green dollar bill, and some cute pictures.  I don't have any gold coins, so I had to use the dollar bill.

Here's Aaron's trap.  The traps don't look like much, but the kids put a lot of thought into them.  Maybe next year we will get to make some cooler ones like this hat trap.

And, these are the Shamrocks the kids made this morning.  Not much, just a fun craft.


Happy lucky St. Patrick's Day!!

Dinner-YUM!

All of the dinners that have been brought to us after we had Alexander were much appreciated, and of course yummy.  But, this one is special because the 12 and 13 year old girls from church (the young women Beehives) made it.  It was so so yummy, and so nice to have a night off from cooking.  They brought it the night before we cooked it so I had to look at those rice krispy treats all day long.  They have oreo cookies in them!  It was hard to resist!


This says:  "Hope it tastes good!  From: Beehives", so cute!  Good job girls, it was delicious!

These treats didn't last long after dinner either.

Wordless Wednesday: A haircut

On my mind today

I am feeling pulled in a lot of directions today. It's hard to focus when I feel like this. I don't know which task is more important to get done first when there are so many things that need to be done, and a baby to hold.  Do I hold the baby or set him down fussy and get things done?  And then, if I do set the baby down, what do I do first, the laundry or the dishes?  Oh, and then there's my bathroom which is terrible, hasn't been cleaned in...we won't mention how long.  Somedays, I'd just like to be a step ahead, rather than 5 steps behind. 

My oven, it's contents burned and melted to a crisp.  This is what happens when my brain has too much going on.  I forget to check what's inside, because you never know who might have put a sippy cup, a plastic cup full of cereal, and two plates of leftover dinner in there!

Anyway, There's a lot of stuff just floating around in my mind that I want to do, or say, or get out.  So, here's what's on my mind today:

I found a piano teacher for April.  We are going to meet her tomorrow, and she is right here in our hometown so we don't have to drive far far away.

I may not have been much help at April's school physically this year, but I can cut out box tops pretty good.  She got the award for collecting the most box tops in her class.  It was a bag of sour skittles.

My gestational diabetes didn't disappear as much as I'd hoped this time.  I spent 2 long hours at the Dr.'s clinic doing glucose test.  I failed.  I now have diabetes, and have to start some sort of treatment for that.  I don't know what it's going to be yet, I find out Friday when I go see my regular Dr.

I have yet to start doing taxes.

I'm thinking about clearing out half of our computer room for baby Alex to have his own space.  Right now I feel like he doesn't really have his own space except for the bassinet.

I was asked to substitute teach the Sunbeams on Sunday (the 4 year old class at church), and I'm actually kind of excited.

April's ear piercing event has inspired me to start wearing earrings again.  I've had a pair in for 3 days.  I think my hubby likes it too!

I think I've pretty much decided that Aaron is not going to do T-ball this spring, but he is going to start swim lessons at the end of March.  He's way excited!

I took my boys to pump it up and ice cream today.  Decided to give my brain a break, and ditch all the housework.  It was a treat, and they had lots of fun.

I'm looking forward to going to the temple tonight, it's been way too long.

A fun SuRpRiSe!

April has wanted to get her ears pierced for a very long time.  First she asked when she was about 5 or 6, I said maybe when you're 8.  Well, when she turned 8, she asked again.  I said, not yet.  How about 12?  Ha, ha, she stopped asking.  I guess I just felt she would be more grown up when she did.  Well now she's 9.5, and my neighbor was talking about taking her baby girl in to get her ears pierced.  Well, then I thought, I guess April is ready, and I guess I'm ready as her mama too.  So, I had the genius idea to take both April and Clara (that's the baby girl's name), at the same time to get their ears pierced.  April just loves baby Clara, it would be a fun girl thing, and I knew she has wanted to get her ears pierced for a very long time, but I decided to make it a SURPRISE.  It was hard but I didn't say anything.  She didn't even have the slightest clue even when we walked into the store Claire's, she still just thought that the surprise was to buy something special for her and Clara....

Well, the clerk at the store asked if we needed any help.  My neighbor Emily said that we did!  Emily explained how this young lady was here for a surprise (and of course the clerk knew right away that it was ear piercing).  Then, Emily said that her baby girl was there to get her ears pierced.  That's when April figured it out.  April immediately said, "I don't like where this is going".  This is when I thought my surprise wasn't really a great surprise.  She got a really worried look on her face.  At first she wasn't so sure she really wanted to do it.  I think it was only because she was worried it would hurt.  So, I talked to her and said she didn't have to do it if she had changed her mind.  She said "well, let Clara go first".  While Clara went she had fun looking at all the different earrings and this is what got her more excited about it.  She really wanted to, she was just worried when it came to actually doing it.

She was a brave girl.  She told me on the way home that she loved the surprise even though she was worried at first.  She said that she knew that she would have been sad later if she hadn't gone through with it, and was glad she did it.

It all happened so fast, I almost didn't get a picture!

All done!  All smiles!  She is so stinkin' pretty!

Here she is making her final decision about which earrings she wants to buy.  Narrowing her choices down.  Turned out that if she bought 2 the 3rd was free!

Sweet Nana (neighbor Emily's Mom), had so much fun looking at all the earrings with her, and was the one that treated her to fun earrings.

Baby Alex was the only brother that came along, this was a girls only outing!  Thanks Daddy for letting us girls go out.

April and Baby Clara with their new studs.  See how happy April is now?

So pretty.

Life's randomness

It's not very often you run into a bigger than life sized jelly fish made of old water bottles!  Aaron just loved this, and kept wanting to walk through it.  It's called garbage art and it's on exhibit right now at the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  Aaron had been asking to take a trip to the coast almost daily, so we finally packed up the family for a day and headed over there.  It was a fun trip.

We love the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and since we have a membership we try to get out there as often as we can.  They always have such intersting exhibits such as this garbage art.  I decided to see if I could find some more pictures since I didn't have my real camera and  found this blog with some pictures.  I also found this article about the person who made all the garbage art.  She makes sculptures out of garbage found on the coast of Oregon that washes up from around the world.  It's kinda neat to see what she has made, and also eye opening to see all the garbage that washes up on the shores.

Raising rock stars preschool--letter T

This weeks focus was the letter T, and the scripture was from the 10 commandments (Thou shalt not steal, Exodus 20:15).  It was fun to focus on the 10 commandments, and this particular scripture he really enjoyed.  It has actually been a little problem of his lately, stealing (his sister's stuff, his brother's stuff, etc), so it was good for him to learn that it's not right to take things that aren't his.  I tell you this preschool is so fitting for him.  We aren't getting to it every week, but he really likes it when we do it.

Cutting out the scripture to make it into a strip...

...and, taping it together

This was the craft, making the 10 commandments stone with numbers 1-10 on it.  He didn't really dig this.

Looking at the letter and sight word for the week.  Having these really helps him, and he's excited about recognizing words.

He made the connection that the number for the 2nd week of Raising rock stars preschool was 2, and he remembered that last weeks was 1.  So he got last weeks number out so he could put them in order.

Surprisingly, he loved coloring the picture for the scripture.  This boy usually does not like to color.  It was a picture of a person taking somebody's piggy bank, like they are stealing.  I think he found it so interesting because like I said it is something that he is having issues with right now.  We talked about why taking things is wrong, and what we should do if we find something and are tempted to take it.  It was a very teachable moment.

I try to do as much of the same stuff with Aric that I'm doing with Aaron.  He's almost at the same level in some areas, and he loves to be a part of it.  Here he is coloring his sheet.

Even though he wasn't interested in the craft, he started drawing his own 10 commandment stones and writing the numbers in them.  He made his own "craft" as he says.

This week was done around groundhog's day, so he also did a groundhog matching sheet.

Aric showing me his finished coloring sheet.

I love this one of them both showing me the props for the week. 

Aaron doing the T worksheets.

Aaron working on the vocabulary cards.  He decided to trace around them all before cutting them out.

putting the vocab cards in the pocket page.

Other preschool fun

I found this idea on No time for flashcards.  It's called a coloring museum.  To get my boys more interested in coloring I put up a whole bunch of color wonder pages for them to color, and display for all to see.  They really liked it.

Artists hard at work.

Aric worked on glueing T pictures to this T page.

And, of course an all time favorite, sorting pom poms.

Baby Alex=2months old!

Weight:  12lbs. 8 oz.

Smiles

Coos

Loves baths

Cries

Watches

Eats

Sleeps

Alex Favorites

He's smiling in this picture from his 2 month check-up.  He was just laying on the table just as happy as can be.  He's already wearing size 2 diapers!

I have the best neighbors, and they brought us all some valentine treats.  So, this was Alexander's valentine treat from "Nana" (their Grandma) since he can't eat candy, a binky with his name.  Soooo adorable.  Too bad he doesn't use it more, I love it!

I love how Aric thought that baby Alex wanted to play with his pretend phone.

This one of Aric reading to Alex just makes me smile.  Alexander was really watching Aric, and I love that baby Alex is really starting to notice what's going on around him.

More to come!  Next month will be Alex in the bumbo!