Reporting live from Noah's Ark...

One of our favorite Family Home Evening Activities is acting out the scripture stories and video taping them on our old video camera. The kids like to do it in a "news reporter" style. We pretend like we are "live on the scene" at a certain place in scriptural history. The reporter is usually me, and I'm usually behind the camera "reporting" as the kids act it out. We hook the camera up to our TV, and we can see it as we record it.
First, we all decide what story we want to act out, and then we find it in the scriptures and read it out loud to make sure we get the story right. Then, we and go and collect things from around the house that will help retell the story.

Here they are getting the family room ready to report on the story of Noah's Ark. The blankets on the floor are supposed to be the water that covers everything. Kaitlyn is collecting all the animals to go on the couch Ark. William practices his standing skills.

They have a lot of fun doing this, and they're funny to watch for later FHE nights too.

What we've been doing since my last post...

Our ward had a "Mexican Fiesta" yesterday. I was in charge of the decorations, and so I decided to have fun and make alot of the decorations. I had the kids help me with some of it, but mainly I did it.

First, we made some "pinch pots" out of salt dough to put flowers in as table decorations.

They helped me color them when they were dry.

We also made dozens of tissue paper flowers. Which were suprisingly hard for my kids to make. So I made most of them.

Then I thought it would be fun to make some mini maracas out of some of my scrap would. I used my scroll saw and sander to turn a 2x4 into the right shapes, and then using the largest drill bit I had, drilled a hole down the middle through the top of them, put some rice in the hole, then plugged the hole with a wooden dowel. After alot of saw dust and some parts of my fingers sanded, here's what I made:

I also printed out and then painted some large "traditional mexican" images to hang on the walls.

The activity went well. We had good food provided by the Buenrostro's-a family in the Spanish branch who own a mexican restauraunt. They brought ingredients for us to build our own tacos, and they brought some home-made "Horchata" which is a yummy mexican drink. We also had a pinata at the end of the party and Alan was the lucky one who gave the pinata it's final hit.

The kid's enjoyed themselves, and the activity was well attended.

Here's what I felt like doing by the end of the party: