Alan loves his baby brother. William looks a little worried...

King Benjamin's tower

We had a lesson about King Benjamin tonight, and for our activity at the end we built towers out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Notice all the marshmallow "people" listening to King Benjamin around the tower. Of course it wasn't long before Alan's marshmallow people became marshmallow soldiers and they were an army storming the tower.. but all in all it was a good night. The marshmallows also made a great desert.

Cheddar Cream Cheese Lasagna
This is my own version of Lasagna with cheddar instead of mozzarella(since that's all we had) and cream cheese instead of ricotta or cottage cheese (since Tom doesn't like either of those cheeses). It turned out terrific, and it wasn't that hard to make!
Ingredients:
1 package Lasagna noodles
1lb ground beef
1 onion chopped
2 cups of your favorite tomato sauce
2 beef bouillion cubes
3 tsps. Italian seasoning
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 pkg (8oz) cream cheese softened to spreading consistency
sliced cheddar cheese
Butter or margarine

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
1.Cook lasagna noodles according to package directions. While noodles are cooking, brown ground beef and oinion until onion is tender. Drain fat. Stir in tomato sauce, bouillion and seasonings. Let simmer 15-20 stirring frequently. Sauce should be thick and meaty, not runny.
2.Generously butter a 13X9 pan and place one layer of noodles on the pan. Spread cream cheese on the noodles. Spoon the meat sauce over the cream cheese. Place slices of cheddar over the meat sauce. Place another layer of noodles over the cheese and continue layering ending with a layer of cheddar on the top.
3. Bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes.
YUM!!

Sarah's creativeness is coming out as she paints on the driveway...

Here's a picture of William in his little white shirt,vest and plaid pants. He was so cute we just had to take a picture. He's 2 1/2 months old now. Only babies can get away with wearing pants like that...

The Balloon experiment...
After dinner last night Tom took one of the mylar balloons I gave him and tied a dixie cup to the string of it. He and the kids filled it with drops of water one at a time until they got it to the weight that would make the balloon hang in the air without moving. They also tried dried beans one at a time. The kids were so fascinated with it last night that they're doing it now on their own even though Tom is not doing it with them, he's at the temple today.

Here's my latest puzzle I'm making and selling on ebay. This one has 37 peices but much easier than the dodecagon, and the noah's ark. I think this is my new favorite puzzle. I love making these!!

Tonight we had our family valentine's party since Tom and I went out last night. I made a chicken potpie in a heart pan, and we opened valentine's that Sarah had made for everyone. She really got into valentine's day this year, and even made a little calendar of activities that she wanted to do the days leading up to valentine's day.
For some games after dinner, I got onto puzzlemaker.com and made a cross-word puzzle and a word search that I blew up and taped on the wall so that we could all do it together. Puzzle maker is really cool because I could use whatever words I wanted for the puzzles. I used the kids names, and other valentine related words. We also played valentine bingo. I found a cute valentine's day bingo card online, uploaded it into "MS paint" and rearranged the little cards so that we had four different bingo cards. It was fun. We used Hershey's "kissables" candies as our markers, and ate them at the end of the game.

Yesterday (Thursday) was valentine's day. Tom ordered me flowers from pro-flowers.com and they were beautiful. Pink roses mixed with other types of lavender and purple flowers surrounding it. It even came with a nice vase. I suprised him by placing a boquet of heart-shaped mylar balloons and some candy in one of the heart boxes I made. I put them on the kitchen table at night after he went to bed on Wednesday, and he saw it in the morning when he came out to have breakfast valentine's day morning. During the day Kaitlyn and William and I went around to my different visiting teaching sisters and dropped off the pretzels and a heart shaped balloon for each of them...
For dinner we went to Charbroil steakhouse at the recommendation of a friend. It was good, but not spectacular. All in all it was a great valentine's day, although when we came home from the restauraunt, I fell asleep feeding the baby in our room while Tom was out in the family room talking with the babysitter. He came in and suprised me because I thought I thought I was only lying down for a minute, but to it had been an hour and I was fast asleep.... pretty funny..

On Wednesday afternoon after the kids finished their home work we made chocolate dipped pretzels. I melted some white chocolate and some milk chocolate, and we dipped them in the different chocolates. I colored some of the white chocolate pink-I just used normal food coloring, and they turned out really pretty. After we had dipped the pretzels in the three different colors, we drizzled them with opposite colors. They looked and tasted great! We made them for us and my visiting teaching sisters. And again I'm without a camera, but I'll take a picture of them and add them to this post when Tom comes home from work with it.

On Tuesday night Sarah, Kaitlyn and I made paper mache heart boxes. I had already put together some heart shaped boxes that I made from old cardboard. Then I had the girls rip up pink, purple and red construction paper. I made some paste out of flour and water, and we had a great time "plastering" the heart boxes with the colored paper. They looked pretty good-kind of like a valentine mosaic. I took a picture of it with my phone, but I can't figure out how to load it on my PC, if I do, I'll add it to this post.

Ahh...Dinner time.. it's the time when mom's all around the world are doing about 10 things at once. Tonight-a typical night- I started boiling the water for macaroni and cheese, and while I was waiting for the water to boil, I went out to my wood shop in the back of the house and cut the frame for one of the puzzles I'm making that sold today. Once that was cut, I used the wood glue to fasten the edges together, and held it together in one hand while it dried as I walked in the house. Once in the house, with the puzzle still in one hand, I began to empty the dishwasher with the other hand. Then I put down the puzzle so that I could put the macaroni in the water on the stove that was now boiling. I then went to the counter and started to trace the hearts for the heart boxes I'm making for my visiting teaching sisters this week for valentine's day- ( I got the pattern from Martha Stewart.com,) . Once I had the hearts traced, I went over to stir the macaroni, then back to finish emptying the dishwasher. As I was emptying the dishwasher Kaitlyn needed help putting on her "princess dress" since she was playing princess. Then it's back to check on the wood frame that I had glued together to make sure it was setting well. Then it's over to change the baby since he was over due. Then back to the macaroni and cheese. So... once dinner was done I had not only made dinner, but I had cut a wooden puzzle frame, started to make a homemade heart box, emptied the dishwasher, changed a diaper, and dressed a princess... I'm sure I'm not the only mult-tasking mother around... they're out there silently doing more in 20 minutes than most other people do in an entire day...

Here's the carmel corn we made. I really love the "moose munch" by Harry and David, and so I decided to try my hand at my own version. I followed a recipe for caramel corn, and added almonds and then dropped globs of chocolate. It's cooling off, and we can't wait to taste it!!
My Moose Munch:
Ingredients:
1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
2 cups raw almonds
1tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 quarts popped popcorn
1 pkg. milk chocolate chips

Directions:
1.Preheat oven to 250. Place popcorn in a large brown paper bag and set aside. (make sure the popcorn is fresh unsalted unbuttered popcorn)
2.Slice the butter into chunks. Place butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, almonds and salt in a microwavable bowl and stir. Place the bowl in the microwave and heat on high for 6-7 minutes without stirring(it should boil for a good 3-4 minutes straight). Remove from microwave and stir in baking soda.
3.Pour heated mixture over popcorn in bag. Close the bag tightly and shake vigorously for 1-2 minutes or until popcorn is completely covered.
4.Pour the popcorn into large shallow baking dishes and bake in a preheated oven, stirring every 15 minutes, for 1 hour. Remove from oven.
5.Melt chocolate chips in microwave for 1 minute, stirring every 20-30 seconds. Dump spoonfulls of chocolate over the popcorn in various different spots.
Let cool completely before breaking into peices.

I decided to make some homemade carmel corn today. I sat the popcorn popper on the ground so that the kids could hear it, see it, smell it, etc. A great lesson to the senses. It was very exciting to Kaitlyn. William, being only 2-months old just enjoyed lying there watching.

Super Tuesday

I went and voted today at Blackmon middle school. I took my two little ones, and saw that I was by far the youngest one voting at the time I was there. It was interesting to see that everyone else voting there at the time looked at least 30+ years older than me... hmmm I wonder what that means, and I just wonder how many people who vote are actually informed about what the candidates stand for, or if they're just voting for who they think looks the best, acts the nicest, is the best public speaker, etc...