Time Machine...

Jam Session...

Mini people playing mini instruments on a Sunday afternoon.

Playdough cookies

We like to have a fun activity to do on Friday nights. So, after dinner tonight, we cleared the table and all sat down to make our playdough cookies! Here's a little video of the kids shaping them. It's a fun idea I found on allrecipes.com .
You just make sugar cookie dough and divide it into four different balls, tint the balls with food coloring, then let the kids make whatever shape cookie they want.
You might notice the Mozart music in the background. I like Mozart. :)

Here's a few of the cookies before they're cooked:

And here they are coming out of the oven:

They kept their color! Yay!

Vacuuming the hair?

I just couldn't resist posting this. I just read on Mary's family website that when she cut my brother Ben's hair it was so thick she had to use a vacuum to get all the excess hair off of him when he was done...

Too funny... I wish we had a picture of the vacuum on his head. Why not just have him take a shower? :)

Enjoying the outdoors

Sarah and Kaitlyn like to take their blankets, pillows and toys outside in the yard sometimes. I only let them take a few things, and it's always funny to see which toys they choose. I like to catch the kids off gaurd when I take pictures so that I can get a true glimpse of what they are really doing while they play. Notice the toy blender Sarah is holding over the plastic tiger? I wonder what she was planning to do there....

Reading...

This is one of those very rare moments where my two oldest are actually getting along. Usually they are in opposotion to each other as Alan wants to play something to do with war and guns, while Sarah likes to play like she's a teacher or a news reporter. One thing they can both agree on are the poems of Shel Silverstein.

They're having a snack after church. I usually don't allow books at the table, but they seemed so peaceful reading to each other like that.

My attempt at clock making...

I'm teaching Sharing Time in Primary tomorrow, and this week's theme is, "Heavenly Father wants me to pray to him often-anytime, anywhere". I've been wanting to make a clock lately, and as I was thinking about this week's lesson, I thought of this cool idea for one. Unfortunately I didn't plan how to actually place the clock in the wood before I cut it, and the words are a little crooked. Oh well, at least I made the attempt. Now I know what to do, and my next clock will be much better.

Tom's Birthday Party- A plane ride to Sweden

Tom's birthday is today, and he is on his way to the Military World Games in Sweden. He will have to take a 10 hour flight and then ride for 13 hours on a train to get to his the city where the Games are. Happy Birthday Tom!! Poor guy.

This is the first time he's been to Sweden, and it's pretty exciting. So far he's been to Germany, China, Italy, Czchech Republic, India, Brazil, Peurto Rico, and several other places I can't think of right now, including Kuwait and Iraq to train soldiers there.

....And, for those of you who are wondering, Tom placed 4th in the Olympic trials and they took 3 to the Olympics this time. They no longer take alternates, or he would've gone as an alternate. We're sad about that, but he thinks of the Olympics as just one of the many world cups he goes to, and he plans on going to the London Olympics in 2012. And I'm planning on going with him. That'd be so fun.

Kaitlyn's Noah's ark cake

The day of Kaitlyn's party I intended to make her a Noah's ark cake, but I ran out of time to make it. So, yesterday she and I made a mini Noah's ark cake. She covered it with animal crackers. We even put candles on it and sang to her.
Afterwards, I had to stop her from licking the candles because she started biting off the dripped wax on them. I guess she thought it was frosting. Funny girl.

Kaitlyn's 4th Birthday

One week after Alan's party, we celebrated Kaitlyn's Birthday. She will be 4 on Monday, but this was the best day for the party. Needless to say, Tom and I are exhausted, but the kids are happy. We had a lot of fun today. Kaitlyn's party had an animal/zoo theme. Including our 3 big kids, there were 8 children there. It was the perfect size.

I thought the invitations for her party were so cute that I made a big Happy Birthday sign by scanning one onto the computer and turning it into a big poster.

To capture the children's attention, I asked them all to sit in a circle and tell me which animal they would like to be. Then I told them that the animal they want to be is hiding around the room, and that they can go find it. One by one they told me which animal they wanted, and I let them go get it. I had cut 13 different chunky animals out of some of my scrap wood for the kids to pick. Once they picked an animal, I had them hold onto it and we played "Zoo Upside down" which is the animal version of our favorite game growing up called, "Fruit basket upside down". They had alot of fun. One mom was so impressed with the game and the animals that she wanted me to cut her some animals and print out instructions to the game and sell it to her. I told her that I would just cut her some animals for free since it only takes me a few minutes. I thought that was kind of funny. Anway,... this picture shows just a few of the 13 different animals I cut this morning before the party.

We also played pin the tail on the lion with a picture of a lion I got from Kaitlyn's invitations. Notice how many of the tails aren't even close to the lion? One even ended up on the refridgerator in the kitchen to the right. The kids thought it was hillarious to laugh at how badly each other did in placing the tail.

We ended the party with the old favorite, smashing the heck out of a poor unsuspecting pinata animal. This party's victim was a brightly colored Llama. Here Sarah is laughing as she smacks

him.

Here's William enjoying the animal glasses that all the kids got in their goody bags:

Alan's 9th Birthday

For Alan's 9th Birthday we took 5 little boys + Alan and Sarah to see the animated starwars movie "The Clone Wars". They met at our house at 3:00pm, and we drove them all to the theater. Then we got 7 little children popcorn and drinks, then filed all 7 into see the movie. They had alot of fun. The movie was pretty decent. Lot's of action, which is just what a bunch of little boys want to see. William didn't want to sit on my lap for most of the movie, so I was in the back watching with my wiggly little one, while Tom sat with all the kids. After the movie we drove them back to our house for presents cake and ice cream.

Notice the light saber cake? It is a chocolate cake I made from scratch since I had no chocolate cake mixes in the house. It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

I also made wooden light sabers for each of the boys as party favors. I bought a thick wooden dowel and cut and sanded it down into light sabers. I painted the "blade" part with glow in the dark paint. The boys loved those too.I made the boys go out in the yard to play with them so that I wouldn't have any thing broken in the house.

Little Piano Man

I found this little piano at the GoodWill store for $5.95. That was so cheap that just couldn't resist buying it. It has two octaves and it sounds like a little tinkling music box when played. William loves to stand at it and bang on it.

Preparing for the winter....

I've been working on my puzzles for the Christmas season all summer, but I haven't been able to really get going until the kids went back to school. I have a goal of having 50 ready by October 15. Last year I made them as people bought them, and it was quite stressful at times, especially when I had orders for multiples. And of course, I did have a baby last November, one puzzle even sold the day he was born. (I just love ebay)
Here's my stack of 10 freshly cut still needing alot of attention.
Here's my scroll saw after I've cut a few puzzles. Look at all that sawdust!! You can also see my protective glasses, ear plugs, wood mineral oil, and plans for new puzzles on the bulletin board behind it.

Yesterday I was able to get 6 painted, now I have to lacquer them.. But two of them have already sold this week, so technically I only have 4 toward my goal of 50... I have a long way to go.

Watching Hurricane Fay...

William loves to sit and play at our front door and look outside through the glass. (We have an all glass storm door). He will pull himself up on the glass and tap on the glass and laugh. Today it was particularly interesting outside because we're getting some serious rain from Hurricane Fay. We're so far inland that we hopefully won't get anything too terrible. But we are on a "tornado watch" all day today. You can't tell, but on the ground outside the front door there's around an inch of rain already, and it only just started raining about 5 mins before I took this picture. Do you see how dark it is out there? I took this picture this morning at 11:30 am.

Bath time fun...

William says, "I just love bath time!"

" There's just so much to taste!"
"Gimme that camera!"