20 mini giraffe puzzles

I just finished making an order of puzzles for a birthday party. I received the order through Etsy, which I'm beginning to like better than ebay. They wanted 20 small giraffe puzzles as a party favor for their baby's 1st birthday. It only took me about 2 hours to cut them all and another 45 minutes to sand them. I love wood.

Daddy's Day

This morning, Alan and Sarah had their own creative presents for their Dad. Alan made a sign out of marbles on the rug in the hall that said, "Daddy's # 1" Sarah and Alan both got dressed up in blankets and said they were going to be Tom's "servants" for the day. (We told them to take the blankets off eventually because it was a very hot day.)

Here's Alan ready to fight any battle for his Dad. After church, we all played "Monopoly" at Tom's request. And he won.

Here we are all enjoying the "Baskin Robbins Ice cream cake" I bought for him yesterday. It was chocolate chip mint and devils food. I have made these in the past, but I was a little busy yesterday babysitting two other kids besides my own.

"That was good cake"

Crazy in the Car

Posing for a pic in the van after an afternoon at the Psalmond Road Pool.

Music Lessons

Today I started giving Alan piano lessons and Sarah guitar lessons. No, I don't know how to play a guitar, but I can read the lesson book and figure it out pretty easily. So, after their lessons, each went off on their own to practice.

More pictures from the big day

Sarah and Tom before the baptism. Grammy is behind the piano playing.Sarah waiting to greet her guests at the door. Our family plus my parents and Tom's Dad and Step mom.

Sarah's big day

Yesterday was Sarah's baptism day. Grandparents from both sides came to be a part of it. It was a very special occassion. Sarah was very happy. Alot of preparation went into the big day.The day before she had a pool party, hence the cake with a beach scene on it.
I made a white dress for her to be baptized in, and a pink dress out of the same material to wear the rest of the day. She's wearing the pink one in the above picture.

Later that evening the grandparents and the kids had alot of fun.

Girls camp sheet music ready for download

Many people have been asking for the sheet music of the song I sang at Girls Camp this year. I finally got it posted to my website.

So here you go: (Click on the music to recieve it) To hear the audio, just go to http://www.jenniferjoyrose.com/. It will start playing automatically on the site. Please be kind. It's not a professional recording. :/

Camping Inside

Alan and Sarah have spent the whole afternoon building tents out of pvc pipe and old sheets and blankets. They've moved in lamps, books, and now they're carrying pillows, blankets and stuffed animals to their new shelters. They just told me that they want to campout in the playroom inside their tents. I told them they could. We'll see how long they stay there tonight.

Material Madness

I've been in a sewing mood lately. Mainly out of necessity. So a lot of my fabric is out, and that means playtime to my wild ones. I don't mind, infact it's kind of neat to see what they do with it. Yesterday they were playing "beach" with some old sheer fabric. They were putting it in front of the fan and pretending it was the waves. One project that needed to be done was to reupholster our kitchen chairs. They were really stained and ripped and gross looking. The problem is the original upholstery is the same fabric as the kitchen curtains and the bench in the kitchen and upholstery fabric is super expensive! But I guess it's much cheaper than buying new chairs and curtains.

Anyway, here's the old fabric, the new fabric,and the wallpaper I needed to match it with.

FHE on the Plan of Happiness

Click on the picture to print out the booklet for your family, or see the sharing time lesson in the January 2005 Friend.

You can get activities and visuals from the "Friend" magazine on lds.org, on practically every subject you'd want to teach in your Family Home Evening. Having small children, I never plan a FHE without visuals, activities, music etc. Last night we used the January 2005 friend where they have this little booklet that the children can make that outlines the Plan of Salvation. Sarah led the lesson last night, and the visuals from this booklet helped her to do it. She had us sing songs, and talked us through the pictures. It was great! She usually doesn't like to be in front of people, but it was good practice for her to be in charge of our family where she could learn not to be scared.

William conquers the counter in quest of the cell phone

William loves my cell phone. I walked into the kitchen, and saw that he had pushed a chair up to the counter, and scaled the cabinets to claim his prize.

Making Sarah's birthday dress...

Sarah has long legs. So long that it's always been a challenge finding dresses that will even go down to her knees. Tom and I decided long ago that if we want to have teenagers that dress modestly, we'll have to teach them when they're young. Something that's really hard to enforce when the styles of little girl dresses are these cute little short things. Every Sunday it's the same thing: Sarah gets dressed for church and when she comes out I always say, "That's too short, you'll have to wear something else." It's gotten to the point that only 1 or 2 of her dresses are long enough, so, I decided to try to make her one.

Now, I'm an extremely impatient person. I like the end result of sewing, but I don't like all the pinning and cutting and measuring. I found this pattern for something called a "pillow dress" that's super easy. I didn't even start it until about 10:00pm last night, and it was completely finished by midnight! That's the kind of sewing I like.

So, here's the finished product. Like I said, it's extremely basic, and I needed to make it longer than it's supposed to be. But, believe it or not, Sarah's knees are just above the bottom of that dress, so it's the perfect length with a little room to grow.

Making Sarah's Birthday Cake

Today was Sarah's 8th Birthday! We had a small family party because we'll have the big party in a few weeks when the Grandparents get here and she is baptized. We took the kids to Chuck E Cheese's and then when we got home William and Kaitlyn helped me make an ice cream cake for Sarah.
She wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and mint chocolate chip ice cream in the middle. As you can see, William enjoyed taste testing the frosting. "Do you want to taste it too?"

Last Day of school party

Today was the last day of school, and the girls wanted to have a "slumber party" in Alan's room. I let them drag their things into his room and they are all playing quietly in there right now.

It's a rare thing-them playing quietly. Maybe I should let them do this more often.

Scripture Challenge

The idea door has these scripture cards that you can print out and use for fun or for learning. We printed out the Book of Mormon cards and played concentration with them. It was neat because the matches are not matching the exact pictures to each other, they are matching the elements of the scripture story to each other. For example, there's a card with sheep on it that matches a card with Ammon on it. There's another card with 16 small clear stones that matches the card with the brother of Jared on it. It was fun. I let them see if they could match them together without my help and they got them all! I guess our Book of Mormon reading each night is paying off.

Click on the picture below for the link to the cards. It's called "Scripture Challenge"