Time to catch up...

To say I've been busy would be... well... repetitive... since I always say I'm busy. But, I think I might've reached a tipping point in the past few months, and the blog has suffered. Which is sad because this is what I'm using as a family journal of sorts. I've started publishing each year in a blog book, and I don't like to leave things out. But, so far this year, I have. So, because I have a lot of catching up to to do, I'm going to post some things that we've done in the past few months that don't really fit, but I don't want to leave them out.

Atlanta Temple Open House

The Atlanta Temple has been going through renovations for almost 2 years and it's finally finished. This last Saturday we went with our ward to take a tour during the open house. It's was a great experience. Even William was able to stay relatively still and look at the beautiful building. In nearly every room he kept wanting to reach down and touch the white rugs. We let him. Sarah, Kaitlyn and William standing with two little girls in our ward that look like they could be my children too. :)

Making Rainbows

Kaitlyn has been learning about the weather in Science lately and one of the things we learned about was rain and rainbows. The Georgia Cyber Academy sent us all sorts of good stuff (for free because it's a public school) that we can use to better learn certain concepts. On the day that we learned about rain and rainbows we got to create our own rainbows using a mirror in water. We also made bubbles so that we could look at the tiny rainbows on the bubbles. Another part of the lesson was to make it "rain" by filling a cotton ball with droplets of water until it go so full that it started dripping or "raining". Lots of good hands on lessons. The best kind for little ones.

Here's how to make your own rainbow using a mirror in a bowl of water. You fill a large glass bowl with water then you put a mirror completely in the water. You take a peice of paper and move it around in front of the bowl until the light from the sun bounces off of the mirror in the water and reflects onto the paper. On the edge of the light being reflected, you will see a band of rainbow colors. You can tell your little scientist that rainbows are made when sunlight bounces off of droplets of water. (That's also why you can see rainbows in bubbles.)

Happy Half Birthday!!

We don't usually celebrate half birthdays, but Kaitlyn and William love to pretend it's someone's birthday all the time, so I thought it would be fun to celebrate a half birthday for Family Home Evening this week. Alan's half birthday would've been February 31st, Kaitlyn's March 8th, Tom's March 12th, and mine March 20th. We played games like "mother may I" and had different kids of races (like somersault races, cottonball races, etc). Then at the end we made a batch of sugar cookie dough and gave everyone their own portion of dough to make whatever shapes they wanted. After that we decorated them and ate them. Yum!

Crazy Raking

We don't bother raking in the fall because the leaves don't completely fall off of the trees here until it's almost spring. Tom will do one good mow in November when it starts to cool off which will pick up alot of the leaves, but by January-Feb more leaves have fallen and we have to do it all over again. So, last week we had a lot fun raking and blowing the leaves in both the front and back. We did more playing than raking for a while. :)

Dr. Suess' Birthday

In honor of Dr. Suess' birthday yesterday we ate green eggs and ham for dinner. Kaitlyn read us a Dr. Suess book , "Hop on Pop". (We couldn't find our "Green Eggs and Ham" book) After eating that dinner we have all decided that we like Green eggs and Ham.
The ham was literally "colored" with a green food coloring pen.

Here's my attempt at making green fried eggs.

Car Wash

Yesterday the kids were out of school and the weather was beautiful and warm- low 70's I think. They were playing outside all day and at one point Sarah came in and begged me to let them wash the van. At first I thought it wasn't a good idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'd get a free carwash out of it, and it was a chore that I didn't have to try to get them to do. I couldn't argue with that. :)

A song as a game

Since I have no chorister in my Primary right now, I'm acting as the chorister and teaching the kids the new songs each month. This month the song is "I Will Follow God's Plan". I thought of making the song into a game and tested it out on our family Sunday evening.

I'm not sure if it will work in Primary without a lot of changes, but it was a lot of fun for our family. I made a little "color cube" by taking a little block of wood and coloring the sides of it to match the colors in the game. We used Hershey Kisses as markers and when we got to the end everyone got to eat their playing piece. :)

Please excuse the poor quality pictures, our Family room is dimly lit and we badly need a new camera.

Homemade Rootbeer

For FHE last week we made homemade rootbeer. We've always wanted to try making it, and for Christmas my mom gave Tom a rootbeer making kit. It was a lot of fun and even though we couldn't taste it for a few days, when we finally got to, it was pretty good!!

The Pledge of Allegiance Song

I found this song to help teach Kaitlyn the Pledge of Allegiance. Good teaching tool for little ones. I know my genius nephew memorized the pledge at only 2, but we're still working on it here. :) Just thought I'd share what I found.

Clogs from the Netherlands!!

Tom just got back from a trip to the Netherlands. He always tries pick up something from the country he visits for each of our kids. For Kaitlyn and William he bought some clogs. He got the plain kind so that they could paint their own. Kaitlyn is really sick again, so she didn't feel up to painting today. Here are a few pictures of William painting his new clogs.

Sudoku Sarah

I found this Sudoku game at the Dollar store. Sarah has been playing it all morning. Good math practice.

And in other news I have let Sarah start her own blog too. I think it's good creative writing practice. So now, both Alan and Sarah have their own blogs. I am not responsible for the content of either blog. :)

For Alan

New Beds!

There's a furniture store in town that's going out of business, and we decided to go in and see what they had in the way of bunk beds. Well, we walked out with a great deal on two sets of bunk beds. One for the girls room and one for the boys room. They have book shelves, a dresser, and a desk. Very nice. They've all really loved having their new beds. After we set them up they played on them for hours.

We weren't sure how William would do sleeping in Alan's room in a new bed. But he loves it!! He's had no problem going to bed and staying asleep since he started sleeping in there. Big relief.

Now we have his old room for guests.... in case any of you want to come visit... hint.. hint..

Ice storm

It rained ice!! Everything was covered in ice, and the kids got 2 days off of school. I thought I'd share some pictures. The coolest icicles were the ones on the leaves that looked like drips of water.