Shaving Cream fingerpainting

One of our favorite multi-sensory activities. Squirt out some shaving cream on the table. Let the kids put a few drops of food coloring of their choice, and the let them have fun!! We did this inbetween General Conference Sessions on Saturday.

Thunder in the Valley

Even though we've lived here for 14 years, we've never been to the Airshow they have at the little airport here. One of the reasons why we hadn't gone in the past is because we can always see the airshow in the sky without having to pay to walk into the actual show area. This year, Alan went with his boyscout troop to do a fundraiser for scout camp. So, we thought it might be fun to go this year. We also saw from the outside, some of the fun looking inflatable rides that they had on the grounds, so we went. Unfortunately, the inflatables cost extra, so because it was $30 just to walk through the gate, we passed on the inflatable rides. That made William really upset, but he got over it, eventually. :)

It was in the mid 80's which is too hot to be walking around on pavement in the sun, and that spoiled the fun a little, but we still enjoyed looking at the neat airplanes.

Oxbow meadows field trip

Georgia Cyber Academy had a field trip at Oxbow Meadows, an Evironmental learning center here in Columbus. The kids had fun meeting up with their other GCA friends and going on a scavenger hunt around the whole center.

Happy Birthday Oreo!!

The Oreo Cookie, which we love, turned 100 years old in March. To celebrate, we made home made oreos.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Suess!!

Here's just a few pics of our the kids (minus Sarah who was at her school), dressed up as The Cat in the Hat on Dr. Suess's birthday. We also attempted to make green eggs and ham. They tasted good, but didn't look quite right. Kaitlyn also read us all "Green Egg's and Ham" by Dr. Suess.

Making orange juice

With oranges in abundance and at a good price, we've bought alot of them in the early months of the year. It was a good thing, because many things can be learned from oranges. :) Here we are making juice from them. We also measured how much juice we could get from one orange. It was about 1/2 cup. Good thing we had alot of oranges!!

Shadow puppets

One of the unit's in Kaitlyn's science class was learning about light. She learned about things that are transparent, translucent, and opaque. To illustrate something that is translucent, Kaitlyn and William got to make a Shadow puppet theater. We stretched a white sheet across some PVC pipes, which as you know, we have in abundance, and put a lamp behind it. (You can also stretch it across chairs) For the pupets, you just cut out some distinct shapes of animals, people etc., and glue them to a popsicle stick. Here's a few pics of the fun.

1st grade science

We've been having fun in science learning about seeds. Today we made a poster depicting all the things that we've learned in the past few weeks. Her favorite part of making the poster was her own idea of what happens when there's a storm. (Not something we covered in class, but she thought it was important to include :)

School Valentine's Day Party

About 2 months ago I felt that Kaitlyn was having a really hard time not being able to interact with other kids at school since she's home with me. I thought about trying to find a school for her to go to, and I even did some more research on the schools around here. I found nothing new, and after much prayer I felt that as long as we live here, the best school for her is Georgia Cyber Academy.

So, I got onto the GCA family directory and looked up families that had 1st graders and emailed them all in hopes of being able to start doing some activities together. I got a pretty good response!! I have since formed a group on facebook called k12 in columbus.

To make a long story short, we decided to get together at the Columbus Museum for a Valentine exchange. We had close to 20 kids there!! There are actually probably around 100 kids here in Columbus that go to GCA, and 10,000 students in all of the state of Georgia. We went to the children's section of the Columbus Museum, where they have hands on activities, and it was a great place for the kids to play and get to know each other better. It was nice to see them go up to each other to give out valentine's and actually get to know some kids their age.

The party was at 2:00pm, after Sarah's school day was over (she had a half day), so she could come too.

Since the museum wouldn't let the kids make crafts there, we made some mailboxes at home to bring to the party.

Below is a picture of the flower Sarah got from her friend Blake at her school Valentine's Day party. She was really excited to get this from him. :)

Valentine's Day treats...

I like dipping marshmallows in chocolate. And now that many marshmallow companies make different shaped marshmallows it's really fun to dip them for treats on hollidays. Here's what we did with some heart shaped marshmallows. We were using bamboo skewers to dip the marshmallows (because I had a bunch of them from another project), and I decided to try to make a valentine "arrow".

Yummy.

Alan bakes a cake in the crockpot!

I've had this recipe for a cake in the crockpot for a long time, and I wanted to try it out. So, last week when we had the missionaries for dinner I let Alan make the cake in the crockpot. It was a triple chocolate cake. It was very moist and very delicious! We topped it with home made whipped cream.
For the recipe, go here: http://bringonthefood.blogspot.com/2012/02/triple-chocolate-cake-in-crockpot.html

Here he is making the cake:

Fortune Cookies!

One of our good friends just had a new baby. She was born close to the Chinese New Year, and for fun, I took them some home made Chinese food (sweet and sour chicken), and I made them some home made fortune cookies with fortunes in them that I customized for them. I even colored them pink for their new baby girl. The fortunes were for meant for the baby and said things like,

"You will be adored by all who see you"

"You will be carried everywhere you go"

"Many diaper changes ahead"

I also found this cute idea for making fortune cookie booties on Martha Stewart.com. I changed the pattern slightly because I didn't like the way they looked when I made them the first time, so I made them a second time and I think after my revisions they turned out really cute.

Alan's new hobby...

Alan has started making stop motion videos. He's seen alot of lego and mega blocks stop motion videos, and thought they were cool. So, he wanted to make some of his own. He will be loading them up on his blog often. Here's the first one he made:

Math Bowling

While Kaitlyn was working on her Math subtraction facts this morning, William got out the bowling set and wanted to play bowing with me. We played for a little while, then I got the idea that bowling was a great way to teach subtraction!

Here's William bowing technique:

Christmas!!

Because it's so late to be posting about Christmas, I'm going to combine everything we did Christmas week into this one post.

First, we always love to make and deliver treats to our friends, but this year with Tom recovering from knee surgery, and me working alot, I was looking for easy fun treats to make.
I found at the store these super cute gingerbread man shaped marshmallows, and snowman shaped marshmallows. So, I used candy melts (much faster and easier than frosting, to me) to add details, and stuck them on popsicle sticks. So easy and so fun!! The gingerbread man marshmallows were actually gingerbread flavored, and the snowman marshmallows were eggnog flavored.
We also took some cannisters that I'd saved throughout the year and decorated them. The canisters were peanut cannisters, or hot chocolate cannisters, and we used sticky back foam to decorate them. We just got a big stack of multi colored sticky phone, and cut out our own shapes and scenes. Of course you could just buy a big batch of Christmas shapes and stick them on the cannisters too. Then, inside the cannisters we put home made caramel corn. Also a fast and delicious treat to make.

On Christmas Eve morning, I was busy finishing up a Christmas dress for Kaitlyn, which sadly, I have not taken a picture of, but it turned out nicely. While I was sewing, Kaitlyn was putting together a nativity scene. I walked into the family room, and saw this against the couches and walls:

I think these are the 3 wise men? They are separated from the Nativity scene because they were not there the night Jesus was born, they were traveling, following the star. I was suprised that Kaitlyn would remember that.

And Christmas morning! It was a happy morning. We let the kids pick out gifts for each other this year, so we had more gifts than our usual 1 from Mom, 1 from Dad and 1 from Santa. We also got beautiful Christmas Roses from Uncle Michael, and lot's of gifts from Grandpa and Grammy McGiffin!!

Here's Sarah opening the last gift. A giant one hidden behind the tree for her. It turned out to be a bean bag chair she'd been wanting since her birthday back in May. She was very happy.

Later that morning we went to church and enjoyed a nice Christmas program. I directed the ward Choir in singing a version of "Once in Royal David's City". Even Alan and Sarah sang in our little ward choir. Then, I sang a version of "O Come Immanuel" at the request of the Bishopric. I wouldn't have sung if the Bishopric hadn't asked me to because I was already directing the ward choir, but that's what they wanted. It turned out really well.

It was wonderful Christmas.