Pre-Mother's Day Acitivities

For a primary activity today, we framed the "Proclamation on the Family". In preparation, we bought mat boards for 8x10 pictures, and printed out the proclamation on normal sized copy paper. We invited families to come and bring pictures of themselves, and provided a table for each family with glue sticks and scissors to make a collage of their pictures on the matboard as a frame to the proclamation. It went really well. The children and parents all worked nicely together cutting out the pictures and figuring out where to place them.
After the activity, I needed to go to the grocery store. Tom being gone, I took all 4 little ones with me, something I don't usually do. When we got there, one of the ladies in the bakery came over and asked me if the children could decorate cookies for Mother's Day. Of course I said sure! They had a table set up with sugar cookies, frosting, and sprinkles. Alan, Sarah, and Kaitlyn had fun decorating them while I did a little bit of shopping. When I was done, they each had their cookies in a tiny bakery box with the writing, "Free Cookie" on it. What a nice store!(It was Publix on Milgen Road for those of you in Columbus.) Now that we're home, the kids are in a "giving spirit". I never said anything about gifts on Mother's Day, they just decided they wanted to do things on their own. They are all going around the house looking for ideas for presents that they can make for me. They were all in the play room and I was forbidden from going in. Now Alan is in the kitchen doing the dishes, and Sarah is wrapping little presents she made.
I never thought I would have much of a Mother's Day this year because Tom is in Europe, but this just might be the best Mother's Day I've had.

Drinking from a cup

I've never thought sippy cups were the best idea. I know they prevent spills and everything, but they also prevent children from learning to drink from a normal cup. I have known 8 yr-olds who couldn't drink from cup without spilling because they were never allowed to drink from a cup without some sort of straw or sipping mechanism.
Sometimes being a mother means knowing when to relax and let children learn. Even and if you have to clean up a few spills along the way, it's ok! So that's my soap box moment for the day. :)

William eating pizza...

I took a video of William eating pizza because I thought it was so funny the way he ate it.You also may notice my 3 other crazies yelling in the background.

Kaitlyn's new bed

We finally traded Kaitlyn's toddler bed for a normal twin size bed this week. Sarah and Kaitlyn already shared a room, but we had to rearrange the room to fit the new bigger bed. She's really excited and loves her new bed.

Reading

This was too cute. I just had to post these pics of Kaitlyn reading, or rather, trying

to read to William. He was more interested in climbing around on the rocking chair or smiling at the camera.

Song for Girls Camp is finally finished

I've been asked to write another song for Girls Camp this year, and I'm finally done. The 2009 theme for the youth is "Be thou and example of th believers.", but the theme for our Stake's Girls Camp is "Source of Strength". I had alot of things that the YW leaders wanted me to encompass in the song, and so as a result, this song is very wordy. The chorus is the longest chorus I've ever written for any song. The vocals are my amateur voice, so don't cringe when you hear it. I've just worked so much on it, I thought I'd share. http://jenniferjoyrose.com/files/I_Belive.wma

For Uncle Johnny

My brother Johnny is all alone in Indiana while his wife is away visiting family, so here's an easy dessert recipe for him to enjoy. (He asked for us to send him some dessert in the last post)

Sunday evening is always a night where we like to make a dessert, and tonight we wanted brownies but all we had were cake mixes. I looked up recipes for brownies using a cake mix and found several, but not wanting to work too much on the Sabbath, used the simplest one I could find.

Brownies:

1 chocolate cake mix

1/4 cup water

1 egg

1/2 baf of chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all ingredients together and press into greased 9x9 square pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Enjoy!!

William and Kaitlyn had fun licking the leftovers from the mix.

Family Fun Night

Last night was the first night in almost 3 weeks that Tom has felt good enough to be out of the bedroom, and able to be with us as a family. His surgery was really hard on him, but he's doing much better.... So, we played some fun little games together-mostly games that we made up. Then we got creative with a dessert just for fun. We had a box of vanilla pudding that we made up, then added some sliced strawberries, a dallop of whipped cream, and then sprinkled chocolate chips on the top. Yum!

Mini Puzzles

Here's my latest addition to my puzzle biz. These are really cute and only about 5" long, but like all my puzzles they're a chunky 3/4" thick. Super easy and fun to make. Good for curious little hands. I just listed them up on etsy.

At the Park

I took Kaitlyn and William to the park yesterday. It was beautiful outside and we really needed to get out. William absolutely loves being outdoors and it was nearly impossible to get him back into his carseat to go home.

These are pictures from my old cell-phone, so they're not that great. William loved picking up sand from the playground and throwing it in the giant puddles near by. (We've recently had lot's of rainstorms)

William at the Wii

Alan and Sarah had stepped away from the wii, and William saw his chance. He walked over, stepped on the wii fit board and grabbed the remote. With a fiendish smile he looked over at me knowing he's not allowed to play with it, and aimed it happily at the screen. It was too cute. I had to take a picture. He's even in workout attire.

Easter... tired but Happy..

Ok, so I know I've been a little slow posting over the last two weeks, but last week all the kid's were home from school for Spring Break, and Tom has been recovering from surgery. It's been pretty hard for him, and so because of the care he has needed, I haven't had a ton of time to get onto the computer.... but today, I'm going to post about Easter.

The Saturday before Easter we made our own marshmallow Easter shapes. We melted a bag of marshmallows, poured it onto a greasted pan, then used cookie cutters to make the shapes. We divided the melted marshmallows into different colors, and then kneaded the different colors of marshmallow together to form a "marbelized" look. The kids had alot of fun doing that, and it was alot quicker than making a whole recipe of marshmallows like we did before.
We also died eggs, and made our "Easter Story Cookies". The Easter story cookies are the ones where you read a scripture with each ingredient, and the cookies are not done until the next morning. And when you eat them they are hollow inside or "empty", like the tomb. (I posted the recipe for them last year, click here: Easter Story Cookies )


On top of that, I was busy making an Easter gift for the children in Primary. I decided to design a "Scripture Bag" for all the kids, since we've been encouraging them to bring their scriptures. On one side of the bag I put the words to the song "Scripture Power", and on the the other side I just simply put the words, "My Scripture Bag".

The night before Easter was a hard one. We had to take Tom to the ER at 1:00am. I couldn't find anyone to come and stay at our house with the kids while I took him, so I just piled them in the van and we all drove him out there. We waited in the van while he went inside. Tom turned out to be fine, he's just having hard time with his recovery, but none of us got to sleep until about 3:30 a.m.
That late night didn't deter the kid's from waking up at 7:30 a.m. to see what the Easter Bunny brought. So, all of you who think that keeping children up late will make them sleep in in the morning, that doesn't apply at our house. My children will not sleep late no matter what time they go to bed!! Needless to say, I was exhausted, and so were they, but we had a happy morning anyway.
For Breakfast I made carrot pancakes. It was a recipe I found online for pancakes using a carrot cake mix. It was pretty good. Then, after church we had the traditional ham dinner. All in all it was a great day.

Washing feet

For tonight's special activity, we washed each other's feet. Tom and I thought maybe the kids would be silly about it, and we were a little worried, but they weren't . It was a really special activity. We got out 3 big pans, and sat them in front of three chairs. We poured in water, a little soap, and some actual sea salt from the dead sea. Then 3 of us sat in the chairs, while the rest of us washed and dried each other's feet. Then we switched places. It went really well. After that, we decided to watch the church produced movie, "Finding Faith In Christ."
Tom and I decided that we want to do this particular activity every year.

Resurrection Rolls

We made these today, and we'll be making them as part of a primary activity tomorrow.

Ingredients:
1 can refrigerated crescent roll dough
8 large marshmallows
Melted butter
Cinnamon
Sugar

Directions:
Give each child one triangle shaped section of crescent roll. This represents the tomb.
Each child takes one marshmallow which represents the body of Christ.
Dip the marshmallow in the butter and roll in cinnamon and sugar mixture. This represents the oils and spices the body was anointed with upon burial.
Lay the marshmallow on the dough and carefully wrap it around the marshmallow.
Make sure all seams are pinched together well. (Otherwise the marshmallow will "ooze" out of the seams)
Bake according to package directions.
Cool.
Break open the tomb and the body of Christ is no longer there!!

House of Prayer

Tonight was the second night in our Easter week of activities. It was also Family Home Evening. At dinner time we talked about how after Jesus entered Jerusalem, he went up to the Temple.

We read Matthew 21:12-13:

12 ¶ And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
For our activity, we made pretzels, to represent arms folded in prayer. Because we were talking about the House of Prayer, while we made them, we talked to each other in whispers. It was a really good activity.