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"

Girls Night

Last night was the Father and Son campout. Alan went with some friends because Tom is still in Europe. So while Alan was gone, we had a girls night. We made homemade pizzas, watched "Princess Diaries 2", curled our hair, put on makeup, and had ice creams Sundaes. This is becoming a tradition because we did the same thing last year during the Father and Son campout too. I still think it's so funny that I have little girls that like such girly things. I was never into that kind of stuff when I was little. But it's fun to see how excited my daughters get when we do things like that.

Happy Mother's Day, Grammy!

This is a video we made just for you! I wanted Kaitlyn to be in it for you too, but she went to play in her bedroom, and within 5 minutes she was asleep. We didn't want to wake her up, so Alan and Sarah sang this song for you. We love you!

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.