Sarah is 10!!!

Sarah's birthday was on May 23 and it was a 3-day celebration!! It wasn't really intended to be, but it just kind of turned out that way. On Saturday the 21st, she had her birthday party with her friends. It was the day after the last day of school, so she was excited to make it kind of like the last big party of the school year. She invited her whole class over to go swimming, and just hang out. (No pics of the friends of course, but it was a well attended party)
She wanted cupcakes instead of a cake this year. So, when it was time to blow out the candles, we covered one cupcake with 10 candles.

Sarah loves chocolate and the TV show/ band, "Big Time Rush" on Nickelodeon. Here she is at the party eating chocolate wearing a T-shirt of the band. One of her friends came early and gave her a shirt and a CD of them, and Sarah immediately put on the shirt. She later hooked up her CD player to the speakers we had set up out side so that she and her friends could listen to "Big Time Rush" during the party. I had no idea how popular "Big Time Rush" was to 9-10 year old girls, but they were all super excited to listen to it.

Here's a view of some of the food. Because it was so hot, I blew up a little swimming pool I got at the dollar store, filled it with ice and put all the food on it. It worked really well.

Here's Sarah opening a gift from Daddy. She got a jewelry box. He often gets her and Kaitlyn necklaces from other countries. She also got her ears peirced 2 months ago so that she could wear earrings on her 10th birthday. Now she has a place to put everything.

Here's the "bowl of chocolate" that Sarah wanted as treats at her party. This bowl is also sitting in another bowl of ice to keep it from melting, because even in our playroom where it was, it was about 85 degrees with the Air Conditioning on.

Here's the cupcakes, some of them already eaten, in the shape of a 10.

Anticipating eating the chocolate cupcake. This is before we loaded it down with candles.

The day after her party, being Sunday, Alan made her a birthday crown for her to be queen for the day, and Sarah and Alan made plans for her actual day.

Then, the next day on the 23rd, her real birthday, at exactly 7:08am (the actual time she was born), she and Alan got up and made all sorts of noise and yelling, "Happy Birthday!!", "Sarah is 10"!!

Because she likes to cook, I let her go through a dessert recipe cookbook I had, and told her she could pick anything to make on her birthday. She picked a cookie pizza.

Then, the last thing she wanted to do was watch her favorite movie, "The Karate Kid" with Jaden Smith. We like that one better than the old one because there's only 2 swear words in it (which we muted), and we think it's cool that it's set in China, and that the guy who trains him (Jackie Chan) actually knows martial arts.... But, we still waited until after Kaitlyn and William had gone to bed to watch it because it was still too old for them with the fighting and stuff..

So, Sarah had a very happy 10th Birthday!!

Restoration Timeline

In primary this month we've been learning about the Restoration, so I thought it would be good ro reinforce the lessons at home. Something good and easy to do when learning about the Restoration is to make a timeline.

To set up, I tied a rope in between two chairs and attached dates to it with clothes pins.

For the learning activity, everyone in the family got a picture from the gospel art kit that depicted an event in the Restoration. After an opening song and prayer, everyone looked at their pictures and we discussed what was happening in them. Then we got to put them on the clothesline-timeline with their matching date. It went really well

Playing Birthday

One of Kaitlyn and William's favorite games is to play "birthday". They love to pretend it's their birthday and have a party. They always want to have a cake with balloons and presents. Well, I usually let them pretend to make a cake and if we have some balloons, I'll blow a few up. They'll sometimes get their own toys and wrap them up in paper and give them to each other. It's very cute. Well this morning, because they play this so often, I decided that we'd make our own little mini cakes together. I got out a cake mix and used my mini bread pans to let them bake their own individual little cakes. Since they love "sprinkles", I let them put some into the cake batter before we baked the cakes.

While the cakes were baking we made some frosting. Because the cakes were so small, they only baked for about 20 minutes, and they only took a few more minutes to cool. So we were able to get to work on the frosting right away. They even wanted to put candles on the cakes and sing "happy birthday".

Another fun activity we did this morning -that teaches all sorts of good stuff to little hands and little minds,- was making an owl "softie". I let Kaitlyn pick out the fabric she wanted and then let her trace and cut the pattern peices. Then I sewed it up for her really quick, and let her stuff it. Fun!! I think this little owl looks like "neopolitan ice cream". Kaitlyn has named her "Owlie".

Resurrection Eggs

On Easter Sunday, the primary children walked through 12 different scenes in the last hours of the Savior's life. After opening excercises, we dismissed the the classes one by one to go out on a "Resurrection Egg" hunt. Outside in the hallway, were 12 giant eggs sitting in front of 12 different rooms (These eggs were huge, like 2 feet long and a foot wide, and they opened up in the middle just like the small eggs) I got them from hobby lobby). The class would go to each egg, one at a time, and open the egg, and then go inside the room to learn about what they found in the egg. Once inside the room, a member of the ward greeted the children by simply reading a scripture. The rooms were set up with pictures and little bit of scenery to help it look like the place where the scripture for each egg took place. Then, each child got a smaller version of the item that was in the large egg to put in their own egg. Each child had their own set of 12 eggs with scriptures on the outside of each egg. They filled their eggs as they walked through the 12 different scenes. Some of the ward members who helped us in the scenes were dressed up. It was very effective, even with the littlest ones.
(The pictures below are the baskets full of the mini versions of the items we had to give to each child. There was of course only one of each of these items in the 12 large eggs outside the rooms. )

1.Matthew 26:36-39:36

2. Matthew 26:14-15
3. Matthew 27:1-2
4 Matthew 27:22-24
5. Matthew 27:28-30
6. Matthew 27:31-35
7. Matthew 27:35-37
8. Matthew 27;50,51, 54 9.Matthew 27:57-60

10.Matthew 27:62-666 11. Mark 16:1-2

12. Luke 24:1-6

(This egg was empty, because the tomb was empty.)

This is a picture of our Bishop in front of the empty tomb from last year when we were able to do it on Good Friday and set up an actual tomb. We even had a CD with nature sounds playing in the background. This year, our Bishop just stood outside with a picture of the Savior and a small tomb that I have from a miniature resurrection scene.

Wild Animal Safari

Here's some more pictures of us at the Wild Animal Safari. The previous post has more info. We went to the Wild Animal Park on Friday of our Spring Break this year.

Spring Break

We did a different activity every day of the week during spring break.

On Monday we planted our garden-we got the ground all ready and repaired the frame around the garden and then planted beans, peas, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons and strawberries. The kids had alot of fun helping with that.

On Tuesday, we went on a 2 1/2 mile hike on Pine Mountain -the longest hike we've ever taken our kids on, and they did it! It was a little tough on William. Tom and I had to take turns carrying him, but for the most part, he hiked it. We can't wait until our kids are older and we can do longer hikes.

Wednesday was pool day. We all worked on our pool to get it ready for summer- the kids loved doing that. We got all the leaves and debris out of it from the winter, scrubbed the sides and floor of it, and refilled it. Since it's a big pool, it was a big job, but the kids were happy to play in the water as we did it.

Thursday we went to the National Infantry Museum and walked around it. What an amazing and inspiring place that is. We'll have to take family there when they visit. It's huge and full of all sorts of interesting displays. It was even interesting to William. We loved it and we're thankful to be so close to it.

Friday we went to the Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain. It was better than the Atlanta Zoo! When we pulled in to the parking lot we saw a peacock just walking around in the grass in front of us. He wasn't in a cage or anything, just wandering around. Once we got inside the park, we did what they call the "walk about" where you basically go and look at the animals in their cages like at the Zoo. It was neat, except for when Alan got "sprayed" by the Tiger. Eww. I guess he didn't like us looking at him... Then we went on a "safari" where we got to drive through this 3 mile (I think) land where the animals just roam and come right up to your car window and eat out of your hand! The kids were scared at first when the big cows would come and stick their heads in our car window. But they had tons of fun.

Saturday we went with the Primary in our Ward to the Temple. I already put up a post about that, and it was such a special experience. It was beautiful and even the littlest children in our primary could feel how sacred the Temple is.

Sunday, Alan and I spoke in church. This was Alan's first talk he gave in Sacrament meeting that wasn't part of the Primary Program. He spoke on "Keeping the commandments" He wrote the entire talk himself and included lots of scriptures. Afterwards, he said he was scared at first, but then he said as he kept talking, it became kind of fun! That's my boy. :)

Kaitlyn's class field trip

Kaitlyn recently got a chance to meet her teacher and other classmates on a field trip to the Columbus Space Science Center. For those of you who don't know, she's enrolled in the Georgia Cyber Academy, and I'm her learning coach. It's a public school and the school sends us all the curriculum materials for free. I really like it because she has a teacher that I can talk with and ask for help with anything we need, but I'm the one who does the teaching. They have outings and "meet ups" all the time. It's perfect for us right now.

Here's a picture of her and William playing with the "mars cars" at the museum. I wanted to get a picture of the whole group, but we had to leave early. There were probably 15 kids there with parents. It was fun.

Valentine's Day at Chez La Rose

When I was growing up my brothers and I would make dinner for my parents on their anniversary and turn our family room into a private restauraunt. My mom was always in on it, and if I remember correctly it was her idea the first time we did it. It became a family tradition every year on their anniversary. My older brother would make the meal, I would make some fancy looking menus, my other brothers would act as waiters, and bus boys, etc. I have fond memories of doing this.
Now, my own children really love playing restauraunt. They play it constantly and we even have videos of them playing restauraunt with each other. (It helps that their mom makes wooden play food:) So, I thought the perfect thing to do for Valentine's day would be to have them help me make a surprise restauraunt for Tom and I. They loved the idea! We got to work cleaning up the spare bedroom and creating the "atmosphere". We brought an old round table that I dont use any more and covered it with a red table cloth. I bought some heart shaped candles and made up some menus for the new restauraunt, "Chez la Rose". I made the meal, but I let the kids serve it. Tom was totally surprised, and we had a nice (semi) quiet, private Valentine's Dinner. The kids loved it so much they want to do it again another time. I'm sure we will.

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. :)