Kaitlyn's 2nd grade project

Kaitlyn has finally finished her project for school!! Here is a video of her presenting it.

Butts Mill Farm

We went on a field trip to ButtsMill Farm because it was in it's off season and admission was free. We got to see some animals and play on their numerous playgrounds.

Valentine's Day Fun!

We started the day in the classroom making Valentine's Day mailboxes to take to our School Valentine's Day Party. 

The school party was at Sweet Frog, a self serve frozen yogurt shop with an nice playground outside. Here's Kaitlyn dropping her valentine's into the other students mailboxes. I was sad to see that the coordinators set this up just like they do at the schools here: put all the mail boxes in one place on a table and you just drop the cards in to one after another. You don't even get to meet the kids you're giving the cards to. Not a good thing when you're all home schooled, and you don't get to see other kids very often.  Last year when I did a party, I had the kids hand them to each other so that they could actually meet each other and make friends... oh well....  The activities at the party were good, though.

      We had a really nice family dinner that we made Chinese style. During the week before Valentine's day, the kids wrote kind notes to each other and placed them in these Valentine's Day themed take out boxes I had in the classroom.  We opened and read the notes at dinner time on Valentine's Day.  We also  made paper fortune cookies for each other and put fun fortunes in them.

      For food, we had a Hibachi grilled vegetables, chicken, and fried rice. (Hibachi is technically Japanese, but you get the idea) Everyone picked the vegetables they wanted and I grilled them on the griddle for them. I even found a recipe for the Hibachi sauce that we love at the Hibachi restauraunt. It  was so yummy!!

.... And we ended the day with a super fun "Family Dance". We lit candles, and played our favorite music on  Tom's 7.1 surround stereo, and all enjoyed dancing and laughing together. It was a great day.
 It was the best Valentine's Day we've had.

Home made Christmas

For Christmas 2012, we decided to make as many presents for each other as we could. We wanted to save money, and make Christmas more meaningful.  Here's a few of the projects we worked hard on to make for each other. 

 A multi-shot rubber band gun from Sarah to Alan. I actually made this entire thing, while Sarah had other plans for Alan to make him a sock monkey like she did for William, but Christmas Eve came and Sarah hadn't finished Alan's monkey, so I told her she could give him the rubber band gun I had already made. If Sarah had helped to make it, I would've had her help with the painting, sanding and finishing.  The plans to make it can be found at www.scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com

A bunkbed for Kaitlyn's American Girl Doll twins that Tom and I worked together to make. This is a very simple way to make a really good solid wood bunk bed for 18" dolls.  I got the plans from Ana-white.com. Tom and I worked together on this, which was quite a feat considering he was recovering from knee surgery.    I couldn't have done it without his help. My woodworking expertise is in carving wooden play food and making puzzles, not making furniture.    If I had the patience I would make more of these to sell, but well.... I don't... :) 

 

 A pretend birthday cake from Alan to Kaitlyn. Alan and I worked on this together. We thought of this on our own. We actually made this up as we went along with materials we had in our house. It's foam covered with colored sticky foam.

Sarah made this monkey for William from a pair of socks that she picked out especially for him. She stuffed it with both stuffing and rice. She wanted to make it a toy that he could warm up in the microwave. She thought of it on her own.

12/12/12

Today at exactly 12:12pm on the 12th month of the year and the 12 day, and the 12th year of this century and (millenium) we took a picture. Since this day comes only once every 1000 years, we thought it was important. :)    If you zoom in to the little black clock we set on the mantle for just this occasion, you can see that it reads 12:12.

 Enjoying some "12" cookies.

Lots and lots of blocks

     Our ward had a very late in the year Super Saturday, it was held on December 1st.  I volunteered to do a few of the crafts... because well, I'm insane....

      I found this idea online for Nativity Blocks, and I thought that they would be easy and fun for the sisters in our ward to do.  Our ward is really small, we're lucky if 20 sisters take part in any of our activities, so I thought it wouldn't take much to do that craft.

      Well, when we passed around the sign up sheet to see who would like to do which craft, 22 ladies signed up to do my Nativity blocks!

     The block set contained 13 blocks, and so, you can calculate how many blocks I had to cut. I made 2 extra sets to make it an even 25 sets just in case we needed extra. 

     Now lest you  forget, I run a wood working business that is in it's busiest time in November (we're talking 50+ orders per week), and I also teach 3 of my children at  home, so I had next to no time to cut and sand the 325 blocks.  So, in my usual last minute frantic way, I cut and sanded them all the day before the activity.

     Here I am with my miter saw on our deck. I did it outside because of the huge amount of sawdust that would be coming from all that cutting, and I didn't feel like turning my workshop into a sawdust wonderland.  I had my kids sort the blocks for me, which helped alot. It only took me about an hour to cut them all, but it took me like 4-5 hours to sand each one. I used my belt sander of course, but 325 blocks all individually sanded takes a while.....

     Was it worth it?? Yes it was. The sisters in our ward happily covered their blocks with the beautiful nativity stickers I bought at hobby lobby, and then covered the blocks in modge podge. Look how nice they turned out!!

I also volunteered to be in charge of a scripture wall hanging/placque thingy. I had ldsvynl.com custom make some vinyl lettering for the boards, and I cut the wood for 18 placques (again more than I thought I would need to cut) . That didn't take nearly as long as the blocks, and they turned out really nice too.

William's 5th Birthday !!

William turned 5 on November 28th. We had a birthday party for him on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We did it at a playground near our house. It was a nice recently built playground, and it was a beautiful day.  Our friends the Padrons and the Buenrostro's came.  So including our family, there were 11 children. It was perfect.  William wanted a super hero party, so we used red, white and blue colors, and told the guests to come dressed in their super hero costumes. It was a windy cold day, so only William and one other friend were dressed up. Everyone had a great time!!

The most popular place to play at the party was the sand box.

Halloween at school (and at home)

Two Trunk or Treats!

Fun with water colors...

   One of William's favorite books is "White Rabbit's Color Book".  It's about a little white rabbit who finds 3 tubs of paint and dips himself in them and discovers how different colors are made.  He has the book memorized,  but it didn't click with him until we mixed the colors ourselves. We got out the water color paint and painted little splotches on small white cards. Then he smashed the papers together and saw what color was made. It was a great discovery that red and blue actually did make purple, and red and yellow actually did make green. He loved it.

Stake Fall Festival