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.

Palm Sunday

Tonight to remember Palm Sunday, I had the kids cut palm leaves out of green construction paper and lay them on the table. Right before dinner we read Luke 19: 29-38, and then Matthew 21:8-11. Having them make and then lay the palm leaves down helped them want to listen better when we read the scriptures. lEach day this week we're going to do something to remember the Savior.

Having fun making the eggs...

The rice crispy egg recipe (see previous post) is a great activity to do with your kids. It's super simple. You take care of the easy cooking part, but let them grease the plastic eggs with butter and spoon in whatever colors of rice crispy treat they want to form their eggs. They even have fun snapping the eggs shut over the treat, and later opening them to see how they turned out. We did this yesterday inbetween conference sessions.

Here you can see the bowls of colored melted marshmallows and rice crispy cereal. Alan and sarah are buttering the plastic eggs. Here are Sarah and Kaitlyn admiring some of the finished eggs. Sarah ate three of them.

Worth another post...Rice Crispy Easter Eggs

I posted these last year, but I'm making them again for the primary children, so I thought it would be worth another post.

Rice Crispy Eggs

1/4 cup butter or margarine

6 cups of mini marshmallows

6 cups of crispy rice cereal

plastic eggs greased inside

1. Divide the butter and marshmallows evenly into four separate microwavable bowls.

2. Warm up each bowl in the microwave until the butter and marshmallows are melted. Every microwave is different, but in mine, it takes about 1 minute on high.

3. Stir a different color of food coloring into each bowl.

4. Add the crispy rice cereal to the bowls.

5. Working quickly, layer spoonfuls of the different colored rice crispy treat mix into the greased plastic eggs. Wait for them to cool, then take them out of the eggs and enjoy!!

The Meat Eater

We noticed yesterday that William has 4 yes, 4 molars coming in right now. In celebration of his new chompers, we let him have his first official dinner with us at the table where he ate what we ate and even used a fork.

At meal times before tonight, we would just give him soft foods to eat with his hands. But, since he has demonstrated his fork skills previously, we decided to make him a little bowl of meatloaf and some peices of steamed broccoli. The broccoli was whole-not chopped or mashed.

As you can see by the pictures, he loved it!!! He ate an adult size portion of meatloaf and wanted more. He even ate several peices of steamed broccoli.

The famous Uncle Johnny

My brother Johnny is famous at our house because of 5 years ago when he came to live with us for 6 weeks to help when I was pregnant with Kaitlyn. He was so much fun then, that the kid's haven't forgotten him. They were so excited when they found out he was coming again with his wife and baby boy. He was exactly as fun as they all remember. They played basketball with him, and spoke a little Spanish with him. He even brought his optometrist stuff and examined all our eyes. We love Uncle Johnny and his family!! Johnny is one of the best Dad's I've ever seen! Jenette is very lucky to have him. He was even able to calm down William a few times when he was fussy and I couldn't do it.

Now Aunt Jenette is famous too because of the fun games she played with them.

Sorry I'm a little late posting pics from when they were here. (Mainly because I don't have any good ones, and I've been stealing pics from their blog because they are much better photographers than I am)

Biker Baby

Tom took William outside and put him on the little tricycle we have. He loved it. I couldn't get him to look at me for a good picture because he was too busy wiggling the handle bars back and forth and looking down at his new ride.

Carrots?

The kids were playing in our garden spot this afternoon. We haven't planted a garden yet this year, and so I've been letting them play in it. Sarah was pulling at what she thought were weeds, and this is what she found.

The funny thing is when I planted the carrots last year, nothing ever came up. And now, a year later we find this giant carrot. Actually I think it's several carrots that just grew together into one giant carrot ball. I don't think we'll eat it though.

Cousins in the Kitchen

It's so cute to see Robby and William playing. Here they are in the kitchen playing with Tom's thermos. William is a little too rough with Robby sometimes. Here he's trying to take the thermos cup from Robby. Notice the unhappy look on Robby's face.

Cousins on the trampoline

William and Robby are trying out the trampoline. This is Robby's first time on the trampoline. He's 4 months younger than William. They weigh about the same, but William is a few inches taller.