Frisbeeeeeeeee!

Alan throws the frisbee.Kaitlyn throws the frisbee
Sarah throws it too....


Sarah watches the frisbee land on the roof.

Sarah decides to climb over the fence to get to the frisbee.
William likes the climbing idea.

The frisbee stays on the roof until Dad can get it down.

Strawberry season!!

We had fun making strawberry jam this week. It's a good project for the whole family. William and I bought the strawberries-it was cheaper to buy them than to drive way out and pick them this year. Alan and Sarah washed the jars and lids to prepare them for the jam. Everyone took a turn at crushing the strawberries with the potato masher. Alan got to stir the crushed berries in the pot while it was cooking into jam. Then Tom and I did the last step of filling the jars with the hot jam and actually canning them in our canner.

World's Easiest Cookies

Click on the picture for these yummy cookies that we made for snack after school today.

Spring Break

For spring break this year we went camping in Talladega national forest. It's about 3 hours away. We haven't gone camping since before William was born, and we decided it was time to go again. The kids helped Tom look for wood for our fires, and Alan even learned how to build fires from only the coals of another one hours before. Sarah had fun climbing trees, but did NOT enjoy the outdoor bathroom. Kaitlyn had fun finding bugs and singing to herself around the camp. William enjoyed getting dirty, playing in the river. The night we made baked potatoes for dinner, William was so hungry that he stole a potato while I was preparing them and started to eat it raw! Tom and I just enjoyed camping and getting away from everything. It was beautiful there and we had so much fun!!

Good Friday- "He is Risen" primary activity

We did a primary/ward activity last night that was really neat. We called it He is Risen. If you've ever done the "Resurrection Eggs" with your family on Easter, this is what we did for the ward only on a larger scale.

We had each family in the ward dress in Biblical costumes, and bring a blanket to sit on the floor. We divided the ward up into families, and told the children that at other activities they can be with their friends, but for this activity, we'd like them to stay with just their family, as this would be a special activity to share with them. Each family went together around the church to find the "resurrection eggs". Each of the eggs were in front of a door. The family would open the egg and find something that would represent the easter story. Then knock on the door to go into the room and learn about the token in the egg. The presenters in the room read a Bible scripture that went with the item in the egg and then each family would recieve a small version of the item for each room.

After the 12th egg, the families would go back into the cultural hall for a snack and to view the life size resurrection scene that we set up.

Everyone enjoyed it, and we all would like to make this a ward tradition.

We took video of some of the presenters in the rooms, although the rooms were dark, I thought you'd like to see or at least hear some of the presenters.

Easter Week Day 5-The Last Supper

Tonight we ate foods that might have been eaten during Jesus's time. We had fish, olives, cheese, grapes, nuts, and flat bread. The kids enjoyed it. At the end of the meal, we read how Jesus washed his apostles' feet and how he told us we should wash each other's feet. We explained that Jesus meant we should serve each other. So after dinner, we cleaned up, lit some candles because that's what they would've had during Jesus' time, and washed each other's feet. It was a really neat experience.

Easter week days 3-4 Light of the world

On Tuesday I was not feeling well with a terrible headache-the kind that hurts when you move your head, so we didn't do anything on Tuesday night-except read some scriptures in the New Testament about what Jesus did.

Last night, we talked again about what Jesus did in Jerusalem during his last week of life. We read in John 12: 34-36 how the people were asking him who is the Son of man, and who is the Messiah who abideth forever. Apparently, they thought there was a distinction between the two.

He answered them,

"Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light."

So, we made candles.

I have some candle making supplies from back when I made them for the teachers in primary, they came in handy this night.

Each of the kids wanted to make a different color, so we poured wax into little jars for each of them and let them stir in whatever color they wanted. They also stirred in a little vanilla fragrance because Jesus taught at the temple the last week of his life, and they used to burn incense in temples those days, and the fragrance was to symbolize the incense.

After the wax was thoroughly colored and "fragranced", we poured them into the jello egg molds we have. William really liked this part-especially using the funnel.

Then we put them into the freezer for a few minutes.

And here are our finished egg candles!

Kaitlyn's Preschool Party

Today at Kaitlyn's preschool they had a spring "dance". William and I went to go be a part of it. The kid's danced and sang to their favorite preschool songs, and then later ate cookies and fruit for refreshments. Kaitlyn was really happy to have us there. William was a little shy, but he enjoyed the cookies.

Easter week -Day 2-House of Prayer.

Like last year, Tom and I wanted to do an activity each day of the week leading up to Easter to help us think of the Savior. Yesterday we read how Jesus cleansed the temple right after he came into Jerusalem. He tells us that the Temple is a "house of prayer". So, we made big soft pretzels to represent arms folded in prayer.

Spring Party

Tom's Unit hosted a family day yesterday. It was the first one we've ever had in the 12 + years we've been here. It was alot of fun. There was a giant slide and a bounce house.Alan enjoyed going down the slide with his little brother. Sarah enjoyed jumping in the air at the top of the slide.

Sarah had her face painted.

There were crafts to make....And eggs to find...

They also had lunch for us with cake as the desert.

William gave up on using his fork for the cake. Lot's of fun, but a little too cold and windy for a spring day.

But it was better than being hot! :p

PVC pipe is cool

Years ago I was in charge of the Fall Festival at Alan and Sarah's school, and I built booths out of PVC pipe for it. Knowing that if I left it at school it would just get thrown out, I decided to keep it. Since then we've used it for all sorts of fun stuff. We've made houses and giant forts with it, we've made balloon arches with it for birthdays, and I've used it in primary for object lessons. William loves to just sit and put the shorter peices together.

It's kind of like giant tinker toys.

For those of you who are wondering, a 10 foot pole of PVC pipe is about $1 at the Home Depot or Lowes. The joints are about .20-40 cents each. You can cut it easily with pretty much any kind of saw, to any length you want. You can even spray paint it if you like a variety of colors. Very cool.

Leprechaun Day!

I tried to find some green spray paint because the girls wanted to have green hair for St. Patty's Day, but it was no where to be found. So I bought this cheap green wig. Kaitlyn now goes to a little preschool and this is what she wore yesterday. The teacher said she wore it all day!
Sarah did not want to wear the wig into the 3rd grade class, but she did want a little stripe of green hair. (Alan wanted nothing to do with the wearing of the green wig)

Here is Sarah showing us the irish dinner we had-Corned beef and cabbage with carrots and potatoes, and Irish soda bread. She's also modeling the wig.

After dinner we made rainbow cupcakes!! And played find the leprechaun.

Planting our little garden

For Family Home Evening last night we decided to make another attempt at planting a garden. I've never been able to get anything to grow except beans, peas, and tomatoes, I'm not sure what will come up.Last year we had no garden,and it was a good thing because our yard was over run with gigantic black grasshoppers. Hopefully they won't come back. Does anybody have a good way to get rid of those dinasaur sized things? I never knew they existed until I came here. Here's William doing his favorite chore: watering the garden!!

Sand imported from the Moon

A trip to the playroom on Friday afternoon revealed a new discovery at the sand and water table: Moon Sand!!

Toys R Us had it on sale, and so I bought some and put it in the long neglected sand table. I haven't had anything in their for a long time since it usually gets eaten. Yes, I said eaten. Either that or thrown all around the room.

I took a chance on the moon sand because it claims to be easy to clean up. I wouldn't support that claim. If you get it, don't let your kids play with it anywhere near a rug or you will spend quite a while vacuuming it up. But, they absolutely love it, and even Alan and Sarah spent hours in it on Saturday. I have looked for moon sand recipes, and I did make some moon sand-it is NOT the same. So for now we'll have fun with the real stuff and hope we don't lose too much of it to the vacuum.

Eggs!

These are the awesomely large eggs I found at Hobby Lobby. I love them!Here's some egg sugar cookies we made tonight. Cool tip: Melt a tub of vanilla icing in the microwave and color it with food coloring. It dries hard but still shiny.

Some wooden eggs I've finally figured out how to create with my scroll saw. I cut the wood at different angles then stack it together.

I really wanted to make them hollow, and yet still seemless when they're closed.