Happy November

I know I have been terrible about posting, and I make no guarantee that I will ever catch up on the last few months, but yesterday Greg's parents flew out to Australia and in an effort to keep better track of our lives here in order to report to them on the happenings of our world, I am going to try to revive the blog. :)
I also wanted to repeat what I did a couple years ago where in November I try to mention a blessing a day. If it is too cheesy for you, feel free to pretend I haven't started writing again, but today at the front of my mind I am so grateful for wonderful in-laws. They are setting such a great example to my family as the set off on their mission. I am so thankful for their love, kindness and goodness. I am so grateful for the important role the gospel plays in their lives, and I look forward to hearing the stories they have to share with our family. We have already had the chance to sit down and visit with them about their experience in the MTC, and were able to feel a tiny piece of the spirit that is there. So today, I have to share with everyone how grateful I am for Steve & Lorna. They really are the best in-laws anyone could ever have!

This is the Night We've Waited For

Tonight for FHE we had a lesson on obedience (specifically on being first-time minders) and then went to practice our obedience at the Art Museum. On the third Monday of each month they hold a family night activity for the kids & this month they had all the winners of the Pioneer Day competition on display, so we got to have a Pioneer mini-lesson as well. After looking at all the exhibits we took the kids down to the basement where they had craft tables set up to make international paper dolls. Here are the girls' beauties...

After the art lesson, we went out for frozen yogurt then practiced first-time minding again to see if the girls could get ready for bed without having to be asked repeatedly...I now get to go find out :)

Becca's Fairy Party

We have officially reached double digits. It is hard to believe that Becca is 10, but ready or not I have a full-fledged tween. The impact coming full-force since Becca got a new CD player & mixed CD for her birthday & has spent the last 24 hours in her room playing with her new gifts and listening to her music emerging only for meals. Crazy!

Yesterday we had a fairy party for our little bug & her friends...not a Tinkerbell fairy party though; it was a woodland fairy party based on the Fablehaven books. We tried to make things a little more "grown up" by avoiding Pin the Wings on the Fairy & instead serving lunch.

Here is the table we set for lunch. We tried to keep things earthy as much as possible with "spider web" linen napkins, flower-etched glasses, and mossy green, brown and red colors.
When the girls arrived they made their own flower clips for their hair. Here is a small sample of their creations...I think each girl made about 5 clips each.

When the girls were finished with their hair clips we had a Woodland Fairy Feast. The menu included raspberry filled chocolate nests, snail crescent rolls, Panko breaded-pepper chicken (Birch Bark Chicken) Broccoli Saplings, radish toadstools on a bed of fresh spinach, and some magical milk a.k.a. vanilla milkshakes, dew drops (water), fairy nectar (invisible kool-ade) and birthday cake for dessert.

After lunch the girls went on a treasure hunt. This was supposed to happen at my grandpa's house, where his huge wooded yard borders the golf course and is amazingly Fablehaven-esque; however, with threatening thunder storms I decided to keep the girls in our house & so I had to mix things up. In the Fablehaven series there is a secret journal written in a magical ink that can only be read with an umite candle. So, I wrote the clues to the treasure hunt with bleach and then we used a UV flashlight to read the secret messages. Each clue was in a different volume of the Fablehaven series, so the clues read: B 4; P 454; L 18; W 7 Or, Book 4, Page 454 Line 18 Word 7. I scanned each of the books to find corresponding places in our house...the bathroom, a hedge, the refrigerator, Becca's bedroom desk, etc. then I hid the clues really well (in an empty sour cream container in the fridge for example). and included a small 'treasure' for the girls to use to decorate a fairy house.
Each house was different & the girls did a great job decorating them. It was fun to see their creativity shine through as they decorated their houses.

After the fairy houses were finished, we had some cake and ice cream. Becca helped me design her birthday cake this year; a toadstool fairy house complete with strawberry flavored toadstool cake pops.

As the girls were leaving they received a fairy necklace in a little muslin fairy pouch. All things considered I'd have to say the party was a success...even with the more 'mature' girls who have given up on fairies.

Shake It

One quick funny...despite the fact that there are about a thousand posts that I should catch up on.

I walked in on Rachel today pumping her fists and singing at the top of her lungs "Shake Shake Shake A-Snore-A!"

then she said, "but they aren't really a-snore-ing, are they mom?"

Happy Birthday Rachel!

It is hard to believe that my little girl is already four years old. She is such a sweetheart! As far as celebrations go, we are keeping it pretty simple with a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese's (my kids have never been & have been asking to go for years), a tea party brunch with mom, a ride on her new bike and a recital for the big girls.

We also got a new camera so hopefully I can get some pics up here again :)

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Rachel gets to watch "The Cat in the Hat" every morning after her sisters leave for school before she gets ready for the day and this morning was no exception. I turned on her show and told her that as soon as it was over she needed to get dressed. I got ready and started doing a few things and kept checking in on her and she was still watching. I did a few more things and checked on her again, but the show was still on. I thought I was being REALLY efficient today until I looked at the clock and realized that the show had been on for over an hour...Yep, today is Dr. Seuss' birthday and I guess they are celebrating on PBS with a "Cat in the Hat" marathon.
Nice! Now I'm not sure she'll ever get dressed :)

fleeting childhood

Today I was given a great reminder about how quickly time passes. For the last few weeks my mind has been bent toward my little sister & her baby. Haylee's baby has a brain cyst & has had to have one surgery already and is back at the hospital scheduled for another.

Well, this morning, I was getting Rachel some strawberry milk when the phone rang. My mom was calling to give me the update from Haylee and when I came back from the phone call to see how Rachel was enjoying her milk this was the scene in the kitchen.

It was such a visual reminder to me to enjoy the moment and be there for my kids. I love being around when my kids have flavored milk because they enjoy it so much and it is a sure way for me to get a compliment on being the "best mom ever!"

So, seeing the empty cup when I came back just reminded me how important it is to be there to enjoy my kids & to be there with them whenever I can.

Ellie's Baptism

Saturday Ellie turned 8 and was able to be baptized on her very birthday! She was so excited & we had a wonderful experience. When Becca got baptized, she wanted to follow up on the theme "Black-White-Choose the Right" that the primary started, so we had black and white decorations and black and white treats for dessert.
True to Ellie's personality, she decided that it would be much more fun to alter the theme a little bit and have a "Be BRIGHT Choose the Right" party. We had rainbow pinwheels in the flowerpots, and decorated the tables with Jelly Bellies, balloons, crayons, markers and all things BRIGHT.
The baptism itself was wonderful. We were so grateful for the support of our family, neighbors, friends, and teachers (both Ellie's primary teacher & 2nd grade teacher attended).
What a wonderful experience it was for her to be surrounded by so many people on such an important day.
We had her bear her testimony last night at family home evening, and she said that getting baptized and getting the Holy Ghost made her feel warm inside all through her body. She felt so happy and was all smiles that day (as evidenced by the lousy picture I tried to grab with my phone).

Sarah's Homework

I was helping Sarah sound out some words in her homework & she said, "Mom, I don't really need to do my homework. It's just reading & I like looking at the pictures more anyway."

Silly girl!

My friend Rabbit

To ease Rachel's sadness at being the only child who doesn't get to go to school every morning, we have a tradition that as soon as the older girls leave the two of us snuggle on the couch and watch the last 15-20 minutes of a show. Usually Rachel picks The Cat in the Hat but today she wanted to watch something different. So we checked to see what her options were and I found a show called My Friend Rabbit. I asked her if she wanted to watch My Friend Rabbit, and she said, "Yes! I love your friend Rabbit. . . but can he be my friend, too?"

The New Naughty

So, I guess it is in answer to my concern that I haven't had much about which to blog lately, but Sarah has proven herself completely capable of filling a post or two today.
Today was the first day back to school for the girls & I had a lovely morning getting the "Monday" checklist under my belt. I thought I was pretty much on top of things until miss Sarah arrived home from school.
She asked if she could play with a friend & since she hadn't had a friend over since Christmas, I said that sounded great. She had cleaned her room and there was nothing stopping her from having a wonderful time.
Sadly, while playing I gave her a little too much space & she decided to paint the couches with coconut oil (for the popcorn machine), color on her comforter with a permanent marker and hide her friend's coat so she couldn't leave when the time came.
I have already cleaned up the popcorn oil, and I fortunately found the missing coat shoved in the back of Sarah's closet, but despite my best efforts I was unable to clean the ink from the quilt, so I should be able to post pictures tomorrow (Sarah is currently in bed & I don't want to wake her).
But, if this keeps up, I will certainly have plenty of fuel for the writing fire...so Welcome 2011...BRING IT ON!

Happy New Year!

With a new year I suppose I should renew my efforts to blog consistently about our lives. The past few months have been filled with the usual day to day chaos that goes with life, but it has been just great. Our Christmas was wonderful. The girls were sick early in the week of Christmas, but managed to get healthy by the time all the family parties started. It made for a rather uneventful Christmas break from school, but I am thrilled that they didn't need to do any make-up work either!
I have to laugh at our Christmas this year. I thought I was doing such an amazing thing, but Sarah's response turned out to be a little anticlimactic. For the last three years the girls have been ogling over the American Girl catalog that comes in the mail. They would always choose which doll they would pick if they could have one (knowing full-well it would probably never happen). Well, the doll that Becca has been looking at for the last few years was being retired, so I decided to take the plunge and get each of my older girls an American Girl doll.
It was the only "parent" gift they would receive & I thought it would be the hit of Christmas. On Christmas morning the girls opened their presents, including the dolls, and were thrilled with everything, but when asked what they received for Christmas, Sarah excitedly tells everyone about the Dollar-Tree harmonica and butterfly sticker earrings she received.
I guess it just goes to show that Christmas REALLY isn't about the expensive gifts at all!

On the upside, all the girls do seem to be enjoying their dolls & have carried them happily around the house.

As for the new year, today we spent the afternoon sledding in the FREEZING temperatures, but it was really fun to watch the girls get more and more daring as time went on. I have really enjoyed having the girls home from school, and I'm not quite ready to turn them back over to their teachers yet, but I'm sure that getting back into a routine will be beneficial for the whole family.

I guess the next goal I should have is to dust off the old camera & get some more pictures for this blog. I didn't even think about taking pictures of sledding but it would have been great!
Hopefully we'll be able to hit the snow again in the next few days & I'll remember the camera!

Happy New Year to all, and to all a great football game & cheese ball tonight!

SURPRISE!....Again!

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to surprise Greg at Christmas. A couple years ago I wrote a post about the fact that I tried unsuccessfully to surprise Greg with a popcorn machine for Christmas (you can read about it here).
Well, once again Greg has somehow managed to discover a surprise well before it was supposed to be revealed. Greg has been talking excitedly about the upcoming release of TRON, the Disney sequel to the movie from the early eighties. It is not a movie I would typically choose to see, so he wasn't convinced that we would ever see it in the theater, but has mentioned that it would be really neat to see it at the IMAX theater in 3D.
So, this morning, I decided that it would be the perfect stocking stuffer to grab a couple of tickets online and plan a date where we could go watch it.
Greg was at work, and I sat down at the computer to order the tickets. I got to the payment page and ran upstairs to get my wallet. By the time I got back the computer had timed out & I had to log back in. I thought it was surprising that it had locked me out so quickly since it took me less than a minute to grab my wallet, but I didn't give it much thought. I ordered the tickets, and started back upstairs to call my mom to make an excuse so Greg didn't make any plans for the date & time of the movie. As I walked up the stairs the phone started to ring & it was none other than Greg apologizing for logging in to a virtual desktop of the very computer I had been using to get tickets at the very moment I was on the purchase page.
We both burst out into laughter that he would choose that moment to log in because he hasn't logged in remotely from outside our house for a VERY long time.
Well, at least I don't have to worry about Greg double booking something for the same day now!