some March happenings

A tiny wooden basketball hoop? Sounds weird, but the kids loved this Lowe's project on March 13th. Christian even figured out all the directions himself by looking at the pictures!

Faith continues to love drawing temporary tatoos on herself. How can I be mad when she does such an amazing job?

On the 17th Faith got her top braces on and a soft pallette expander (the metal bar across the roof of her mouth). Every morning and night I had to twist the screw in the middle to slowly break apart her soft pallette and expand the room she has for teeth in her mouth (giant eeek!). Luckily, Faith didn't find it too painful, but hated the twisting tool because it pressed down on the back of her tongue and made her gag. My brave little baby! After two weeks of expanding, the orthodontist is going to lock it in place and it will act as a cast as her pallette grows back and heals.

We were fortunate that my mom brought us corned beef and cabbage on that Monday night, so I made green crepes for dinner. Happy St. Patrick's day!

On the 18th Buddy was extra wild and crazy while I tried to help in Faith's classroom.

The next day we went with them on a field trip to Apple Village where they sang and played ukeleles after reading to the grandparents. Here's "Skip to my Lou"



and "The Doughnut Song".



Next we went to Kaysville Theater. Here we are upstairs in the projection room learning all about film.

We even got to watch some cartoons on the big screen!

After that, we walked a few doors down to a shoe repair shop. We got to see the owner use his giant industrial sewing machine to fix Mrs. Bertram's purse.

Just a few doors down from that is the Clytie Adams Ballet Studio. Faith's classmate's mom is a teacher there and we got to check it out inside.

Later that day I had Faith open a gift my mom had left for when her braces were hurting her. My mom's so cute, she drew braces on some smilie face stickers to decorate the box! It was a mama and baby horse charm for her charm bracelet.

On the 20th the kids helped me make a special breakfast of pop up pancakes. They were so easy, fun and delicious!! I got the recipe here.

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Pop Up Pancakes – makes 24

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1 cup milk
1 cup flour
6 eggs
1/4 cup melted butter
dash salt

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Preheat oven at 400° and grease muffin tins. Put all ingredients in a blender and blend well. Pour batter into muffin tins evenly (only fill each one a centimeter or so full). Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffy and golden on top. Let cool for a few minutes and they will shrink down in the middle. Use a knife to pry them out and enjoy with fruit or syrup.

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I also made mushroom cheese omelets to go with them.

The pancakes make perfect little cups for fruit. Faith put syrup on her second one and said that was the best because it could hold a lot more than regular pancakes (ick)!

I forgot to add the video of Faith's class singing "Feather Bed" at Apple Village on the 5th to my last post. Enjoy!

End of January and all of February

On January 28th I helped out in Faith's class when they did market day. Different stations were set up around the classroom where the students had to figure out different money related problems to "buy" things like they were out shopping. My station was a flower shop where the kids had to figure out what different arrangements cost by looking at the key to see how much each type of flower was and then adding it up.

There was a video store

and a supermarket along with two or three others where there were different activities. It was a fun time and the kids learned a lot about money that they will use in the real world. I love Faith's teacher, she is the best!

Later that day I cleaned our fish bowl. I have an easier time scooping him with my hand rather than the net and Christian became jealous that I got to "pet Grape Juice." Against my better judgement, I let Buddy have a go at it. He was very gentle and thought our fish "felt weird."

On February 4th Faith's class painted designs in sqares of what would later become the tail of their Chinese dragon.

There was one square left which Faith's teacher started to add stripes to, but then turned the paintbrush over to Buddy. He made some great dots! Unfortunately, we missed out on the Chinese Dragon parade due to our getting the flu of some sort that had us down in bed for over a week :( I'm sure it was awesome!

Here is the grandparent Faith read to at Apple Village Assisted Living on the 5th. She got to partner with Spencer! (Does it seem to you that Christian and I are always at the school or on a field trip with Faith? It does to us, too!)

They sang the cutest olden day love songs and invited the residents to sing along. Here's "Daisy".



The kids made these cute toy car shelves at Home Depot on the 6th. I think they're pretty cool!

After that, we went to Joy's house for Sierra and Lily's joint birthday party. The kids loved playing "Under the Sea" with balloon "bubbles"!

Joy held a freind party for them the day before and had made mermaid tails and seashell bras for the girls,

and shark fins for the boys! We had fun with the leftovers, even if Christian doesn't look like it in this picture.

Some might say it was a little too much fun :D

Faith squeezed into a tail even though they were made for three-year-olds, but got uncomfortable with the fit and took it off not long after. But she was certainly a beautiful mermaid!

Lunch consisted of shell pasta salad with tuna, hot dog octopusses (had to look that one up--not octopi like I thought), hot dog/spaghetti noodle squid, and goldfish crackers.

Buddy doesn't know what to think of his squid!

For the games, we started with Under the Sea Limbo.

See it in action:



Then, Flounder toss with three different sized fish toys.

Lastly, pass the sea anemone. Isn't Eric a fun uncle to always play the kids' games? We love him!!

Then it was on to the presents.

Faith was finally better by the 12th (Christian and I weren't so lucky) and she got to go to the Kaysville City Daddy Daughter Dance. Her dad even brought her roses! They said it was fun and had great treats, but the only activity was dancing (there was even a dj). Tony does not dance, but apparently he made a bit of an exception for his little girl.

This is the picture she had drawn of her dad several weeks before, in anticipation of the event. She was sooooo excited! I love the Steeler shirt detail and our kitchen cabinets in the background!

On the 15th Christian said he was making breakfast for him and Faith and brought his finished masterpiece to show me. I don't think he'd ever had cottage cheese with fruit before, but he figured it would be good! He even washed the berries first. What a sweet brother!

On the 19th we were back at Apple Village. Christian loves the bird they have there as well as the turtles that have their own pond near the front door.

This time, instead of reading, the kids sang a few songs and then played Wii Bowling with the grandparents! Faith did great on her turn,

and everyone had a ton of fun!!

For the second part of the field trip, we visited Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. I wonder what Faith's friend Elaina was shaking her finger at, too funny! They even sang the Donut Song to the employees.

On February 22nd Faith got spacers between her back molars in preparation for her braces. She was getting excited and very nervous about them!

first part of October

On September 30th I decided that it was officially fall, or at least very fallish. That meant it's time to break out the soup recipes!! (or in this case, the Bear Creek soup packet) I also did fresh rolls (not homemade though, just dough from Bowman's bakery). Christian has a new ambition to make crazy faces in as many of my pictures as he can. Good on 'im that he has goals so young.

The morning of October 1st, Christian found a slug to play with. A few days later, after a rainstorm, he collected up a slew of them and put them into a tupperware container with a few plants to keep as pets. I had a ton of errands that day and Buddy insisted on bringing them with. Every time a passerby or cashier asked what he had there, he proudly answered, "Swugs."

Faith went to her friend Kelsie's birthday party at the DATC and ended up with a very beautiful, curly hairdo. She also got her nails painted! What a fun girlie party.

Christian has been doing so-so with his potty training. I think it's hilarious that every time he pees in the potty, he calls to the family, "Come here and see my yay-yo (yellow)!"

On October 3rd we went to J & J Nursery for a free hayride and pumpkin picking. Faith got an invite to it from school, and all you had to do was bring canned items for the Utah Food Bank.

Faith made sure she found the perfect one,

and Christian changed his mind about which was the perfect one about a hundred times.

My dad gave us his old, old laptop so that the kids could both be on the computer at the same time and Faith has been having fun with it. She likes to set up her little office in the family room or the kitchen and play Webkinz or look up ads for ZhuZhu pets.

Faithy painted this at school with watercolors and was so excited that many of her classmates oohed and ahed over it. It is gorgeous!

I was putting sticky dots on some googly eyes to get them ready for a preschool project on the morning of the 6th and Buddy asked if he could play with a set. He went right to work giving our produce some personality.

I read this book called "The Biggest Bed in the World" to my preschool kids for B week a few weeks ago. It's so cute! My favorite part is this page that just says that the mom has another baby, but it shows the baby breastfeeding. Nothing is mentioned in the text about it, it's just a picture of what happens when a tiny newborn joins the family. LOVE IT!

Faith made us this cool jack-o-lantern decoration . . .

boo!

Christian took this picture of Crumpet the other day, right after he woke her from a nap. Love the hair! I definately feel (and look) like this some days!!

Some Thursdays Christian and I return to school to have lunch with Faith after volunteering for her class in the morning. Faith loves to show me how good she is getting on the monkey bars

and Christian has a ball on the playground, too.

Faith wrapped up this soccer season by being goalie twice! She was too frightened to do that last year. She is doing so much better at not being afraid of the ball and all the crazy kicking.

Here was their Lowe's craft on the 10th, a ball toss game.

That afternoon, I got busy making cupcakes for the cake walk at our ward "harvest" party. They usually go all out on a "Halloween" party, but they couldn't get the building any later in October, so they went with more of a harvest/fall theme this year. I tried a fancy new frosting, chocolate mousse buttercream (recipe here). I didn't see that it called for unsalted butter, so after I tasted mine and it was too buttery tasting, I added some powdered sugar to it and it came out quite delicious. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, so it wasn't my favorite ever, but everyone who tried it gave it rave reviews. Still, if I make it again, I'll probably still use salted butter, but lessen the amount to 3 or 4 sticks (!!!!). Oh! Another thing! This recipe makes a TON, so halve or quarter it. I heavily frosted 48 cupcakes with my batch and still had some left over. These had a peanut butter filling in them,

and I also made some with a marshmallow creme filling. This picture shows my inspiration (because I somehow forgot to get a pic), but mine just had the graham cracker crumbs over the chocolate mousse buttercream frosting and two of the toasted mini marshmallow on a pretzel stick decorations on the top. They were some of the first chosen by the winning cakewalk-ers! (you can check out the directions for this one here)

Tony was sick and missed out, but the kids and I had a blast!

They had all the games that they usually do, minus the spook alley.

Both kids ended up with plates of cupcakes--Christian's had Reeses mini peanut butter cup/pretzel/Red Hot spiders

and Faiths were brownies in cupcake wrappers with gum strip mummy wraps and M&M eyes.

Here's Buddy's haul-

and they had square dancing with a caller.

Check out my video of the kids doing the chicken dance:

The next day when we walked into Sacrament meeting a few minutes late and had to sit quite far back in the gym, Christian looked around and screamed, "Where that fishing booth, aaa-aaahh-hhhhh-hhhhh!!!!!" Poor little guy, he thought they finally figured out how to make church awesome ;)