First, I have to comment on the unusual amount of rain we've gotten around here lately. What's up with all of it? I actually like rain, but this spring it's made it hard to work and play outside, especially on the weekends! I think my poster here sums it up pretty well . . .

Back on the 17th, the kids mashed the strawberries, measured the sugar and help mix strawberry freezer jam.

(Sorry for the stock photos, I forgot to get my camera out.) If you've never had freezer jam, you really need to try it. But don't try it on a toasted english muffin with lots of butter melting into it, trust me on this--it's as addictive as heroin.
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I was putting something on top of the entertainment center, looked up, and found someone spying on me.

There he is up in one of his favorite napping spots (next to the plant).

Christian loves to play with his aunt Tam on Sundays. Here he's made her a gigantic pop-bead necklace.






By the 26th, all of our caterpillars had made their chrysalises so it was time to move them to the mesh pop up cage (sorry mom, I mean "butterfly pavillion").

Here's a close up look at five of the little guys.

And here's their new home.
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On May 25th Joy called and asked if we wanted to go with her to the Aerospace Museum because she was having "A" week at their house (she's working on teaching Sierra the letters). We were all for it, but she called later from the ER because Sierra had climbed the shelves of her linen closet and had gotten a hold of the Imodium A-D and was unwrapping the pills and putting them in play teacups of water! Joy didn't think they had eaten any, but since she wasn't sure the poison control center had strongly encouraged her to take them to the hospital. Luckily, they hadn't eaten any and were fine except for the huge blow to Joy's wallet.

On the 27th, we decided to try again. It's just in Roy and it's free, but I had never been there before.

Joy was nice enough to wait until just after four so that Faith could go, but what we didn't know is that it closes at 4:30 and they like to lock up a few minutes early. Still, we raced through and saw lots of planes and these cool antique flying duds.

After they kicked us out, we looked at the huge planes outside and the kids even touched some.

I don't know what this face is, but it sure is cute!

After walking a ways out there, we noticed a sign that said that even the outside grounds close at 4:30 and they lock the gates and tow cars after that, so we hoofed it back to the parking lot! Even though it was a short visit, it was fun and fit the little ones' attention spans quite well. We did make a trip to the dollar store afterward, so that rounded out our fun afternoon. We'll definately be heading back there later on this summer.

I just had to take a picture of Faith when she got ready for school the next day. She had on a new purple shirt (courtesy of her grandma Peterson), purple shoes (courtesy of being $3 clearance priced at WalMart), and

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a purple glittery hair streak! Faith picked up a set of them at the dollar store :D

On the 29th we had a water party playdate at Ann's and on the way home I picked up some fresh asparagus from Day Farm. Yummy!

I hope that Crumpet isn't getting her feelings hurt that Dusty has been getting so many pics in the blog lately. He's just the baby of the family and somewhat of a camera magnet. And he's always looking so crazy!

Saturday the 30th was a busy day. Tony went to the gym that morning while I took the kids to the Safe Kids Fair in Kaysville. They had a bunch of booths with free stuff for the kids. I'm not sure what business had this pirate, but it sure was cool!

Then we had to be to Faith's last soccer game at noon. Buddy's just chillin'.

Here's Faith getting to do a corner kick. She's so sad that soccer is over and can't wait to start up again in the fall.

We hadn't gotten to all the booths and activities at the fair, so we headed back after the game.

Faith did the inflatable slide, but Buddy chickened out at the last minute after waiting in line. We got free snow cones, balloons, backpack bags, balls, magnets, crayons, cookies, temporary tatoos, candy, drinks, and a whole bunch of other stuff in addition to getting the kids fingerprinted and watching a really neat poice dog demonstration. At the end as we were leaving, we got to see the news chopper take off.

At home, Christian colored some of his coloring pages and was so proud of it. Great job, little guy! You can't quite see in this picture the skull and crossbones tatoo that he got that said something about the danger of abandoned mines. He loved that thing!

When we got home from church on the 31st, we saw that two of our butterflies had emerged!

Here is a close up of one of them.

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The neatest thing was that a few minutes later, Faith grabbed me and said that another one was coming out, and I got it on video!

(click on the triangle below to play)

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Dusty kept knocking the cage off the stereo in the living room, so we moved it to hang on a fan blade in the family room. Look at that stinker watch them fly around, he wants one for a tasty treat!

Later that afternoon at Braegger's I got these cute shots of the kids,

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and Faith got this hilarious one of Christian,

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and Buddy took these. He likes to be right in his subjects' faces!

Silly Musical Graphs

some videos

First up we have Christian just after he started singing the alphabet song by himself. This was taken on the evening of May 6th, in the car as we were coming home with our three free KFC meals that Oprah.com had the coupon for (Tony was still on his way home from work & picked up his own). It's a little hard to hear at first because the windows were down, but then the sound quality gets a bit better. Buddy only misses letters E, M, N & O. Great job Christian! And great job to Faith for taking this video!

And this one's from May 16th at Sam's Club. As we pass a big screen TV display, Christian gets the idea that Faith should dance with him during the closing credits to the end of Madagascar 2.

Yep, that's just how I remember it . . .

If you've given birth, you have to read this "Dooce" entry. It definately brought back (not so happy) memories for me!

My Mother's Day Gifts

First, Christian's offering which, you're not going to believe this ;) , he made entirely by himself. I think it's supposed to be a card since it's colored on cardstock. I love his cutting job! (And the other 80% of the paper, which Buddy threw away as cutting scrap, had really cute drawings on it as well.)





Faith made me this darling card at school. It's so sweet that it has her school picture in it!

At home, Faith made me this neclace with Pixos, which are little round plastic beads that stick together after you spray them with water. Christian has a play-doh fettish as of late, and smeared some metalic silver clay into it. I guess he just wanted to not be left out of contributing to this gift.

Faith also drew this cute ballerina which is two-sided and has cardstock in the middle.

This wasn't a gift for me, but Faith made it a few weeks ago and I wanted to share. It's a robe for her Webkinz! She thought up the pattern, cut it, and hot glued the belt loops all on her own! I didn't even know what she was doing until she showed me the finished project. I tell ya, this girl is very independant and self-motivated when it comes to things she wants to do. And I'm only a little freaked out that my 7 year old got out, plugged in, used, unplugged, cooled & put away a hot glue gun without my knowledge.

Pioneer Woman had pictures of baby calves (sorry, a bit of redundancy there) on her blog yesterday and now I'm dying to pet/hug/nuzzle/snuggle one!! Here's what she had to say about this particular pic:

Did you ever used to blow spit bubbles when you were young?

No?

Oh. I didn’t either. Never blew spit bubbles in church, never blew spit bubbles at piano recitals, never had to be told by my mom to stop blowing spit bubbles. I just wanted to see if any of YOU did. And now I know you didn’t.

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And that’s great, because I didn’t either!

May Happenings

I finally got some pics edited to blog about! This first one I took May 6th and it's kind of hard to tell what's going on in it. Christian had gotten a hold of a spool of white thread and thought he would make a giant art sculpture-type-thing with it. He wound the thread around a bunch of bar stools and things on the counter, and then managed to hang a glue stick from it. Sounds like someone is turning out to be creative like his sister :)

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Later that day, my sister brought over their puppy, Tiff, for her first haircut. (Remember this little fluffball from Christmas?) She was really pretty good for it!

On May 8th, the sickness curse struck our family yet again and Christian was running a fever. By the next day, Faith was sick, too! Here the kids are, in the middle of the day, down for a nap with their "barf bowls". Tony & I were both suffering from some nasty allergies that week, so we were a pretty pittiful bunch of souls!

By Mother's Day the kids were both feeling better, so we visited the grandparents and brought gifts of homemade fudge. (I'll have to get the recipe posted soon--it's incredible!) I didn't manage to remember to take pictures besides this one, Buddy sure loves his grandmas!

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I had a wonderful Mother's day and got the cutest gifts from my kids (pictures coming in the next post). I love being a mom and feel very privileged to be able to stay home with them every day. Thank you Tony for working so hard to make it possible!

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On May 12th I went out to dinner with the fabulous ladies that I was in the 6th Ward Primary presidency with. It was so much fun chatting and laughing with those gals, I can't wait to do it again!

I should mention that I have a new calling--nursery coordinator! I'm so glad to still be in the primary, and I really look forward to doing some fun things with the tiny ones. I'm especially excited to do music time with them!

On the 13th, Faith told me that she noticed a bird coming out from behind our satelite dish. We got on a ladder and found this nest with four little chicks! They'd been there for awhile because they were already all feathered out. On Memorial Day we checked on them and they were already gone :(

Early May 14th I left for a PTA conference being held on the BYU campus. Faith made me this letter to remind me how much they each would miss me :D

I ended up having a lot of fun with our PTA board ladies, even though some of the seminars were less than thrilling. The first day I went to a class about getting people involved in their child's education and one about the School Land Trust program. We then met up and went to lunch at the Brick Oven, which has great salad and pasta bars. My last class was about an online membership program. We went to dinner at PF Changs. I'd never been there before and I loved it! After that, we stayed up too late playing Phase 10 and being silly.

The next day I had a really neat class about increasing membership and then one about PTA awards. After that, there was a general meeting where we got to hear from motivational speaker Chad Hymas, and that was an absolute treat! We skipped out on the presentations and instead spent a long lunch at T.G.I.Friday's. The last class was called "Music and the Brain" and was taught by Michael Hamblin. What great information! Did you know that most children under 14 are kinesthetic/tactile learners (they learn best through movement and exploring the environment)? We did a fun clapping game to "The Lady With the Aligator Purse" and soothing (& tiring!) movements to "Kumbayah" as part of the seminar.

The conference certainly did its job--motivated me to do a good job in my positions in membership and grants next year. I hope everyone reading this who has kids in school will become a PTA member!! It really is a great organization which does a lot for the children with a small amount of money.

I got home Friday night and on Saturday the kids spent a lot of time playing our new Wii game "Wii Ski & Snowboard". It's hilarious to watch Christian play this and try to avoid crashing into everything!

Faith's team won their soccer game that day. The regular season is over, but they have one makeup game on the 30th.

When my mom came over to watch the kids while I was at PTA conference, she brought an awesome gift. These two containers of tiny caterpillars and a butterfly pavillion!

Here's how big they were on the 17th,

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and the 22nd. In this one they are getting ready to make their chrysalises. I will post more on them in a week or so ;)

Speaking of new pets, Faith got this Beta fish and named him Grape Juice.

When I was editing this picture of his fish bowl, I noticed a pair of sneaky little eyes on the lower left. Come on, Dusty, say it with me "Fish are friends, not food!" (~name that movie~)

You can see him better here, he's getting sooooooo big!

And finally, Christian doing his favorite activity again--cooking. This happens to be lemon poppyseed muffins.

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We've had a great month of May at our house!

Cool Chip Bag

I'm not a chip lover (and am trying to not eat any right now while I'm losing weight!), but Sun Chips are my favorite chip and I will love them even more next year:

Totally loving this shirt

(image is linked)

My favorite Cake Wreks Mother's Day cake:

Nothing too exciting has been going on lately in the Braegger household. We have been loving some great spring weather going on around here, though! Faith and Christian have been playing outside every day, and this pic was taken after Little Buddy flooded our garage floor with the hose and then splashed around in the water in his socks. Faith, in a futile attempt to protect herself from the crazy hose wielder, got out her umbrella :)




Last Sunday we had some wild weather with high winds and hail. If you look closely, you'll see the remnants of a tumbleweed stuck on Crumpet's leg.



Faith is busy making a miniature, two floor candy store out of this cardboard and paper. Seriously, what will she think of next?


Some pics of the cute flower planters we got a few weeks ago: here's the little one hanging by the front door (the giant blue thing is an Aqua Globe to help keep it moist) which we planted ourselves,



the urn of white Geraniums,

and the terrific hanging basket.

Because Faith learned to ride her bike without training wheels, we thought we'd better get her one that was her size. At ToysRUs, Christian found something that he would love!

Here's Faith with her first new bike--details on her second in my next update. Christian looks a little miffed that it's not his!

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I lost my cell phone and replaced it with this one. I hate getting expensive new gadgets, so I got the cheapest one that seemed like it would hold up. My cousin Derek works at the T Mobile store, and I always get whatever he tells me to!

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Here's Christian after he finished off the end of a giant Sam's Club bag of frozen blueberries. Seriously, he was even bluer in real life than he looks in this picutre!

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And here's Faith on her old, small bike showing off her new "two-wheeler" skilz:

If you haven't played with a virtual spider lately, you should really check THIS out! It's an amazing little guy that will follow your pointer or you can grab it by the leg and drag it across the screen. If you want it faster, bouncier, or smaller you can adjust many features on the right hand bar as well.

I also loved the links to videos of people using it to tease their cats, here's an example:



Have fun!

Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

The week before last was "TV Turnoff Week" for the elementary school, so Faith and Christian went Monday through Friday with no TV, computer, or video games (but Tony & I managed to sneak some in). On Tuesday, Buddy begged and begged to make cookies, so I helped him make these:

Cranberry White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies


1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup Crisco shortening
1 & 1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 Tbs. milk
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
3 cups oats
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup Craisins

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream butter, Crisco, and sugars together. Mix in eggs, milk and vanilla. In a seperate bowl, mix flour, soda, and salt. Mix dry ingredients into wet, then stir in oats, chips and Craisins. Drop by large tablespoonful onto greased cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.


My first cookie sheet full came out great. This was using my air-bake pan that has the double bottom with air between to prevent over-browning. Next, I put in my two regular cookie sheets full, so I reduced my baking time by two minutes to compensate. Two minutes before that, I smelled smoke and found that those suckers had already burnt! I even scooped them up and plopped them upside down on the cooling rack to show how bad they got it.

Note to my mom--when you ask me in a few months what I want for my birthday, I will not remember this and say that I don't know. Could you please put down on your calendar or list that I need another air-bake cookie sheet or two? Or instead, my friend Jenn suggested maybe trying a baking stone. My cookies & little cookie monsters will forever thank you!

And, although they did turn out very good, I later came across this recipe at My Kitchen Cafe that I may need to try next time. Also, I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate, so I think I'll leave that out and just double up on the craisins.

I only ate one cookie the day I made them and two the next day, I'm doing pretty well sticking to healthy foods. I'm now down 19 pounds, yay me!!

A good article

I'm definately not a "breastfeeding nazi" but I consider myself somewhat of a "lactivist". I've had this blog entry from PhD in Parenting saved in my favorites since March and wanted to share what I thought was a good response to another blogger who is offended by women who breastfeed at restaurants:

Here is what it comes down to:

*I want to go out to dinner with my family. I want to feed my kids at the restaurant. This means the baby will be breastfeeding. I do not want to put a blanket over my child’s head.
*You want to go out to dinner with your family. You want to feed your kids at the restaurant. You do not want to explain to them why my baby is drinking from my breasts. You do not want to put a blanket over your child’s head.

You don’t want your child to see me feeding my child. Why is that my problem? Why should I stay home while you go to the restaurant? Why should your kids eat at the table, while my kid eats in the bathroom? Why should my child have to have a blanket over her head instead of you putting a blanket over your child’s head?

If you don’t want to see me breastfeed, it is YOUR problem, not MY problem. Period.

Kim and Rachel, I totally thought of you girls when I saw this! Click where it says "share" and you can copy the embed code to add to your blog. Enjoy!!!