Christian has still been revelling in his obsession with the Lego Indiana Jones game which, by the way, he now pronounces "Hone-ya Jone-yez" for reasons which escape me. On March 24th he decided that he wanted to draw Indy and asked me how to do it. I told him to start with a circle and draw his face. "But he face not a circle," he countered, "he face is a square!" I looked at the front of the game box and, sure enough, two-dimensionally it does look like a square.

I told Buddy that I'm certain that he knows enough about Indiana Jones to draw a great picture, and this is what he produced:

Square head, check! Hat, check! Squiggly whip, check! Intense expression, check! It's an exact replica!

I took a picture of our front door with the Easter egg wreath I made last year because the irridescent Easter grass was glittering so prettily in the sun, but in this photo you can't see it very well :(

Christian took some pretty cool pictures of Dusty that day

even an extreme close up of his bunny-fur tummy!

He didn't totally leave Crumpet out, but you can tell that her picture was a bit of an afterthought.

That evening we went to the school to see Faith's opera! Here is the scenery that the kids painted,

and the sign that faith did all the lettering for.

Doesn't Christian look excited to see it?

Here is the opening scene,

and the end, all lined up for picture taking.

Here is Faith's costume that she came up with herself, I just did a bit of hot glueing and sewing.

She wanted to be a hawk even though all the other girls but one (who was a bunny) wanted to be flowers. Way to not follow the pack! I took video with our old camcorder, but it will take me forever to get that on the computer or disc. I did get some segments with my camera the next week when they performed at Apple Village, and I'll be putting those in that post. It was wonderful!! It was so amazing that they wrote the words and music by themselves.

After we got home, we had a late dinner of spaghetti and Buddy got a little wild!

On the 25th Joy invited us to the Treehouse Children's Museum with her since she had a free pass for Christian and Faith had gotten a free pass from Weber State Credit Union. The kids had a blast!

This new bucking bull was a lot of fun.

We made lion and lamb sack puppets for the craft.

Faith did a great job on the states quiz (and Buddy copied her).

Joy wanted to bring her kids to the Treehouse because she was doing "X week" and could teach them about x-rays and xylophones there. Here she's showing Sierra a person picture (which you color to look like yourself) that you hold up to the light to see the skeleton inside. If you want to print this activity that I made for my preschool a while ago, see this post. Joy also did a few of animals, the frog one was really neat!

I think Christian could have played on this for an hour, at least.

We had such a fun time and the kids were sad to leave. And when I say leave, I mean get drug out of the building after it closed and I was getting scuzzed by all the employees.

That evening we stopped by the library. It's one of our favorite places to visit!

The kids slept over at Braegger's on the 26th (and Tony & I went out to Olive Garden!) but we picked them and Zach up the next morning to take them to Lowe's craft. The kaleidoscopes turned out really cool, but they were the most difficult project we'd done!

We took the kids straight back to grandma's because that afternoon was their egg hunt and early Easter dinner.

They got candy, money, bubbles, stuffed animal bunnies and outfits!

I brought Snickers Salad to the dinner and it was a big hit, so I thought I'd post the recipe:

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Snickers Salad

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4 apples (I used all Granny Smith, but it's also good with 2 green & 2 red)

4 or 5 regular size Snickers candy bars (I got the almond ones--yum!)

1 - 8 oz. tub Cool Whip, thawed

small box vanilla instant pudding

1 & 1/2 cups of milk

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Core and dice apples (with skin on) and immediately put into a bowl with a few cups of water and a squirt of lemon juice (to prevent browning). Drain and put in large bowl. In a separate bowl, stir together pudding mix with milk (or what I used instead was four cups [one pack] of the already prepared vanilla Snack Pack Pudding--it was cheaper!). Mix in Cool Whip and then add to apples. Stir. Cut each candy bar into three long strips and then cut pieces directly onto the apple mixture, stirring every so often (otherwise the caramel makes all the candy bar pieces stick together).

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I'm not sure how much in advance you can prepare this and have it look and taste its best, but mine was refrigerated for several hours and it was great. There weren't any leftovers to tell if it's just as good the next day!

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After dinner, grandma went out to blow bubbles with the kids. It was such a fun Easter activity day!

Sunday, the 28th was Joy's birthday and Faith got this shot of her and also a very unflattering one of her blowing out the candles. Unfortunately, I promised not to share that one on the blog!

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!

Just before we got sick, I bought the makings for several different Valentine's craft projects. Because of the illness we didn't accomplish them all, but this one turned out great and Faith did most of it! It's just a styrofoam heart and a zillion 3" red felt circles folded and pinned on. They were all over the internets, but I first saw them here. Lots of ladies had a hard time finding the foam hearts in stock so I wasn't planning on making one, but I found one while shopping for other things at Hobby Lobby and just couldn't resist. It did take several hours (while watching tv with my hubby) to cut out all the circles, but Faith had a lot of fun pinning them on. I just filled in a couple of bare spots and it was complete.

When the kids get a h0ld of my phone, I never know what pictures will be on it when I get it back. Here are four of the forty+ they took in the back seat of the car on March 2nd. Crazy kids!

On March 3rd Faith went to the orthodontist (Sheldon Peck Orthodontics in Syracuse) to get her braces! I took a "before" shot in the waiting room.

Here she is with the bands around her back molars.

Love the attractive lip spreaders!

They decided to only do the bottom ones and wait two weeks to put on the top so that she could deal with the pain of each seperately and not have her whole mouth killing her. She got light green and dark green elastics for St. Patty's Day!

Buddy and I brought some lunch back for her that day so she could have really soft food. We brought yogurt, applesauce, string cheese, bread, and a banana. According to Buddy, we had to play on the playground after lunch! Faith's teeth didn't really start hurting until the next day, were definately sore the second day, but then felt pretty good by the third day. She was pretty lucky!

Here is the visual aid Faith made with her animal report on hamsters that she did at school.

Her teacher said to me, "You know, Faith is really talented in art." I said, "Yep, I know." She then said, "No, I mean really talented!" to which I replied, "Thanks, I really know!" :)

On the 5th we went with Faith's class to Apple Village and then Kaysville Fire Station. The firemen did such a great job with the tour. Here they are showing us the "jaws of life".

We got to see brush trucks, fire trucks, fire engines (which the kids got to get into) and the ambulance.

This firefighter even got all suited up for us and then let all the kids feel how heavy the helmets are. The kids loved it all, but Christian was absolutely enthralled. He couldn't stop talking about the "firemans and them trucks" afterward!

They even pulled an engine out of the bay so we could get a great group picture.

Later that day we had Ann, Natalie and kids over for a little get together. The kids played and then I had them do a craft--rainbows in a pot of gold! We just stuffed crumpled newspaper in the bottom of the cup and then used leftover homemade playdough (that I used for preschool) in the top to hold the pipe cleaners. I was going to get Rolos for the gold, but Faith can't have chewy candy with her braces! Instead, I found some Hershey's Treasures that had a gold wrapper.

We just found out Natalie is expecting this summer--a boy!

Christian has been obsessed with this game lately. For some reason, he calles it "hone-a jone-ez" and if he could, he would play it all day. When Tony got it for a family gift for us, I thought it would be too difficult for Buddy since he hasn't really done any video games other than Nick Jr. ones on the computer and some Wii sports. But the minute he started playing, he was hooked and learned really quickly. Is this just something that's in boys' DNA? It is good that he has something he loves so much because I totally use it as leverage to get good behavior out of him. Threatening his hona jonez usually gets him to straighten up pretty quick! I think it's also helping with potty training.

Of course, he still loves reading books and playing board games. I took these on the 11th after playing several rounds of Candy Land and Pretty, Pretty Princess. He calls it "Membery", I guess because you have to 'member where the cards are :D He always kicks my butt!

A match!

Whoa, hold on to your hats--I'm finally caught up!!!