The Braegger Family Blog

On April 9th the kids and I finally made it to Baby Animal Days at the American West Heritage Center! I've been meaning to take the kids for five or six years now and it was so fun that I now know we were really missing out. There were so many adorable baby animals to pet!

ducklings

chicks

the bunnies were a huge hit

We couldn't hold the bear cubs, but they sure were adorable. You can see from the picture how excited Christian was to see them!

Here's a short video of them:

Even though Easter was over, they had the Easter Bunny there for pictures. I should have taken several so I could have one with Buddy's eyes open, but I felt a little bad that I wasn't buying the picture from them, so we didn't take up too much of their time.
Somehow the kids talked me into paying four bucks for them to each do the giant inflatable slide three times.
We also had fun checking out their American West stuff.

I let the kids each make a beaded neclace but told them to keep it to around a dollar each (the beads were different prices and they just add up the cost when the child is done). The first item Faith finds is an arrowhead attached to a slice of wood which is a dollar on it's own, but Christian seemed happy with the penny beads so I let her pick it. Both necklaces only cost me $1.73!

We got to see what life was like living in a dugout and having an outdoor kitchen,

meet a mountain man,

see a sheep sheared with olden-day scissor clippers,

and how to spin that wool into yarn.

It was difficult to pull the kids away from the kids :)

And it tugged at my heartstrings to see this little lamb having a "bub". I can't believe that my own little sucklings are already giant kids, sometimes I lose my mind a little and long for the days with a newborn.

We did the Utah history trail quiz, but got a little cold as you can see.

We needed to head back to town and drop off a sleeping Buddy with my mom and dad so that Faith and I could have a night at the theater! Grandma Braegger took us to see Les Misérable at Bonneville High (Lana, Tina, Jason, Tyler, Tammy, Tony and mom: only dorks go to Bonneville, right ???). I was super excited since I've been obsessed with the music for twenty years and know 95% of the words to the songs, but had never seen the production.

We loved it even though we roasted in that auditorium! I'm such a great mom approving my eight year old daughter to see Les Mis. It's themes of transformation, compassion and redemption completely extenuate all the depravity, whoredom, suicide, violence and death {cough, cough}.

I had to post this Easter Bunny that Faith drew at school, it's so darling. My favorite part you might not even be able to see in the picture, it has braces!!

I decided to do a week's worth of Easter activities this year. On Palm Sunday I told the kids the story of Jesus' triumphant entry to Jerusalem and had them color this picture.

Buddy got a little crazy with the markers on his, then he helped staple a palm leaf craft and attached it along with many pages from my grocery list pad that he'd scribbled on. He loves to make his art into multimedia projects!

On Monday, I had the kids help me find the props for resurrection scripture eggs and then did the activity for Family Home Evening. Here's the printout I made for them if anyone would like a copy:
Resurrection Scripture Eggs

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Tuesday night's activity was the story "The Cactus, the Cross, and Easter," the poem "Easter Lilies," and making handprint lilies.

Wednesday afternoon Joy, Sierra and Lily had a "Y" party and invited us and some friends from their neighborhood. We made yo yo's with yellow yarn y's on one side and yin yangs on the other, then peeled yellow dyed hard boiled eggs. Joy took out the yellow yolk centers and mixed them with mayo and yellow mustard. The kids got to fill their egg whites and have deviled eggs for a snack.

Next, the kids got to measure and cut a yard of yellow yarn which they used to play a little tug of war game where the child yelled "yikes!" if they had the yarn pulled out of their hand or "yay!" if they ended up with it. They then all made yellow chicks with hand traced wings.

At the end of the pary, there was a yard sale game where the little ones had to sort objects into different price labeled bins depending on if they were yellow or not and Joy led the kids in some yoga!

Unfortunately, Wednesday night I didn't get in an Easter activity. As punishment ;) (or just an April Fools' joke) we got snow! But it didn't keep Christian and I from doing our school volunteering.

After we were done, we stopped by Taco Bell to get some 89¢ five layer burritos that Tony had been enjoying for lunch lately. I was super offended that they cost $1.19 at the Layton location!! Lucky for them, they were pretty good and, even though they're quite large, Buddy enjoyed the heck out of most of his.

For dinner that night, the kids and I played an April Fools' joke on Tony. I'd seen meatloaf cupcakes on the internet, but he doesn't like meatloaf so we made his favorite shepherd's pie in cupcake form instead for our "dessert". I made little cups out of foil to put inside the cupckae wrappers to hold the gooeyness together. I thought about using foil wrappers, but figured the weight of the filling would bow the sides too much.

For "dinner" we made cupcakes that were covered with frosting and jam so they would look like spaghetti.

Tony could tell that they weren't really spaghetti when he sat down to the table, but he played along and took a few bites. He then turned to me and asked what was really for dinner. "Cupcakes." I told him and he replied, "So, we're having cake and cupcakes for dinner???" I told him to go ahead and try it and he didn't want to because he really wanted to have dinner before he ate any more treats! We totally fooled him with those!!! He was pretty impressed when he actually tried one and ended up having two or three more :)

After dinner, for our Easter week activity I read "Mending Easter," which we loved and then made cotton ball and q-tip lambs. Faith was overtired that night and freaked out that she couldn't make one look exactly the way she wanted it to. She went to bed screaming and bawling. Just warms the cockles of my heart how all the thought, planning and effort pays off in the end! (Insert sardonic smirk--I couldn't find an emoticon smiley that I thought appropriately conveyed the appropriate emotion)

On the 2nd Faith's class performed their opera (which was even featured in the Salt Lake Tribune!) for the people at Apple Village.

Because I only have a 312mb SD card in my camera (I know, I needed to upgrade years ago!!! I'll get around to remembering to buy a decent one some day) I was worried about running out of space and just filmed multiple little snippets.

It's so cute! Faith's class wrote it and the story line is about plants and animals wanting to get rid of weeds. They try mowing them down and digging up their roots, but finally just talk them into moving to a better place. We can all work together!

After Apple Village, we continued the field trip at J&J Nursery. Their seed planting machine was really interesting.

All the kids even got a plant to take home!

That night we did an empty tomb craft. I had them cut a paper plate in half, cut a curved opening out of one, color the inside of the other one black, staple a round "stone" piece over the opening, and staple the plates together. Then they got to sponge paint it with white and black paint.

When it was dry, I had them add green marker grass and some flower stickers. I had printed out the picture of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene from the Gospel Art Kit for the stone, which you can see when you open it. I think this was their favorite craft of the week!

For our lesson, I did a treasure hunt with this numbered Easter story from the Friend. I cut it into strips with five or so numbers on each and hid them around the house with clues. I tried to make them somewhat Easter related like, "I use this to bake Easter treats."

and "We can use this to play Easter music." I should have added "if we have the sheet music" to that last one, because the kids first ran for Faith's mp3 player and then her boom box.

The next morning we woke up early to get in as many free activities as possible. We first went to Fresh Market for thier candy hunt. They did a ton of huge paper strips this year and it was really hard to find and get the candy out. Also, Faith was dissapointed that most of the candy was chewy stuff that she can't eat because of her braces :(

And I guess all the Easter Bunny costumes were gone when they finally got around to renting one, because all they came up with was this totally freaky chicken!! I'm surprised that Christian actually agreed to get his picutre taken with it, it was even weirding me out!

Next stop was Kaysville City's egg hunt. It was so cold and windy that we nearly froze, but the kids had fun and got quite a few plastic eggs filled with various trinkets and candies. I guess my fingers and/or brain was too frozen to get any pictures there.

Third stop-Michael's. They had this free activity going on:

And finally, Home Depot! The kids made these cute butterfly houses.

I was pretty impressed that we were able to do all that for free--score! That afternoon, we painted Easter eggs for our Easter week activity.

I totally meant to make Easter story cookies that night and even made up this cute printable sheet for them, but totally forgot!

Easter Story Cookies

The next morning, the kids were excited to see that the Easter Bunny had come! The kids thought it was weird that he didn't hide their eggs, just candy around the house and filled their baskets. I guessed that maybe he came to our house earlier in the night and didn't want them sitting out that long, but it's possible that he just forgot ;)

The Bubbas had fun with the chick and bunny paratroopers,

sqeeze nerf guns,

jump ropes

and bubbles (not pictured here, just thought it was a cute one of Buddy).

For breakfast I made the kids each a simple chick out of their Easter eggs. We also had bacon, hash browns, and pop-up pancakes that the kids begged for.