April Fools', Easter and Such

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.

We watched conference and then headed to my mom & dad's. First the hunt,

then showing off all the loot!

At Braegger's, Christian was grandpa's boy and snuggled him in this chair watching Return of the King.

Doesn't everybody do Swiss steak and Lord of the Rings for Easter????

The next night we got tons of snow and on April 6th the kids went out to enjoy it!

They sure made a great snowman.

And before I took down our Easter decorations I wanted to post a pic of these cute Easter eggs Faith and I crafted last year.

They're just plastic eggs with clear tri beads like these hot glued all over them.

We loved how they came out, so sparkly!

Some dinner recipes

Braegger Shepherd's Pie

1 lb. hamburger
sprinkle of onion flakes
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can French style green beans, drained
2 cups mashed potatoes (we make up instant), seasoned with salt and pepper
shredded cheese, optional

Brown hamburger in skillet. Add onion flakes, soup and beans and mix well. Spread mashed potatoes in a layer on top of hamburger mixture and heat through. If desired (but we don't usually do this), top with grated cheese and cover skillet until melted.



Hamburger Gravy over Noodles

1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 lb. hamburger
sprinkle of garlic powder
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream
egg noodles, cooked, drained and buttered

Saute onion in olive oil until translucent. Add hamburger and break up while browning thoroughly. Sprinkle with garlic powder and add soup, milk and sour cream. Heat until bubbly. Serve over buttered egg noodles.

I'm a totally cool parent like Phil on Modern Family, yo :)

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!