Hot dogs and marshmallows

We found ourselves with a night this week that we could actually be home and stay home.  It was so nice and so fun.   We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.   It has been a long time since we have done this.

The boys love to play with sticks in the fire.  This boy realized he got too close to the flames at one point.

Elijah was so proud of his hot dog that he roasted himself.  He kept saying over and over "I did it."   He was so funny.

Josiah wasn't as proud of his but he ate it anyway. 

It's way better if you have a least four marshmallows on your stick.  

I am not sure why but Elijah dominated in having the most pictures taken of him.  

Funny faces

I have some interesting pictures I cleared off of my phone today. 

This one cracks me up.  Do you think this will teach Nathan to not stick his tongue out when a picture is taken.  I doubt it.

BLUE AND GOLD

It was the Blue and Gold banquet tonight.  This is the first one we have participated in with a boy involved.  This cake only proves we had too much going on today.  We had about an hour to put it together and make a main dish to take.  The frosting wasn't cooperating at all and Josiah was having a hard time putting it on.  I ended up helping more than I should have.  This was supposed to be a pinewood derby track.   The cake tasted really good anyway according to Josiah.  

The ole Science Fair

 It is that time of year to put the last touches onto the science project.   The fourth and fifth graders are required to participate.  It was fun to work with Sadie on this last night.  We actually finished sooner than I thought we would.  I remember many late nights up with my mom working on last minute projects or assignments.   My mom was a trooper with everything we had to work on.  She saved me many times in college too.   I am sure that this is only the beginning of Sadie and 

I working on school projects together.  

The question is........ What type of fabric is best to wear in winter?

The choices are wool, cotton, or polyester

Another Birthday

It sure feels good to 29 again.  (we won't talk about my real age)  It was a great birthday!  I love German chocolate cake with the coconut and pecan frosting.  It is my most favorite cake.  Although at our house there are half of us who don't share my love of the frosting so there is a compromise to please all.

Instead of going out to eat I chose to take the kids to THE LEGO movie.   It is a good movie and if you want to get a really awesome song stuck in your head you ought to go see it or you can hear it  here.  We sold our first born and some arms and legs of a few other kids to see the movie.   MOVIE THEATERS ARE CRAZY EXPENSIVE!  Of course we knew this before we went and this is why it takes us every 5-10 years to actually step foot in a theater.   It was a good activity for a rainy dreary day.

One of my birthday gifts was to upgrade from a DVD player to a Blu Ray player.   To some I know this is way behind the times and to others of you I know, you are behind us.  This purchase was made so that we can store any movies that we own on an external hard drive that can be attached to the player.  I can pack our DVD's away so that they aren't scattered everywhere when someone decides to look for a movie.  Yea for modern technology. 

BAZOOKA

This is what every kid needs.  Jarom was pretending that his light saber was a bazooka the other day so this got Nathan thinking about making one that shoots water rockets.  They finished it this afternoon.  The boys are super excited about this.

Family read

We have movie night nearly every Friday night and our kids love love love it.  They are always bummed when we don't get to do it.  The kids begged their friends to let them borrow this movie since they didn't get to watch all of it at their house.  Over the weekend we did borrow the movie Chronicles of Narnia: The voyage of The Dawn Treader.  I have seen The Lion, The Witch, and The WardRobe a while ago and liked it.  After watching the one we borrowed for a bit we realized we should be reading the whole series instead of watching the movies.  We watched the full movie anyway.  The next day I ordered the first book of the series for my NOOK and we started reading it as a family.  The kids loved it and wanted to finish the book that night.  It was fun to read as a family and have everyone so interested in every word.  It took us three nights to read it and now we need to get the second book.  We have tried other books to read as a family in the past but the interest wanes quickly.  This is good results because I worry about one child in particular with his reading.  I am grateful for talented writers who can capture my kids attention with a good read.

Breakfast and flowers

We didn't have school on Valentine's day.  It was supposed to be a snow make up day but since we didn't have any snow to keep us from going to school they got the day off.   It was a nice morning.  Sadie made pancakes for breakfast.  I love it when Sadie or Josiah makes breakfast.  It tastes much better to me when someone else makes it.   We had strawberries, and frozen raspberries and blueberries with powdered sugar and whipped topping on them.  She did a fantastic job with breakfast and my was it tasty.

Elijah's plate

Jarom doesn't like blueberries or raspberries so his looked plain except that he had plenty of powdered sugar on his.  

Josiah will eat nearly everything you put in front of him including the stems (just kidding).  He sure wasn't lacking with the whipped topping.  

All of these pictures make me want to have that breakfast again.  

I took a lady from our ward to a doctor's appointment in the afternoon and when I came home there where hearts made out of construction paper with messages on them from Nathan and the kids in various places.  There were also real flowers and a big balloon too.  One of the best flowers was this beauty.  Nathan says the kids worked hard on making this paper flower for me.  I have the best family and they made my day.  

 

Hearts

For activity day we "heart attacked" a few of the girls that haven't been attending to let them know we are thinking of them and want them to come.   I wanted to get better pictures but there was too much excitement and I needed to make sure the girls were safe.   First, the girls decorated sugar cookies and put them on plates.  Then we taped the back of the hearts they made out of construction paper.  Last we were on our way to deliver them.   The girls loved this.   It was so fun watching them.

They are running from house #1.

They are sneaking up on house #3

Most of them thought someone had knocked already so they were out of there in a flash.

There are a few who stayed back to put the hearts on the door.

Activity day has been so fun for me.  We have up to 11 girls coming each time.  I will miss this group of girls.  I have been called to work in young women's now.   Maybe I can stay there for awhile to see all of these activity day girls come join young women's in the next year or so.     

Valentine cards

Our kids made their own valentine's for their friends in class.  I told them that we ought to pick something else to give to them besides candy.   The boys picked squishy frogs and Sadie picked bouncy balls.  I thought their cards were cute.  

Snow beautiful Snow

It snowed last night.  The kids were at friends house while we were on a date.   While driving home, the kids kept saying "I wonder what our house looks like".  They were so excited to get home so they could play. Once we all got home the kids tore out of the van and the first thing Jarom says is "wow this is so deep".   Nathan says to me that is pretty sad when they think a 1/2 inch is deep.   This was at 8:30 pm and they didn't care what they were wearing they were ready to play.  We threw snowballs at each other and made a few mini snow men before we had to break up the party and head for bed.

Then this morning Josiah and Jarom were up at 5:30 ready to play in the snow again.  We did tell them they needed to try to go back to sleep (HA!).  They have been out in the snow for about an hour now.  When you don't get to see snow that much it's better than Christmas at our house.   I love it.

It took some convincing to get our dog Allie to go outside the fence to play with the kids.  She is loving it our there now.  

Its a good thing we don't have church till  1 pm, however I had better get moving.  

Why didn't we do this earlier

We have debated on painting the stone behind our gas insert especially after we did all of our renovations this summer.  I was worried about how it would look painted and was dragging my feet doing it.  Nathan got tired of it enough that he decided to scrub the stone down today and low and behold it came clean.  We didn't think it would.  This is one of those times of why didn't we do this sooner because it looks so much better.

Team Colors

I groaned inside when the general dentist told me I ought to take Josiah and Jarom in to the orthodontist soon.  We just put braces on Sadie's teeth for pete sakes.   I did as I was told.  Jarom has a huge gap between his two front teeth so they will watch them for the next 6-9 months and if they don't move closer together by then the orthodontist will take measures in doing it himself.  Sounds good to me.  Josiah has been grinding his teeth down to nubbins.  This is fine for baby teeth but now that he has some nice permanent teeth coming in it wouldn't be nice to have them ground down to nothing.  He will be wearing a night guard to help prevent this.  Josiah picked a green color but then the assistant who took the impression of his mouth convinced him to have the bite plate be the Seattle Seahawks colors.   Josiah got very excited about this. We picked up his night guard today and it is the perfect team colors and he can wear it with pride since they won the Superbowl game yesterday.  Whew!  I am not sure what we would have done if they hadn't won.   He is very excited to try it out tonight.

You know you wanted to see these close up pictures of the night guard right?

Fun times

There are many times I think back of when we first moved here.  In some ways it was more fun than it is now.  We lived in an apartment at first and the kids and I would visit every park we could find or some other place that looked interesting.   I think once we bought a house we have hardly ever made it parks.  Parks are so relaxing in many ways.   One reason is that you aren't at home thinking about what you really think you should be getting done.  Second it is just plain fun to focus on the kids and see more their personalities in action.   We took advantage of our "free" time yesterday and went to a park.   We sure love these four kiddos even if they don't cooperate while taking pictures.  We didn't last long because it got cold.

This boy will swing forever if you let him.

A run around the park can wear a few boys out.

Josiah jumping from swing.

Sadie jumping from swing.

Lego's

Look at all of the cool cars the kids and I made yesterday morning out of Lego's.  I think Lego's are one of the best inventions ever (until you step on one).   Nathan had to work most of the day so he missed out on the Lego fun.  Saturday was a fun day all together and its because I took the time to play with my kids.