Visit from Grandpa Slaugh

Grandpa Slaugh came to visit us! Yeah! The kids made sure to show him all their tricks they can do, all their pictures they've colored, all their cool toys, and all their projects they've made. They loved having an audience. Grandpa brought gummy worms and gummy bones. They thought that was great.

Grandpa brought projects to work on with the kids - 2 bird feeders. The first one we just had to paint. Here they are taking turns painting it:

And here is the bird feeder finished, and hanging up off our back porch. Why is there a branch tied and hanging from it? Just for fun!
And here is the other bird feeder we helped screw together.
We love our Grandpa!! He told us stories every night after the kids were tucked in bed. My favorite was about when Joey was about 6 years old or so. The family went to pick out a tree together. When we brought it home, Dad cut a slice off the bottom of the tree trunk with a bow saw before bringing it in the house and putting it in the water. A little while later, Dad was looking out the back window when he noticed, "Hey, didn't we have 2 fruit trees out there? I only see one!" He went out to investigate, and found the second fruit tree standing up in the sand pit - with ropes tied to it to help it stand up! The culprit: Joey, of course!

What's Missing?

Snow Day

Today was a snow day - school was cancelled. We brought some of that great fresh snow inside to play! Annabelle, Jonah and Grace each got their own pan or large bowl full of snow to play with. We sprayed it with a squirt bottle (we had to use a lot of water to make the snow stick together). We tried coloring it with markers. We stirred it and whatever else they could think of with it.

Annabelle and Jonah each made a mini snowman! Oh, sorry, Annabelle says hers is a snow-woman.
Here is Jonah's. He put a hat on his. He even sculpted a nose, which you can't see.
Next we moved on to snow cones. We just put a scoop of snow in a bowl and added juice to it. There is an actual recipe for snow cones, though if you want to try: Mix one packet of Kool-aid, 3/4 cup of water and 1/2 cup sugar in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Have kids shake and shake till sugar is dissolved. Pour it into a squeeze bottle. Use an ice cream scoop to scoop some packed snow into a bowl and let kids drizzle the syrup on top.
Not done yet! After dinner we tried making snow ice cream! Mix one gallon of snow with one cup of sugar and one tablespoon vanilla. Stir in 2 cups milk, just until it's the right consistency. It turned out much better than I expected! The first 10 bites were great. Then the taste of snow became more pronounced, and maybe we put in too much vanilla. Nobody finished eating their bowl full. But we sure had a great time experimenting with snow today!!

Primary Activity

Every January the Primary holds a "Pajama Pancake Breakfast" Activity. The kids all look forward to wearing their pajamas and slippers. As kids are arriving they make fruit loop necklaces. The bishopric makes pancakes for everyone. Kids and teachers sit as a class to give everyone a chance to interact and get to know each other better (since January always brings new teachers and new classmates). After breakfast, we all play games together. We all had a great time.

I got to play with Annabelle's class - CTR 7. We tried to play a game where each person takes a turn to say three things about themselves, two being true and one a lie. The others have to guess which is not true about the person. The first kid started out taking a very long time to even think of two true statements about himself, then said he couldn't think of anything not true. So I whispered for him to think of a food he doesn't like, then say he likes it. Of course everyone knew which one was the lie, but they didn't seem to care. They still all raised their hands to guess as if they were so smart to have figured it out. The next person did the exact same thing! So I whispered the same help to him! Same reaction. By the third person they had figured out the pattern - and they ALL followed the pattern! In fact, four children in a row said as their third "lie" statement, "I like tomatoes." I got a good laugh out of that.

New Year's Eve

We celebrated New Year's Eve by playing games.  Here we are playing Twister. Annabelle and Jonah are finally both old enough to know right from left, so they enjoyed the game. It was made even more challenging by Grace taking whatever circle she wanted and Olivia walking through and sitting down on the game matt as well.

We ended the evening doing our own parade with musical instruments and yelling "Happy New Year!"
We still sent the kids to bed at a pretty decent time. Ezra and I didn't even stay up till midnight. We value a good night's sleep over late night parties.