Spring Soccer

Annabelle and Grace have mostly been on the same team this season.

Music Recitals

April 10, 2013: Finn asked if I'd play dress-up with him. So we dressed as pirates (do pirates wear capes, arm guard, and carry light sabers and glow sticks? We said, "Aargh!" a lot and, "Ahoy matey!" We talked about what pirates like to eat for snack. Then we changed into robbers. Finn put on a coon-skin hat and he gave me a hammer to tuck in my belt. We packed a snack and ate it on our ship (top bunk). Finn said, "We love robbers!" I asked him what robbers do. He replied, "Eat snacks!" I probed further, "What else to robbers do?" -"Umm, hammer things with hammers."

April 14, 2013: Annabelle and Grace's piano recital was at their teacher Cassie Wynn's house. Cassie is a member of our church ward and only has a few students. We feel lucky to have her! 

Grace played Hiawatha and Prelude on Middle C from her Alfred level 1B books. Annabelle played The Hokey Pokey and Scarborough Fair from her Alfred Level 4. Great job, pianists! Annabelle made mini cupcakes and decorated them with musical notes and symbols.

Grace and Annabelle with piano teacher Cassie Wynn.

This is from Annabelle's band concert. She played flute for one year.

Mylee Moon (best friend from church) Annabelle, and Maddie Soldwich (neighbor)

March Happenings

March 10, 2013: Annabelle was asked to share an experience of sharing the gospel in primary sharing time. She talked about her and Mylee telling their school substitute teacher about the church. Jonah was asked to share about prayer. He shared how some time ago, he was asked to give a talk in primary. He couldn't come up with anything. So he said a prayer. He thought to ask Mom, so he talked to me and I helped him plan his talk. Glad these kids are having good experiences!

March 13, 2013: Olivia loves to have a paint brush in her hand. She licks it, then brushes it on her face. Or along walls. Or whatever else is nearby.

March 23, 2013:
Finn: Soldiers wear shirtses and pantses and helmetses and coatses and capes. So let's go put it on!
Mom: But it's nap time.
Finn: Soldiers need naps and pillows, too. Soldiers have boatses and shipses and bedses. Daddy is a daddy soldier. Dadses go to workses.

March 24, 2013: Finn's talent for FHE was throwing a ball. When he does something neat, he likes us to say, "That was cool!"

March 27, 2013: Finn likes me to do "eenie, meenie, minie, mo" any time he has a choice. Especially choosing which underwear to wear. Spiderman? Hulk? Superhero? Badguy? Cars? Elmo? Fish? "Let's do meenie mo," he says. But he most often says, "No, not that one. Try again," until we finally get to the one he wants.

March 31, 2013: The visited Ames for Easter weekend. The girls all got matching dresses, sewed by Grandma Susan. Even the grown-ups girls Lizz, Emmeline and Heidi wore matching long dresses with jean jackets.

Spring Break, part 2: Kalahari Water Park

Feb 10, 2013: Ezra has a new plan for keeping the house clean, presented to the family during FHE. Every hour that we're all home, I walk around the house and score each room: +1 for clean or -1 for not clean. At the end of the day if we have a negative balance, no treats allowed. If we have a positive balance at the end of the day, yes we can have treats. AND, if we earn 100 points, we can take an overnight vacation to an indoor waterpark!

Feb 11, 2013: Annabelle woke up moaning that we will always have a negative balance and never be allowed to have treats ever again! But after breakfast Annabelle and Jonah kicked in a quick clean, even dumping out Finn's food who hadn't eaten yet. We started the day with -3, and by the end of the day we had a +10! The house never looked so good! Milk and cookies for everyone!

March 22, 2013: Last week the kids reached 100 points, so we are going on a mini family vacation to Wisconsin Dells, Kalahari Water Park Resort!

Spring Break, part 1

I perused pinterest to find lots of ideas for kids to pull from to keep themselves entertained during spring break. These are some of the activities they tried:

Spy Training! You have to look close to see all the thin black string lines behind the pink ones. 

Not quite making it through. See the chair falling? No one made it through. They must have had fun setting up the string.

 Camping out in the living room:

Izzy too:

Project for day 2 of spring break. We cut all kinds of shapes out of foam sheets. Olivia and Finn had a great time dipping them in water, then placing them on the window.

A maze on the carpet made with duct tape