A Day In My Life

My mom loves genealogy. She has several books with pictures and stories of people in our pedigree lines, and she is constantly working on finding more members of our family. All of her information was in books, and although she has a pedigree chart that unfolds out to show 21 (I think) generations, once you get past the first couple generations, it's really hard to tell who is next in line. As soon as I saw this circular chart on Martha Stewart's website, I knew this would be an awesome birthday gift. The template Martha provides is totally not like the awesome one in the picture, so I thought I would have to recreate it with Photoshop... but then I read the comments, and someone had already done that! I just double checked the link and it seems to be having issues, so I'm going to host the same file here: Here is an alternate link to download the file: Genealogy Chart After I got mine printed, I set to work with a fine tipped black marker to fill in al...

 For Easter morning breakfast, we made Resurrection Rolls (I originally found the idea here .) Needed: One can of crescent roll dough 1 large marshmallow for each roll Melted butter Cinnamon sugar Since Harvey has a really short attention span is still pretty young, I decided to read him the story of the crucifixion (chapter 53) out of the children's New Testament Stories instead of the real bible. While we were reading, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. Then we unrolled the crescent rolls and laid them out on a greased cookie sheet. I explained that they were like the burial cloth that Jesus was wrapped in. I told Harvey that the marshmallows were like Jesus because they were white - clean and pure, because he did not sin. As we dipped and rolled them in butter, I explained that the butter represented the oils that were put on his body before burial. Then we rolled the marshmallow in cinnamon sugar, and I told him that it represented the herbs and spi...

When I saw this idea on Pinterest via Play At Home Mom , I knew I wanted to do it for myself. I went to Michaels and purchased some small LED lights to put inside the eggs, and stuck them inside the eggs right away. Harvey's little friend, Brina, came over and I hid the eggs in his room for them to find. They loved it!! Brina told Harvey the pink and purple eggs were just for her... so Harvey said the orange ones were for him. Seriously.... SO much fun. The kids asked me to hide them again and again, so we had an egg hunt in every room of our home!

I have to say, I had grand visions of snuggling on the couch with my Conference Journal absorbed in the awesome teachings from our leaders this past weekend. But... I kind of forgot I have a three year-old. And a baby. And reality was far from my vision. Avery's naps are way off right now, so she wasn't sleeping during the sessions like I had anticipated, and although I printed lots of amazing coloring pages for Harvey... I failed to remember that he doesn't love coloring. He really only lasted about 3 crayons worth, and that wasn't even long enough for two talks. Despite all that went wrong, here's what worked (at least for a little while) to keep Harvey engaged so I could at least try to focus on the spiritually uplifting talks: Speaker Stickers: This one was easy and actually the most effective. I pulled out the center fold from the last conference edition of the Ensign and taped it to the wall next to the television. Every time a new speaker went ...