A Day In My Life

One of my very favorite holiday traditions is our Thankful Jar . I love seeing those colorful papers add up in the jar throughout the month. Every year, after Thanksgiving is over and I am switching all of the decorations from Turkeys and pumpkins over to Christmas trees and stockings, I am kind of sad to throw away our collection of papers inside the jar. A few years back, I read this post on eighteen25 about a book they keep every year. While their tradition only takes place on Thanksgiving day, and incorporates all of the guests they have over for dinner, I was inspired to create a book just for our family. Luckily, I had saved our papers for a couple of years!  Here is our Book of Thanks... I just designed the outer cover, and printed the inside blank. Each year gets 2 pages. I usually snap a picture of all of us on the couch right before we leave for dinner somewhere, and then I hand copy all of the things we wrote and added to our Thankful Jar on the opposite...

It has been a while since I took pictures of my kids with my L-O-V-E letters , and since I didn't have any with Max, I thought I would snap a few. I probably should have done singles like I did before because these kids were acting so silly. This was the best one of the bunch. I really need to get an 8x10 printed and add it into my Valentine decor. For breakfast, we had pink heart pancakes with sprinkles, heart bacon, and apple juice in "fancy glasses." I've never let the kids use these glasses before, so it was pretty exciting... During the younger kids' naptime I took a shower, and while I was up there, Justin snuck in and brought flowers into the house. I was so surprised when I came downstairs and saw these beauties. And he knows me well... I love Gerber daisies. I thought about giving the kids their gift from me (and Justin) during breakfast, but I knew they would want to eat them right away, so I waited until after lunch. They were ...

I am a sucker for window clings. It all stems back to when I was a child. We had these Easter clings made out of reusable vinyl and I loved  putting them on our sliding glass door. It was very detailed; I could design the eggs with different colored stripes, and put the facial features on the Easter Bunny. I really need to ask my mom what happened to them. The only problem, is the window clings in stores now are made from some sort of weird gel. They are cute and transparent, but really don't hold up well after a year in storage. Or through a 5 year old trying to pry them out of their package. Or a 2 year old trying to pry them off the window and re-position them. They stretch and tear. I absolutely loved  the window clings I found at Target a couple of years ago. But when I pulled out my Valentine decor, we had already tossed half of them. This year I was very careful when putting them up, but the gel got weaker each year and a few more of them tore. Then I foun...

When I realized that Harvey would have a Valentine party at his preschool this year, I got really excited. (Hey, it's a first for both of us!) He helped me look on Pinterest for ideas, and he really wanted to give away cars on a Valentine that said, "I wheelie like you." So we went to the dollar store to check out their selection... but when we got there, the cars looked really cheap and we found these dinosaurs instead. He was excited that they glow in the dark and if you put them in water they expand.  I got to work coming up with cute and funny phrases to go with them.. and my Laffy Taffy joke-loving side really started to show. Even though he only has eight kids in his class, I couldn't stop, so I made twelve.  These four are my favorite: Here's a printable PDF if you want to make some, although I removed the part about the dinos glowing in the dark so you could attach any dinosaur. To save, click the little arrow in the top righ...

For fun we did a few Halloween-y activities. We made spinning spirits for Family Home Evening after talking about the Holy Ghost. I think I'll make that a tradition! Then for lunch we made jack-o-lantern quesadillas. Harvey wanted an angry face.. Easy and fun. And then after the kids found some glow sticks they wanted to take them in the bathtub and turn the lights off. I remembered the waterproof lights I bought for the glow-in-the-dark egg hunt around Easter, and I thought it would be fun to take a "spooky bath" with them since they were brighter. It was so fun! The kids put them in a bunch of different toys and had a blast.

So.. I totally fell off the blogging bandwagon. I'm noticing a trend here... (haha. Story of my life.) Anyway, here's one of the little activities we did as part of our Halloween Advent... so fun!

To celebrate July 24th (aka Pioneer Day in Utah) we headed over to Justin's parents' house for a barbeque and fireworks. I volunteered to bring dutch oven peach cobbler for dessert. Yum! I also brought materials for the kids to make their own edible covered wagon (found the idea on Secrets of a Super Mommy .) My pictures are terrible, but you get the idea... The kids liked making them, and we all thought they turned out pretty cute, but the kids didn't eat them and they ended up in the garbage. Just sayin'. But my favorite part of the night were the games. I brought fabric strips for a three-legged race, and we had a race between the adults, and a race for the kids. It was so fun! Then we did stick-pulls (because that was one of Joseph Smith's favorite games); some of us got really intense!  

Like a month ago, candy bars were on sale at the grocery store so I stocked up. I knew I wanted to do a candy gram for Justin on Father's Day, even if I didn't know what I wanted it to say exactly. In the end, it all worked out and I only had to run back and buy a couple more specific bars. I wrote most of it myself, but I also got help from this site . :) Here's what Harvey and I came up with... Jud loved it. I think Avery was a little put out that it wasn't for her.

So, I originally volunteered to bring fruit to the family barbeque on Memorial Day, but then my sister-in-law wanted to bring fruit and the hostess said she needed dessert. No problem... Well, except for the fact that I only had about an hour to throw something together, and I really wanted to bring something festive. But I needed easy. Rootbeer floats are easy, right? Substitute Red Cream Soda for the Rootbeer... and add whipped cream and sprinkles! Easy and delicious. It got rave reviews from the crowd. (I didn't actually taste it because I forgot to bring my coconut ice cream. Bummer.) Have you done "floats" with something other than Rootbeer?

It seems like age three is a good time to start doing birthday interviews... but I missed my little guy's third birthday. I decided I'd better do something soon to capture my little Harvey before he got much older. His half birthday was last Sunday, so I got to work. I made up a little double-sided printable that I can repeat every year... I've seen many versions of the birthday interview all over Pinterest, but I wanted to add a few elements of my own - like a place for a handprint, and a place to either attach a photo or let my child draw a self portrait. Plus, I wanted a little box to write stuff that didn't apply anywhere else. After I printed a copy, I set up the video camera, sat Harvey in front of it.. and asked him the questions. It was thoroughly delightful to see what his answers would be. Harvey hasn't really traced letters much, so I helped him with the first letters in his name. But he did V, E, and Y all by himself. I was so impressed! I lo...

 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!

It was my turn to teach Harvey's preschool group this week. Since St. Patrick's Day is coming up, I thought I would incorporate some shamrocks and the color green as well! We read Great Day for Up and I had the boys shout "UP!" every time they saw it written on the pages. (They loved that!) I told them that if they looked up in the living room they might find something green. I had hidden one for each of the boys to find, and they loved cheering on the other boys who hadn't found theirs yet. After they had all found one shamrock, I told them there was another word that started with the letter U: Under. If they looked "under" in the kitchen, they might find another shamrock or two. There were 10 shamrocks in the packet I bought, and I numbered them for future use. It would be really fun to go on a numbered scavenger hunt, or wrap little packages with numbered tags. After all the boys found two shamrocks each, they traded them in for a green...