Sister Missionaries!

Our family has been so blessed with the  opportunity to know and work with these two awesome and amazing sister missionaries. They truly are some of the Lord's most valiant servants!  They are beautiful, fun, talented, silly, and so inspiring.   

Sister Bowie is from Australia and taught us much about her home country. Some of the tradition, customs, and food.   Her family would send candy and other  food items for her to share with companions and families that feed them. Which we did about once a week for  several months. She was so loving to our children,  so tender and playful with them.    The kids especially loved to listen to her talk. 

Sister Skillings is a Utah home grown girl with many wonderful talents. She wrote, sang, and played the guitar with grace and skill.  If they came to eat, she knew she had to sing and play for us. We are so grateful for this talent and the wonderful spirit it brought into our home. We could sit and listen to her for hours. 

We will miss both of them dearly and will be keeping contact with them for sure. Can't wait to see what life brings them when they get  home and the many wonderful things they will accomplish!

We love you girls! You're in our hearts forever!

Easter Blessings

Easter was wonderful this year. We were able to stay home with our family and watch General conference on TV. It was so nice not having anywhere to go. The kids were able to get up and have a great Easter morning, take their time going through their bucket of goodies, have an egg hunt and enjoy a  lovely breakfast un-rushed.  This was one of the best holidays we have enjoyed. Plus we were blessed to have the sister missionaries come over for the second conference and have dinner with us too.

I really wanted Easter to be special this year. I didn't want it to be all about the candy. So I poured over blog after blog in search for the perfect ideas. I found a wonderful blog  by: https://fhelessons.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/christ-centered-easter-baskets/  

Christ Centered Easter Baskets.

There were few a candy items, but each gift had something to do with Chirst  and the Resurrection. It gave a scripture or quote for each item.  Each item was something useful for them to have. I also put together a basket for each of the sister missionaries and they loved it. I was a great surprise for them.

As you can see there were items like a stuffed lamb, flashlight, flip flops, note book, hand soap, scarves, and then a few colored eggs for the candy. I think my favorite item was the scarf. I found a lovely story that talks about the folded linens and napkins found in the tomb  after Christ's resurrection.

Here they are checking out their goodies.  We got to sleep in a bit before having to get up.  Ethen slept up stair so that he would not catch the Easter Bunny leaving his eggs around the house. He loves camping out with the girls, too bad they don't really enjoy having him up there with  them.

The kids didn't seem to miss all the candy.  They enjoyed reading each of the scriptures or quotes to see what the item meant. I think they really had a better understanding of what this holiday means.

We wish we could have been able to see family. We miss having all those family dinner and egg hunts with the cousins.

Happy spring! Spring has finally come and the flowers are out and the leaves are coming on the trees. The weather is warming up and  we will be able to spend more time outside. We have lots of yard work to do, raking leaves, burning piles of down sticks and branches, planting new flowers to spruce things up.  

I bought the kids some rain boots and they have had so much fun tromping around in the creek.  I  have been looking for some boots too to do yard work in and finally found these really cute ones.  I am excited to get out there and get some work done and look cute doing it!

Spring is Here

We are so excited that spring is finally here. That means we are finally done with snow. It has been pretty cold, but we have had a few days here and there that reached up into the high 50's. So there is hope for warmer days to come. It's raining more now and that means mud  and all things wet. So  I decided to get the kids some rain boots. Being able to go play in the creek, despite the frigged temps, has been a highlight of any warm or almost warm day. They love wearing them.  

I just had to get a picture of Jocelyn outside in her boots. 

Got to love this girl's style.    She is our free spirit.   

We can't wait for the warmer weather and get outside to play more. 

So glad Spring has sprung.

It's a Minion Party

This year Elizabeth decided  her birthday theme was Minions from the movie "Despicable Me".

I was a little surprised because I thought it was more of a boy theme.  But she didn't care.  I  was able to find some really fun idea for decorating, but there were not a lot of ideas for activities or games.

She invited all the girls from her school class and some from church.  About half came. We had 8 total partiers. It was a good number to handle, not too many.

We decorated in Blue, Yellow, and purple. I love having a "Party City" in town. It always has some fun stuff for parties, but I also  really enjoying making a lot of my own decor too. I did a little of both. I love the 5 foot tall minion background wall hanging. It was really cool. Kind of makes you believe there lots of these guys running around.

We blew up balloons and drew minion faces on them, stuck them to the ceiling. 

This is the only time static cling is a good things.

                                      

I really wanted to have a full scale minion, so I found some cardboard and went to work in drawing and painting my own. I love the ones with one eye. They are my favorite. 

We bought a cake from Krogers.  It's a fun design, and the only one they, or anyone else, had for minions. Jocelyn  decided it should say happy birthday Liz instead of Elizabeth. I think that's what most of her friends at school call her. It was to be a vanilla and chocolate marble cake, but I think they forgot the chocolate. 

Ethen named this little square Minion Joe Joe.  I had some random boxes from Sam's club, so I made him into a minion. I love this one since he has a sparkly goggle. He was my main center piece for the table.

Elizabeth and I had a tuff time coming up with party ideas. First she  wanted a Hollywoood red carpet theme.  (LAME) Then she wanted  a movie  night, and a 3 direction theme. Not sure how we got to minions, but it was a lot better than most of the others she thought about.

I came up the idea of minute to win it games. Older kids  seem to enjoy playing those games and it would keep us really busy. I had to find as many games as I could with the supplies I had on hand: cups, marbles, tissue boxes, tape, nerf gun. I was able to get 15 games pulled together with all these items and only had to buy  some ping pong balls and candy.  We were able to do about 9 or 10 of the games.  I wish I  had some  pictures of the girls playing games. They did a good job and looks pretty silly.

After games we had lunch. We did a Mexican theme from the Despicable Me 2 movie. The have a restaurant called "Salsa & Salsa". We had taquitos, chips and salsa, cheese quesadillas, and loaded nachos. I think I was the only one who ate the nachos. The girls loved the taquitos and quesadillas. We were running short on time and had to go quickly to cake and presents. 

She received little pet shops, a gift card, nail polish kit, and some legos. 

For favors I put together a bag full of minion goodies. Minion Twinkies, fruit snacks, and graham cracker. I also found these awesome minion kites for $1.30. 

I love this background! It is so fun and colorful. Side not: I found Elizabeth's shirt at Walmart for $4.00. Party City was asking $10.   She looks so cute.

Happy Birthday to you my  beautiful girl. I love you more every day!

Aren't we cute!?!

St. Patty's Day

St. Patrick's Day

 There kids were excited to see what they would find. 

 Did that tricky leprechaun play any tricks  or  leave any treats?  

No leprechauns found in their trap, but he did leave some green M&M's trailing around their room.

He somehow managed to turn our milk green , which Ethen thought that was great.

Each found a green plate with chips, a drink, lucky charms cereal and a rainbow of water colors to paint with. We made green shamrock pancakes for breakfast and drank the green milk. 

Dinner was even better. We had green eggs, deviled, ham, green mashed potatoes, salad, and green fruit. The kids had a fun time.

Ethen really wants to believe that there is a leprechaun, but he is pretty skeptical. He keeps asking if I'm the leprechaun, and he found some of the left over snacks and chips in the cupboard too.  Now he's asking about the tooth fair and the Easter Bunny. He's pretty sure it's me even though the girls and I try to persuade him other wise.  He's just too smart.

" Be a good little Monkey"

It's all about that Monkey!  Ethen is in love with Curious George. Around Halloween, he discovered the cute, fury monkey and 5 months later he still can't get enough. He will sit and watch it all day long.  So it was no surprise when he said he wanted a Curious George birthday party.  His last two birthdays where quite elaborate and a lot of work to put together.  But I love spending time  making  my own decorations and games. It keeps me busy and allows me to have a creative outlet. But this year  I decided to go simple.  No big ta-due and kept it a family celebration. 

I expected to find  a lot of ideas on this theme, but  it was not as popular as I thought it would have been.  This theme was used mostly for first birthdays. Not quite the age group I was going for.

 I loved the red and yellow color scheme and just went off that. 

I printed off coloring pages for the kids to color and hung those up. Made a plain yellow, red, and brown birthday banner. We had a ton of red balloons that we later played a game with a popped them. The one pintrest decor idea that I really liked was the man with the yellow hat, using plates and cups. 

Ethen is such a picky eater. I was not sure what we would have for his birthday dinner.  But he has just started liking pizza recently.  And we all love pizza .  He also wanted cupcakes and ice cream too. I made these awesome monkey cupcakes that were so incredible easy to do.  They look so cute. Chocolate chips and Nilla Wafers. 

I have been looking for an excuse to try my hand at cake pops. They look really good and quite simple to achieve. Or so I thought.  I had everything I needed, except for the stupid sticks. My pops became cake squares instead. The whole process is a little more time consuming than I like. And it really becomes quite messy and frustrating without the use of sticks. My kids loved them despite the novice look. They did taste good, but man it's too much sugar even for me and I have a sweet tooth. 

                                              

                                   

 Here is the whole ensemble.  

 It ended up just being the kids and I. Scott had to work a late shift at the hospital, but we did have a neighbor girl invite herself in to take part in our games, opening presents, and finishing off most of the desserts.

 Ethen picked out his birthday present from Scott and I a few days prior. A Nerf gun with 10 Styrofoam bullets.  Everyday was battle to not give into his fits about having the gun NOW. He promised he would wait.  I got so  tired of trying to explain he couldn't have the gun until his birthday. 

And waiting all day before opening the package from nana and papa was hard too.

Curious George book, pillow and PJ's. 

The pj's are way too cool. He wears them every night.

Some good friends gave Ethen a Geotrax train set that there boys had grown out of. Every time  Ethen goes to their house to play this is what he loves to play with. He loves it. We have been playing with this for hours.

Happy birthday Ethen, your're finally four. Your growing up so fast and keeping me on my toes.

I love you way too much!

valentines day

So here I am again playing catch up. I take a lot of pictures on my ipad, but they never seem to make it to my blog.  I really need to do better about getting  things posted. 

I went to pintrest and found so many fun ideas for valentines day. And like always, there is so much candy to be had. I tried to find some fun ideas that were treats, but yet not just chocolate and candy. But what is valentines day without chocolate? I ended up  putting together little personal M&M bags and a "I have a Crush on you" drink. Scott loves Red velvet cake! I found these limited addition  valentines, Red velvet Oreo cookie. They really were not that great. I think we will stick with the plain or mint. Each of  the girls found a Littlest Petshop toy and a word search book. Since Ethen broke our last one, he got a new fishing game.

 For Christmas, I was given this really cute scrapbook kit. It was a valentines theme and I couldn't wait to use it for the special occasion.  I had fun putting it together with Ethen's help. He picked out the colors of paper and stamped the red hearts.   We made a pretty good team. Our little treat bags turned out pretty good.