Conference Artwork Game

Today was General Conference. Twice a year we get to stay home from church and listen to our church leaders speak to us on TV. This year, one of the things we did to pass the time is that we drew the person speaking, and then at the end of the talk we would compare drawings.




Here are four drawings that were done of the same speaker (click on it to see the pictures better). Try to guess who drew which portrait. The artists were: Becky, Kaitlin, Ruth and Jared. For a bonus point you can guess who this was that we were drawing.

City Mad Candy Grab...er...Easter Egg Hunt

We always try to make it to our city egg hunt. My camera died so I only got this one picture, but let me try to describe it to you. Imagine a very large grassy field. Now imagine in this field, six rectangular areas marked off with police tape and cones. Each area is about a quarter of an acre in size. These rectangles are full of candy, eggs, prizes etc... Now picture each of these six areas surrounded by children and families, four to six people deep around the entire perimeter of each rectangle. Every child is clutching an Easter basket and is jumping around wildly. Each parent is pushing a stroller with one hand, clutching a camera in the other. Welcome to our City Easter Egg Hunt!!

But this year was different because the Saturday of the hunt we woke up to three inches of fresh snow, the temperatures were below freezing and the wind was howling. We doggedly put on our coats, boots and gloves and headed to the hunt. The city people had anticipated the snow and had enacted a contingency plan. They had set up one police tape rectangle under the large covered pavilion. "Zero to two years!" they called over a loud speaker. Parents pushed and shove through the body to body crowd to get their toddler just inside the police tape. The firetruck blowed it's horn and all the children (and parents in this case) madly grabbed for the goodies. As soon as the children had the place cleaned out, then 10 city workers ran in with big tubs of candy and eggs and ran around the ring, tossing treats out with abandon. "Three to Four year olds!" the loud speaker crackled. And thus it went. The total turn around on each group was about eight minutes. Not too bad! And we were out of the snow to boot! But did I mention the freezing wind?


Ruth was going to try to get all plastic eggs this year because some of the eggs have money in them. By the end of the hunt, neither Ruth nor Jared had gotten one of the coveted money eggs, but they both were happy and had had a good time.

When we finally made it home, we kicked off all our winter clothes. Ruth pulled off her snowy boots and gasped. She reached down and pealed a green piece of paper off her muddy tread. I guess we got some money after all!




Easter Cooking

Kaitlin and I have had a fun weekend cooking together. We discovered the best roll recipe ever! We made them yesterday for today's dinner but they were so good we ate half of them already. The recipe can be found here. We also made these yummy looking turnovers this morning. We haven't eaten one yet but they look delicious. Kaitlin did a project last month for Young Women where she cooked dinner with me for several weeks. She has always liked cooking and has turned into a very capable cook. It's so great to have her to help in the kitchen. Not only is she a good cook but we have a lot of fun working together.

Easter Tree Craft

Earlier in the week, Ruth and Jared and I made this Easter Tree. I remember making Easter Trees many years when I was a child, but haven't made one with my own children in a very long time.

We had a good time coloring each basket and making the chicks and bunnies out of painted cotton balls. Each chick/bunny sits on a few jelly beans, which we have been eating throughout the week.

April Fools! It's Christmas Outside!



It was a little of a shock to wake up April 1st to see that there were four inches of snow on the ground and still more was coming.



We tried to make the best of it and make a Snow Easter Bunny, but the snow was too fluffy to pack, so we had a snowball fight and took turns burrying each other in the snow instead. Did I mention that this was the first of our three spring break days??





















Alvin and the Chipmunks Dance Show



Ruth and Jared have been off-track (in year round school you get a few weeks off of school about four times a year) for four weeks. To fight off the boredom they decided to put on a Dance Show for the kids in the neighborhood. They got together with their friends from across the street and practices for three days, for hours and hours.



They printed up invitations and passed them out to the neighborhood kids. The dance show was in their friend's basement and consisted of six Alvin and the Chipmunks songs, which were all choreographed.

Chaz's Choir Concert

Chaz had a choir concert this week. It was so good!











Guitar Fun

We had fun this weekend playing with a guitar DVD that came with the new Yamaha Jr. we bought for Ruth and Jared. That means we now have four guitars at our house.










Children's Museum

(stock photo) Wednesday was a free day at the big children's museum in town. Since Ruth and Jared are off track we decided to make the drive into downtown and check it out. It was a crazy madhouse, but we were able to do a few fun things like making paper airplains and then testing them out in a wind tunnel, climbing a rock wall, and doing a weather forcast in front of a green screen.




Kaitlin's Art

Kaitlin finished the poster she's been working on for the past month.

A Friday Night at our House

What goes on at our house on a normal Friday night you might ask. Well I went around after dinner on Friday night and took some pictures so you could see.

Friday is "Clean your Room Day" at our house. You have until 9:00pm (scripture time) to clean your room and your bathroom. On this night I caught Jared hard at work putting those last minute touches on his room.

Ruth was strumming away on the new Palmer Electric/Acoustic guitar I bought myself this week. She is becoming quite the guitar player.

Kaitin was caught at her favorite pastime - drawing. She's been working on this poster for several weeks. Her teacher asked her to draw it for his classroom. It's a picture of Percy Jackson from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books.

Chaz is usually out with friends on weekend nights. But this time I was able to capture him doing one of his favorite things, reading and listening to music.

I didn't take a picture of Chuck or I, but Chuck was working on his laptop, which is what I would have probably been doing as well, if I weren't taking pictures of the family.


Oh, I'm going to add one last picture...




Here is Summer. This picture wasn't from Friday night, but this is what you can find her doing much of the time - relaxing in her litter box. She loves laying there - we can't figure out why.

Follow the Prophet Primary Activity

This past Saturday was our Follow the Prophet Primary Activity. We had 70 kids attend and a great time was had by all.

There were four different stations. Each station focusing on a prophet from the Primary song "Follow the Prophet."

Daniel and the Lion's Den Interactive Story.

My secretary, Jayna, is a fabulous teacher and story teller. She got all the kids involved in an interactive story of Daniel and the Lion's den.

Noah's Arc Masks

The kids had a great time making animal masks with my counselors Sarah and Emily as they learned about the story of Noah's Ark. The masks came from this site.

President Monson Multimedia Trivia!

My station was a trivia game on Power Point where all the children got to vote for the answer they thought was correct and then we watched a video to see if they were right.

Jonah and the Whale

The kids had a blast reenacting the story of Jonah with my counselor Krystal and a giant parachute I borrowed from my friend, Lisa. They made the rough waves, and finally were swallowed by the whale by running under the parachute.

Welcome Spring

The tulips are pushing up through the mud (in the back yard at least) and the sun is shining on us a few hours a day. Chuck and I have both taken spins on our respective two wheeled motorized vehicles. (Chuck installed a new fork on mine). And most excitingly, we set up the trampoline! In coats and blankets, Jared and Ruth have been out every day jumping and shivering.

The Mexican Hat Dance

Chaz and I played a trumpet/guitar duet of the Mexican Hat Dance for 200 people at the Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet this last week. I promised some of you video - unfortunately, we forgot our camera. Let's just say, I don't think we'll be getting work at the Blue Iguana any time soon. But it was fun. The girl Chaz likes was there right on the front row. Chaz was a real sport when they put a big sombrero on his head. All evening Chaz was able to sit by that girl so it worked out okay in the end.




www.ldsfiction.net

I'm happy to announce that after only a week my new site now has a presence on one of the three big search engines. If you search for "lds fiction" on Yahoo my site comes up #6! Nothing yet on Bing or Google, but I'm told that it takes weeks sometimes. I'm doing all that I can think to do, so I hope it works out. If you haven't visited the site in a week, check it out again. It has its final look - with a banner that Kaitlin and I designed. I even had my first stranger sign up on the site, so yeah! for me! My next goals are to: 1) try to generate some writers to contribute their work to the site, 2)try to integrate some kind of forum on the site.