Payson Temple Open House

On January 26 we decided to take the kids out of school and head up to Provo for the Provo Temple Open House. I was really excited about this because we all had a really great time at the Payson Temple Open House.

It's a beautiful temple and I love that my kids get to go in and see it and hopefully want to go in someday to make sacred covenants with our Heavenly Father.

There were a lot of people, and you know how much Dan and I love crowds of people...not so much. I was also expecting the tour to be like the Payson Temple where they stopped us in a sealing room and explained different things about the temple. So, when they didn't do that I was slightly disappointed. I later found out that most people that went through the Payson Temple didn't get stopped like we did. Oh, well now I feel pretty special :)

One of these days I'd like to go through a session of these temples. We will probably have to wait until the kids are grown though. It's hard enough finding babysitter's for the Manti temple let alone a temple that's 1 1/2 away. Aren't we lucky though? I can't imagine having to go to a completely different country to attend the temple. This is something that I totally take for granted living where we do.

Harry Potter Party

 So, it's been a REALLY long time since I've written, and there are so many posts I need to do...but we'll start with what happened yesterday, since it was...well, yesterday :)  And what happened yesterday you may ask? Well, Caden's friend birthday party happened. It was two weeks later than I originally planned, but every weekend was filled up with something, so yesterday was the big day. Caden decided that he wanted a Harry Potter party, and I'll admit, I was excited. I had a lot of fun with this party.

We sent out invitations that were an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Telling them to meet at Platform 9 3/4 (or our address) and we attached a balloon with an owl drawn on it, because we wanted it to be delivered by owl post. Those were kind of fun :)

When the kids got there, they had to go through the brick wall at Platform 9 3/4. I didn't realize my door was so big, and I thought I had painted/sponged enough bricks and was going to have to cut some off, but low and behold I didn't do enough...oops. Good thing I'm not a perfectionist, huh :)

 

They went through the brick wall to Diagon Alley, where they went shopping for their school supplies. They were given a shopping list and they went around to the different stores to get their items.

Shopping List

Things like Floo Powder:

Floo Powder

 A Wand from Ollivander's. I'll admit I had a lot of fun making these. I used bamboo sticks and hot glue, and it was quite therapeutic.

You can see some of the ones that haven't been painted...loads of fun. Seriously.

They picked up some potion ingredients (and a mini cauldron that I forgot to take pictures of) that were crushed dragon bones (baking soda), worm guts (dish soap), and basilisk venom (vinegar). Dan let me have those cute vial thingies. 

They got a quill...oh, and a dueling wand that I forgot to take pictures of too. That was just a straw with some paper to go over the top.

 After they picked up all their supplies and put it in their Diagon Alley shopping bag (which was their treat, take home bag) they went to the great hall to be sorted. I read the sorting hat song, and then they chose a colored marble from a little bag. It worked out almost perfect. I cheated on the last kid to make sure everyone had two people in a house, but everyone was okay with what they got.

The sorting hat before I Clear Coated it....if you look close you can see a face on it.

The Great Hall

Caden being sorted. He got sorted into Huffelpuff House.

The badges they got after they got sorted. I had Griffendor and Hufflepuff too, but my kids took those before I could snap a picture :)

After the sorting they all went to potions class, where they made exploding polyjuice potion. I think everyone enjoyed that, and I with I would have done more experiments. I found all sorts of stuff on Pinterest they could do, but I only did one. We had tons of extra time, so in hind sight I would have done two more potions things.

 

 After potions we went downstairs to Charms class. Here I got a whole bunch of blown-up balloons and they had to keep them afloat with just their wands and using the spell "Wingardium Leviosa". We broke into houses to see who could keep their balloon up the longest.

Then we moved over to the dueling club. I had a lot of fun with this one too. I hung up a poster of spells/curse/jinxes they could use. They bowed to each other and then shouted out a spell and blew on their straw. If they actually hit each other than the person that got his had to do whatever the spell did to them.

When the boys started to get a little crazy "Winky the House Elf" aka Kember ran down with a scroll from Professor McGonagall saying that all the Care of Magical Creatures had escaped and they needed to find all of them. 

The list of creature they had to find

Because they were such good helpers and found everything they got to go to HoneyDukes and get some sweets.

They got to have Gilly Water, Edible Broomsticks (pretzels and cheese sticks), Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Lemon Drops, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Licorice wands, Acid Pop's, Chocolate Frogs (complete with chocolate frog cards) and Pumpkin Juice.

 Then we just opened presents. Because everything went way faster than I was expecting there was still a half hour left to the party...so we turned on Harry Potter and waited for their parents to come get them. 

Caden said he had a lot of fun, and honestly, I had a lot of fun putting it together.  So I think that's a success :)

Oops, I did it again!

Sing with me now...and this Britney Spears song will stay in your mind all day long....even if all you know about it is, "Oops, I did it again". But it's true. I did. I couldn't say no. No, that's not true. I did say no. Multiple times, but somehow this happened...again (back the first part of April).

 Yes, this is a bunny. A Lion Head bunny to be exact. I went to Dan's work to drop something off or to say hi, or something, and when I walk in everyone gets quiet and Dan looks extremely guilty. But he holds out the bunny and says, "Look how cute this is." It was cute, but I didn't want it.  Good thing I left the kids in the car so I didn't hear, "Can we have one mom? Can we?" I mean, we were just at IFA and I took them to look at the bunnies because I have no problem looking at the bunnies...I just didn't want one in my house. I'm not sure what happened next. I'm pretty sure "NO" came out of my mouth a couple times, but somehow this little tyke came home with us. I'm such a softie. (*Dan just read this and said, "You're not a softie." That's true...very very true, but we ended up with a bunny never-the-less)

This time, however, the bunny is not terrorizing our chickens. Instead, he is keeping Guiney (I guess his/her name is really Chip, but I never call it that) company.

It is a cute bunny. Sigh.

This is how we roll....a March recap

So I realize that it's the end of April, but March needs to be documented, so...here goes nothing.

What did you do on Pi day? This year was special, you know. 3.14.15 9:26.  Not going to be that way for a long long time. Well, we celebrated with pizza pie from Pizza Hut, and pie from McDonalds. What more can you ask for?

 And this picture pretty much sums up Pi Day. Yea!!!!

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day by making magic hats that the Leprechauns shrunk and filled with candy, and took some lucky charms around to some friends.

I got out of my comfort zone and attended the Utah Farm Bureau's Women's Conference. I drove Dan's truck and took Ginger, Nanci, and Hollie (on the way back) with me. It was a great conference and gave me more ideas of what I am supposed to do as the women's chair.

Milee had a field trip for Preschool at the High School Cafeteria. I will admit I originally thought that this trip was weird, but it was actually really cool. The showed them the behind the scenes stuff, and fed them samples of things they cook. Plus they gave them really cool hats (hair nets) :)

Caden did awesome at his first ever Pinewood Derby. He took first in his group (the wolves, or bears, or whatever animal the first time scouters are). He had a lot of fun building his car with Dan and was really proud of himself, as he should be.

The girlies did my hair and had waaaay too much fun squirting me with the squirt bottle.

The women in the family all got together and watched the General Relief Society Mtg that they have right before conference. I loved that the focus was on the family and how to strengthen it!

March was a really good month for our family and it flew by like crazy! Just like April did, but that's another post for another day.

Sunday Thots

So, I have a confession to make (to myself since no one reads this blog...those are the safest kind of confessions to make :). It's been years and years since I've really really fasted. I was pregnant or nursing for 8ish years and I'll admit that the habit got broken. Since Brinley came along it's been really hard to get back into the habit, and while I was working on it it wasn't coming along super great. Mostly it was just starving....if I remembered it was Fast Sunday in the first place.
Well, conference happened (like it does every April and October) and I think it was the very first talk that talked about fasting. President Eyring mentioned a 24hr fast. And I guess I've heard that before, but it was always two meals in my mind, and really, it was basically just breakfast when it was put into practice.
Last night Scott reminded me it was Fast Sunday today while at Grandpa Brad's 80th birthday party. I appreciated the reminder and started fasting. It was quite different for me. I've never started the day before, I've never gone 24 hours, and it was difficult because the girls had their dance recital (hopefully that will be another post...but...just in case it isn't, they did awesome and it was fun to watch) that night and wanted to go to dinner after to celebrate. None of the kids liked my idea of starting their fasts then. There was weeping and tears, and I let dad take over...I mean, my oldest is 9 so it's not like I expect them to last the whole 24 hours, but I got excited and probably went a little overboard :) Dan took them to Arby's but made them eat it at home so I didn't have to be around it.
Anyway, to make a long story even longer this morning I really wanted my fast to mean something. So while I was praying about it in the shower (don't judge me...shower time is an excellent prayer time) I got the thought to ask Dan for a blessing. After the shower I felt kind of weird asking, but he readily agreed to give me one. I married a wonderful man. I'm so thankful to have a worthy priesthood holder in my home.
The blessing was a confirmation to me that Heavenly Father knows me, knows what is going on in my thoughts, and wants me to be the best I can be. Something interesting to me in the blessing was that I need to focus on the why of things and the hows and the whats will take care of themselves. That got me thinking and I realized I am losing sight of the big picture and going through the motions when really I need to be strengthening my testimony of the end goals in life. I need to focus on why I chose to be a wife and mother, why I'm a member of this church, why I want to gain a more personal relationship with my Father in Heaven.
Anyway, it was really powerful and an answer to a prayer, so I thought I'd write it down so I didn't forget this special experience I had.

Also, one of the conference talks (the last one I think) was about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Now, we don't got shopping or out to eat or anything, but we could definitely do better in this area as well, so that was part of my thoughts this morning. Part of the talk describes Sunday as a day of rest, and while that isn't anything new,  I got something completely different for me. I got that I need to take a rest from those things that I am doing on a daily basis that can get in the way of the things that matter most...like my relationship with God and my family. I was explaining this to Caden when we asked to play on the Kindle, and when I said "the things that matter most" and tapped him on the nose he said, "So...will you play a board game with me?!?" he was so excited when I said that was exactly what I meant. It was a different day for me not playing my games on the electronic devices or reading my books, but focusing on my lessons and my family.

More random things I got out of this day :) Dan and I were making dinner together and I mentioned to him that while he was listening to some Ted Talks the other day I was just thinking how much I would love to do that. Be a public speaker I mean. And then I realized today that my teaching Sharing Time is my Ted Talk. That's my opportunity the Lord has given me, and thinking about it in that way made me want to start preparing for in like I would if I was actually a public speaker. I would study and prepare more, and really try to reach out to my "audience". It made me really grateful that the Lord gave me that realization and that I have this chance and opportunity. It changed my perception of "Ugh, I'm still in the Primary..I'm always in the Primary" to "Wow, this is an awesome calling I have. I get to teach these little kids the most important things in life, and bear my testimony of these things every month!"
I definitely experienced some tender mercies today.

Family 5K

In our stake some girls have organized a 5K run the first Saturday of every month. I think they just started up again, and when they announced it in church I thought to myself that this was something we should do as a family.  I informed everyone that we would be running bright and early Saturday morning.  The kids were excited and Dan just looked at me like I was crazy, which, admittedly , I was.
I started to have second thoughts on Friday when I realized just how cold it was going to be at 7AM the next day, but...we were going to do this as a family! So, we woke the kids up early (something that never happens, by they way. The wake up way earlier than we do) and got ready with our running clothes :)
We drove to the church with Scott and Carol Lee. There were only a few other people there, and it wasn't like a race or anything, just kind of, "Here's the course, go when you are ready, and have fun." Everyone took off and we were having a good time...until the cold started to seep in. Then Milee, Brinley, Cole were rather cranky....the whole 3.2 miles. I'm talking like screaming and crying at the top of their lungs cranky (it was cold and their poor hands and feet were freezing).

 You can see how not happy this little man is. He hurt his leg awhile back, and I guess it is still bothering him. Running is not something he enjoys apparently.

 This is the halfway turn-around point. Milee is crying about her hands in this picture, and Cole is looking at me like I'm nuts because I wanted a picture to prove that we did this :)

 Look, he did it too...while pushing a stroller with three kids on it...that's got to be at least 100lbs. He's studly.

And this is us dying at the end. We are probably not going to do any more of these, but I asked Kember and Caden if they wanted to do them with grandma and grandpa and they said yes, so that's kind of fun. Those two were troopers the entire way, and I'm super proud of them.

Dance Performance

Our girls are taking dance from a family friend (actually, I think that technically they are cousins). The girls really like it, and Ginger (the teacher) is great. Ginger found out last week that they were invited to perform at the cheerleaders and drill teams showstopper thingy :) And even though she doesn't read this blog, I have to give a shout out to Ginger for choosing age appropriate costumes, music, and moves. I was proud to watch my girls out there...I wasn't cringing to see them do sexy moves that really, no one should be doing.

I don't think the girls really understood much about the performance, other than mom was stressed and cranky trying to get everyone ready (they had practice right before and everyone had to be ready because we weren't coming home again....). Just as a note, Milee doesn't like mom doing her make-up. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Which I totally understand. That's how I feel every time I put make-up on :) Kember didn't like it either, but stood up to it a lot better than my 4yr old.  It always amazes me what make-up does to them though. Maybe I should start wearing it more.

When we got to the high school and connected with Dan I think the first question he had was, "How long is this going to take?" I just looked at him.  Really? "Haven't you ever been to one of these before?" I said. It was his turn to just look at me.  "Why would I have been to one of these before?" Well, his eyes were opened and he is just going to have to get used to things like this :) Although, I'm crossing my fingers my girls don't want to be cheerleaders or drill-teamers. Don't get me wrong, the girls were extremely talented, and if that's what my girls want to do, I will totally support them, but really I don't think I'd be sad at all if they wanted to do something else instead :)

So, here are my little cuties.

Milee's dance was super cute. She danced to Splish Splash, and let's face it, watching 4 yr olds. is just funny. One of the girls fell over in her tub, and sometimes they just stood there, and another girl wouldn't get out of her tub :) Milee was always a couple counts off with her moves, but she did them and was super cute!

I was so proud of Kember. She hates getting in front of people, and I've never seen her dance better. She is really improving. I'd love to post the videos of their dances on here, but it won't let me :(

Okay, so here is my question for dancers out there (which, the only people who read this are family and we aren't dancers, so it's a moot question, but I gotta ask it anyway). What is with the faces the cheerleaders and drill team members make while dancing? It looks like your face is twitching when you are winking mid-dance. Why is the fish face apart of the dance? It doesn't make you look cute. It looks like a fish. You are not a fish, nor are you emulating one in your dance. And shaking your head while winking or making the fish face just makes me dizzy. Actually, all the faces that were made not only made the girls look ridiculous, but it was super distracting. Dan couldn't stop laughing, and I was so focused on the faces I wasn't watching the dances. That can't be the point of it. What's wrong with just smiling while you dance? I'd really like to know why they do that. I'm not trying to make fun or be disrespectful.  The girls are all very very talented, so my question is "Why?".