New Year's Eve

NEW YEAR'S EVE =party at our house!

Taylee was in charge of the kiddo entertainment for the evening. I helped her come up with an activity for every hour, counting down to midnight.
She decorated the bags with the time and the New Year's Time Square ball dropping each hour.

First activity: cupcake decorating!

It was fun to have the Clawson's visiting for the week.

Maliah thinks that frosting is yummy.

Kyrick and Treyson concentrating on some serious decorating.

Audrey and Abree

Katelyn

Maliah, Micaela and Taylee

Jackson doing some sprinkles.

Daisylyn having some snacks.

Lots of family, lots of snacks, lots of celebrating.

Sterling

Levi

Let's get a cousin picture... ya, right.

Took several, but never managed to get everyone looking the same way..at the same time. :)

Da boys.

Levi says "Get me out of here!"

These 3 little cousins were like popcorn bouncing up and down and all around.

Atleast one is looking at the camera.

Ahhh.. Sydney and Maliah.

One of the activities Taylee had planned was a "photo booth" with dress-up props. She took pictures of all the cousins dressed up and looking silly. Here are a few...

Abree

Micaela

Katelyn

Micaela???

Audrey

Abree? and Kyrick

Cool Ky

Micaela...again?

Some other activities included; dancing with the strobe light, playing games and making shaker noise makers to welcome in the new year.

Tyrel brought fireworks, that were lit as the new year came in.

HAPPY 2012!

Easter Treats

Coconut nest

Very sweet, but I liked the slivered almonds and coconut in these.

Chowmein noodle nest
This one has crunchy chowmein noodles, peanutbutter and butterscotch chips. Chowmein noodles and butterscotch chips aren't my favorite, but this seemed to be the "crowd's favorite".

Which one sounds good to you?

Spring Break: Day 3 & 4

Sunday, we went to church and had a low-key day; quiet time/nap time, FHE preparations, cherry coconut dessert and "Minute to Win It".
Anyone else watching this show? We like to watch it as a family, because it's fun and clean.

We can totally see us playing these games at a party, FHE or Family Reunion.

Monday, Krissi helped the kids plant wheat in their pots, while I finished FHE preparations.

She even planted some for me.

I bought 3 of these metal planters at Target's "Dollar Spot". My plan is to have Easter grass to decorate my mantle. Hope the wheat grass grows! :)

Our FHE lesson focused on the upcoming General Conference. We talked about the "hidden treasures" we could find in the talks from our Prophet and other inspired leaders. We were all excited to hear what they had in store for us.

Next, we went on a treasure hunt. I gave the kids their first clue and they were off...

Some clues were found out-of-order, others were hard to find without additional clues.... this is NOT what I had envisioned. (One clue had accidentally been found even before FHE started. It was re-hidden, in a different spot, and proved to be harder to find the second time around.) Even so, I think the kids had fun.

Finally, all clues were found... and in the correct order. The kids brought in the chest found by the bikes in the garage. Inside they discovered many treasures.

For each of them there was a personalized conference booklet. These booklets had mazes, pictures to color, word finds, places to take notes on talks and much more.

Also included were pencils, prophet/apostle cards, conference BINGO cards, colored pencils and a conference trail mix.

Sugardoodle to the rescue!

You can find the poem and ingredients here.

Yum!

Now let the countdown begin.

We Are Fam-i-ly!

I was in charge of the FHE lesson last week. I felt that we could benefit (once again) from a lesson on Family Unity. We talked about how each of us are similar because we are a family, but that we all have differences that make us unique.

As we talked about our uniqueness, we took turns adding measured ingredients into a bowl. Each ingredient was unique, but played a part in the whole good of the recipe. If an ingredient would have been left out, the whole or end result, wouldn't have been as good.
As with our family, we all play a very important, unique roll and would be missed if anyone of us were "left out". I encouraged us to celebrate our uniqueness and focus on family unity.

We played a family memory matching game. To throw them off a bit, I added in a "unique" picture of each one of the kids (there wasn't a match for this picture). They loved that they got to keep the unique picture.

Here's the back of the family game. I found them here. So cute!

I covered them with contact paper, punched a hole in the corner and put them on a ring, so we could play with them again some day.

Each ingredient played their part well. The cookies were yummy and baked up huge!

Leftovers?

Do you have left over candy canes from Christmas?

I didn't. At least not in the mini variety.

I had to search many an after-Christmas sale to find these. I finally found them at Walgreen's.

I wanted to try making these cute hearts that I'd seen all over the blog-o-sphere.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. De-wrapper the candy canes. Put the candy canes together in twos and bake.

They melt into this cute little heart shape. (Sometimes I had to pinch the ends together to form the point.)

I also made these lollipops with cherry flavored candy canes. Think the pre-schoolers will like them for their Valentine's Day party?