29 AGAIN!

Wednesday, was the beginning of my birthday celebration. I turned 29 AGAIN! (You know you're getting old when you find yourself saying things like that.)

Jason and I wanted to hang out with the kids, before we left the next day, so we had cheesecake and opened presents together.

Four different kinds of cheesecake; caramel swirl, strawberry, chocolate and original. Yum!

Jason got me an MP3 player. It's touchscreen and has video capabilities. He promptly downloaded an e-book and movie, to entertain us while on our little trip.

I have to warm up to things, especially techie things. It's been hanging out with me for a few days now, but I have yet to use it. We're becoming familiar and warming up to one another. At least I'm warming up to it. I'm sure we'll be great friends in the near future.

I don't know why I'm like that, just am... and have been from birth. Ask my mom, she knows all too well "...but I'm not USED to it!"

Family Home Evening

Well, Taylee did it again... another wonderful FHE lesson.

Her lesson was on how we are the same and how we are different --celebrating our uniqueness.

First, she read a little poem she had written, showed us a picture she had drawn and then had us list how we are the same. Same family name, all have 2 eyes, live in the same house, like some of the same things, etc.

Then she gave us some Play-doh and had us sculpt something that we like...


I like cookies.








Treyson likes his dad. (The girls were guessing that he liked snowmen. I have to admit, that would have been my guess too.)










Jason likes the Boise State Broncos... of course.








Abree likes mountains. (She kept telling us how these were "creative" mountains.) Have you ever seen mountains like these? Quite "creative" don't you think?






Rylee likes i-pods, CDs, shopping and music.

After sculpting, we had show-n-tell about what we had made. She pointed out how we all made something different and all liked different things. She concluded by saying that although we like some of the same things and are the same in some ways, being different or unique is very good. "It would be a boring world if we were all the same."

For treats we made s'mores in the oven. Yummy gooeyness.

Book Club

Book club started this week and I got to be the first hostess. We read, "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns.

The book takes place in Georgia, around the early 1900's. Cold Sassy is the name of the little Southern town where Will Tweety (14 yr old boy) lives and tells the story of his life and the people in it.

The story begins with his Grandpa Blakeslee getting married to a woman half his age and just three weeks after his first wife passes away. It's a small town scandal!

I came to love Grandpa Blakeslee and enjoyed Will Tweety pining over a girl, who he could never have... even though he kissed her once!




We each took turns rating the book 1-4.
1= Didn't really care for it.
2= It was ok.
3= I liked it a lot.
4= I loved it and would read it again.

Our group rated it 2.5 to 3.

I used the decorations from Abree's party.

For refreshments we had Old Fashion Oatmeal Cake and pink lemonade... seemed Southern to me. :)







Cold Sassy got it's name from the sarsaparilla trees that grew there. I had heard of sarsaparilla, but didn't know exactly what it was. I found out that they use the root of the sarsaparilla tree to make tea and soda. The soda is more commonly called rootbeer today. Get it? ROOTbeer.

I sent everyone home with their own sarsaparilla.
(I had to explain to my kids that it was only rootbeer. They were concerned that I had purchased alcohol, because of the look of the bottles.)









I also made everyone a bookmark. I had wanted to make those cute beaded ones with a little charm, but opted for a more simple one that I already had the supplies for.










In the end, I thought they turned out cute. We'll see if they actually work.

We named our group the "Read'em and Weep" club... or R.A.W. for short. Who knows what could happen in book club, with a name like that?! :)

Our club is not exclusive and would love to have more members. So if you're looking to get away in the evening once a month, and want some cool chicks to hang out with, come join our group.

Our next book selection is, "In This Mountain" by Jan Karon.

Districts

This week was Rylee's last cross-country meet of the season... districts. All the Meridian Middle Schools met at a local park for the race.
There were 100's of people there!









Rylee came in around 60th out of 250 girls.








Blayke is a member of one of the opposing teams.
A very friendly rival. :)

Way to go girls!

I'm quite impressed and very proud of you.

C is for Cat

C is for Cat!

The girls made cat masks.




We attempted to make candy corn bracelets.


I had seen some where that you could make bracelets using jellybeans. I thought that a candy corn bracelet would be fun. Wrong! When they would push the needle through the candy corn, it would break 7 out of 10 times. Finally, when one of the girls poked her finger hard enough to make her cry, we stopped and moved on to the next activity.

We read, "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" and then frosted cupcakes and decorated with sprinkles.

Each girl also got to take home a cat puppet

C is for Cookie

C is for cookie... that's good enough for me!

This week pre-school was at our house. We talked about the letter C , Cookie Monster, Chocolate Chip Cookies and read, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".

I'm not sure why Abree likes to pose like this.

Andi was careful to get the paint on her project, rather than on her. She was the cleanest of us all.

Skylar thinks cookie dough is yummy!

Emylie ended up Cookie Monster blue.

We shaped our cookie dough into the letter C. After baking they looked more like blobs than C's.
They still tasted good though.

These girls are becoming very smart little cookies!

Pun totally intended.