Month: April 2012

Easter morning started out super early, as it always does. Before letting the kids loose to go find eggs or look at their Easter baskets though, I insisted they get dressed for church first. Chloe was trying her hardest to collect all the eggs that she  found in her room, while we were getting everyone dressed:

We have a rule that nobody gets to go out and see their baskets (and it’s same rule for Christmas for checking their stockings) until Mommy and Daddy say it’s time, and everyone goes out together. Dinah was a bit of a stinker and dashed out to look while I was getting someone else dressed. I immediately went after her, and brought her back down the hall, and she was crying. Crying that everyone got a toy EXCEPT HER! To back up and explain a bit, last night Dinah had set her basket at Kyle’s place on the table. And she put his basket, in her place. I saw this and after we put the kids to bed, I switched them back to where they should be. So when she came running out on her own this morning, she was looking at Kyle’s basket, thinking it was hers. Kyle didn’t get a toy, just plenty of chocolate. She threw quite the fit, bawling the whole time I was helping her dress. Once we had everyone dressed, and had the cameras ready we let them out to the living room and dining room. That’s when I got to show Dinah that there really was a toy in her basket and that she was just looking at Daddy’s basket. And suddenly that horrible fit, completely vanished, and Dinah was all smiles after that.

The kids also had fun finding the eggs that had been hidden by the Easter Bunny. The bunny hid plastic eggs with goodies inside them, this year. I think Kyle and I have decided that we like this better than the bunny hiding hard boiled eggs, simply because if the kids don’t find them all first thing in the morning, but find an egg hours later (or even days later) we know the goodies will still be ok. That just wouldn’t be the case with a hard boiled egg. Lydia found 2 eggs during the egg hunt, and was perfectly content with those. She just sat there banging them together (another good reason that they were plastic and not hard boiled 😉 ).

After the kids were done hunting eggs we had a very happy breakfast before going to church (which started at 9am):

The day didn’t end there though. After church we headed out to go to Granny’s house for dinner. She had made ham and turkey, and the kids got to play with their cousins while the adults just hung out.

This weekend has been super long and crazy. Saturday morning we got the kids up nice and early to get them dressed and fed so that we could be at Home Depot at 9 am for their kids workshop. I have been looking forward to this workshop because they were making bird feeders and that is one of the requirements in Ethan’s bear scout book. So all the kids got to make their own bird feeder and when they finished they got their pin to put on their aprons and they were given a small baggie of bird seed, and an Easter egg with a treat in it. Then because I’m crazy, and Home Depot had fruit trees, I picked some out and got the kids loaded back in the car while Kyle went to go pay for the trees.

After the workshop we booked it back home to get to the park for the Girl Scout activity on time. Since I’m the leader of the troop and had to bring the orange juice and chocolate milk we really needed to be there on time. We went home, unloaded the trees, let the kids go potty (since there are no bathrooms at the park) and then we got back in the car to go down to the park.

Thankfully, Amy (one of the co-leaders) got there a bit early and got all the eggs scattered in the grass, so that was done. We waited until everyone was there and then we let the kids go hunt all the eggs first.

Then we had donuts and juice or milk for refreshments, and before we let anybody leave we passed out the patches and awards that the girls have earned over the last couple of months. Lydia just hung out in the stroller, watching everybody:

By the time we got home after the Girl Scout activity it was pretty much lunch time and nap time. So we fed the kids lunch, but then instead of making them take naps we decided it was time to color our Easter eggs or we just weren’t going to have time to get that done.

We decided to have a cup of dye in front of each kid and after they got to dye an egg in that color, the cups rotated around the table. That prevented the kids from fighting over which color they wanted to dye the eggs. 🙂

That stamp set that Ethan is using, is a set that my parents had for us to use when I was young. I’ve never pulled it out to use it before this, but Ethan was begging to use it and I decided that I might as well see if it still works or not, and if not it was time to get rid of it. Amazingly the ink pads worked!

While we were dying eggs, this is what Lydia was doing:

After we got all the eggs dyed and got all the mess cleaned up, it was time to go to the ward activity that just happened to be at the same park that we had the Girl Scout activity earlier in the morning. The ward was having a neighborhood cleanup activity, so everyone showed up and went around with trash bags to either pick up garbage at the park, or to go down the streets of our ward to pick up garbage.

I think the idea for this activity was inspired by the Monday morning a couple of weeks ago when we had REALLY bad wind. Monday is trash day in our neighborhood, and this REALLY bad wind that we had was seriously blowing trash cans over, and then down the street. One house down the street from us had a whole bunch of trash cans blown into their yard. It was just really bad.

So we spent the first half of the activity gathering garbage, and then for the second half of the activity there were games and relays to play with eggs. Thankfully, they boiled the eggs first. Otherwise I think we would have just turned around and made a huge mess with broken eggs in the park that we just cleaned up! I think the kids had lots of fun and hopefully are properly worn out. Tomorrow is Easter, and it’s time to let the kids pick their Easter baskets and grass, and get them off to bed. 😉

Every six months we get to come up with some creative idea of keeping the kids interested in paying some attention to General Conference. I don’t like Kyle and I being the only ones in the house that are trying to sit and listen to all the talks, while the kids run around the house like crazy. I want them to learn that when conference is on, we sit and listen, although I know that sitting still for four hours on Saturday and another 4 hours on Sunday is asking a lot out of our small kids. Before conference last October, one of my visiting teachers brought over a few ‘Conference Bingo’ cards that she had made, and a bag of candy corn to use as markers. The only problem was that the bingo cards had words on them, so only my kiddos that know how to read were able to use them. So I looked around online and found some pictures so that Kyle could put together some bingo cards for the younger kids to use.

Saturday morning they were really excited to get to play conference bingo like they did last time, and they were happy when we pulled out the new bingo cards with pictures on them, because now there was one for each of them. And this time, instead of candy corn they got to use jelly beans for markers. That seemed to keep them interested during the morning session. And some of them were still napping when the afternoon session started, so we didn’t have to keep them interested for the whole session.

Today we started the day off with some baked french toast, and bacon and hashed browns for breakfast. I have found that to make hashed browns nice and crispy, the heat for the oil has to be up nice and high. Well I guess I had the heat on high enough, but it must have taken me too long to get the next portion of potatoes in the pan because the oil started smoking and it set the smoke alarms off. Of course, the loud beeping noise all through the house made all the kids scream. Why they felt like they had to add to the noise…I don’t know. If there had been a real fire we would have been in trouble, because not one of the kids got up. They all just sat where they were and screamed. I guess we need to work on that.

We continued with the bingo cards for the Sunday sessions of conference, and that means the kids have had a whole bunch of jelly beans in the last two days. But they were losing interest in actually playing bingo today, so I think I need to find some other ideas for keeping them interested in conference so that they can play conference for one session and do something for another.