Andelin Adventures – Page 101 – A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family

Easter Weekend

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. 😉

April General Conference

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.

3rd Grade Presentation

Ethan has been so excited about the presentation that the third grade students have been preparing to put on for their parents. He has been heard singing the songs that they were practicing at school, all around the house lately. This actually kind of surprised me because he is my child that has never once gone up to the front of church to sing with the primary when they were preparing to sing something. Kyle worked from home today so that he could be close enough to just take a break to come to the school with us to see the presentation. The program went like this:

School song
School motto
Pledge of Allegiance
Star Spangled Banner
Colors of the Wind (from Pocahontas)
The 3 R’s (from School House Rock)
God Bless the USA (Lee Greenwood)
Essays by a few students
You’ve got a Friend in Me (from Toy Story)

I was pleased to see that he not only sang, but he participated when they had hand motions to go with the songs, too. He was very happy to get to put on the presentation and he was even happier that Kyle was able to attend. It’s just not as exciting to have me there, because I’m mommy, I’m always just down the street, so it’s easy for me to be there. But for Kyle to take the day to work from home so that he could use his break time to be at the presentation, was a big thing for Ethan.

More Hair

French braiding is something that I do NOT do well. Most of the time I put my girls hair in pig tails or pony tails, or only part up. Tyra’s hair is long enough to braid without doing a french braid. But Dinah and Chloe still have rather short hair that in order for them to have braided hair, it must be a french braid. And it’s actually better looking if they have two, because one braid down the middle doesn’t keep the hair very well. I don’t really know how to coordinate my fingers to be able to do it, but I did know the concept of HOW, so I’ve been trying to practice french braiding. And here is Chloe with her first ever, french braids!

Pinewood Derby

Ethan had his second pinewood derby today. He made his car look like Lightning McQueen from the Disney movie “Cars”. It turned out to be a really cool looking car, but it didn’t do very well in the races.

First of all we got to the church and he weighed in his car. It was really light, but he said he didn’t want to add any weights to it, so next we just waited for the races to start. Right before they started the races, someone made a comment about putting graphite on the wheels/axles, and Kyle decided to run over to the table and do that really fast before Ethan’s car was up. Ethan’s name came up, and he put his car on the track all excited to see it go, and then it didn’t even make it to the finish line. It rolled down the ramp and then stopped dead on the straight part of the track. Ethan sat there crushed, just staring at it as people told him to just push it through, so the timer for his car would stop counting. Kyle and another dad saw how upset he was and went to help him fix it up a bit to hopefully help the car make it to the end of the track next time. The second time his car was up, it again didn’t make it to the end of the track. Kyle asked the cubmaster if they could add some weight to the car hoping that that may make a difference, and they got permission to do so. And they continued to graphite the wheels after each race. I noticed that with each time his car went down the track the time was better and better, but the damage was done.

They way that the race works is, each boy’s car gets to race 6 times, twice down each of the three lanes. They take the slowest time, and throw that one out, then they add up all the rest of the times. Then they rank the cars based on that number. Well this year instead of just going through the whole pack and starting with boy number 20 and working their way up to the top three, they announced the places within the ranks. So they announced the order that the cars came in for the wolf den, then the bear den and finally the webelos. Ethan came in last of all the bears, and you could tell that he was really disappointed. Then they proceeded to announce the top three overall winners. After that was all done and we were having refreshments and the boys were sending their cars down the track just for fun, they had up on the screen the scores of all the boys in the pack. Ethan’s car was dead last, and Ethan saw it. He was in such a grouchy mood for the rest of the day. But Kyle told him that we would go to the scout shop and buy some more kits and practice making cars between now and the next derby so that hopefully, next year’s race will be better. 🙂