Last Saturday I ordered a hat and a headband with interchangeable flowers for my girls from sillygoosegifts.com. They arrived on Tuesday, even after I paid for the slow shipping! Wow! They are so super cute. Of course, they both wore them each day since then. I had to include a pic because I just love them. Because they are crocheted and knitted, they are soft to wear. I am planning on ordering several more flowers for the headband.

The other arrival this week was our 4th grade state history book, made by our 4th grader. She made it in conjunction with a state history quilt. So, of course, I had to include pics of that too. She is very proud of all her hard work and if is great to have something to show how much she learned. She'll also have better retention because she can look at the quilt and book and remember the things that she learned. Each picture on the quilt were drawn by her and represent a topic that she learned about. Each page in the book explains one of the pictures on the quilt. This project was a total pain and we wanted to just quit a few times but we are so very glad that we didn't quit. We love the book and the quilt and feel it was definitely worth the work. This summer, the quilt will be on display along with the other 4th graders from WAVA who also completed this project at the State History museum in Tacoma.

As long as I'm reporting on work accomplished, this just in: 52 quarts of applesauce in 8 hours. Jen and I worked all day yesterday and we finished 52 quarts by about 5:00. She kept 24 processed quarts and some for the fridge. I kept 25 quarts and some for the fridge. Yipee! I was visiting with the tellers at the bank last night and they asked how much I had made. When I told them, they called me crazy. I suppose it may seem crazy but I can't tell you how much I have fallen in love with food storage the last few years. I love having food on hand and not having to worry about if we will be able to eat for the next month if some aweful disaster were to happen and we couldn' t buy food. There is a feeling of peace that comes with having food storage, or it could just be peace as a result of obedience to modern-day prophets. I bet it's both. Either way, I love it.

Jen was worried about my kitchen. I wasn't. I thought I'd post a picture of it at it's wost yesterday, in the heat of the battle. The floor was terribly sticky by the end of the day and therefore collected a ton of dirt (the pic does not do it justice). My awesome wonderful kids did a lot to help clean up, including mopping the floor on their hands and knees. I had to leave for a wedding reception so, I couldn't help them. I'll finish what they didn't get done this morning.

Free dinner!

Tonight we ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant in Othello. When the waitress brought our take home containers she said that there was no bill because the man who had been sitting next to us had already paid for us. We were shocked! I hadn't recognized the man and so I asked the waitress who he was. She didn't know but thought that he was just passing through town. Then I asked if I should be nervous (I was alone with the kids). She said she thought he was just being nice. The kids wondered why someone would pay for a stranger's dinner. I have to admit, I watched my rear view mirror as we drove out of the parking lot, just to be sure we weren't being followed. I'm so paranoid. We went for dessert at the ice cream place we've been hearing about. It was yummy ice cream. What a super fun evening we had! Please tell me if this has ever happened to you so that I don't feel so abnormal and I can feel comfortable again. The waitress said that it happened to her one time at the fast food drive through. She pulled up and the worker said that the car in front of her had paid for her order.

Spring Break

We had our spring break last week and so the kids and I headed out to visit family. For the first part of the week we went to my sister's house in Utah. We had a fun time there, despite the snow. We were able to hang out with all my siblings and had a great time with them. We wish so much that we could do that more often. We painted my nephew's room (still waiting for a picture from my sister), took the kids bowling, visited my grandma, and ate dinner with everyone at the burger/pizza place where I had my first job (and my first firing; still great burgers!).

For the rest of the week, we headed to Rexburg, Id and more snow. Did I mention that this was SPRING break? Again, we had a great time with cousins. We played at the high school gym (Justin's brother is the principal), played at one cousin's house, went to another cousin's house, visited the cemetary to find family graves (I have ancestors from Rexburg area), told the kids stories about our ancestors, toured the college campus a bit, found the picture of my graduating nursing class on the wall in the nursing department, hunted easter eggs in the high school band room (remember the snow?), and played games until midnight.

Whew! and now we're home again and trying to remember how to work. Not having very much luck, although we are doing better as the days go on. I actually cleaned a bathroom today and washed up the baseboards in the entryway. Okay, that's only because the kids' ball games were cancelled and I had extra time at home. Otherwise, nada.

Art projects and new hats

Royal didn't have school on Friday this week. We still had Internet school so I knew that it might be hard to keep everyone going with Kale at home. It turned out that everyone did a really great job of staying on task. Actually Kai went with Justin to work. They planted new trees all day. We also had Sawyer here at our house and he had agreed to do school work with Hadley. Isn't he awesome? It was fun for Hadley to have a friend to discuss her work with. Sawyer kept right up and had fun playing homeschool with us. It really was enjoyable to have him here with us. They finished all their work before lunch! After lunch I talked Hadley, Sawyer, and Kale into starting an art project. We worked for an hour making crayon rubbings in different colors and using different textures, then doing a paint wash in a contrasting color over the rubbing. We learned about Cubism art. Anyway, I gave them a little break and then Kale was the only one who wanted to come back and finish. It took us another hour to finish the project and I was so excited with Kale's finished project that I had to take a picture. He had fun and is very proud of his art. He wanted a picture of him playing his guitar picture.

Saturday morning Hadley went to Othello for a Stake Achievement Day activity, Kai and Seila had a service project for mutual, Kai stayed home with me. We sewed a new car seat cover for a friend. Then I finished 3 hooded bath towels that have been waiting for me. I decided that I'd better start Seila's new dress (we picked up the fabric and pattern last week) while I helped Kai finish up school work that he didn't do on Friday. Kai was able to finish his essay and I was able to finish about an hour before we were supposed to leave for a Stake dance in Othello. It turned out pretty good. She chose black with white polka-dots. This is a style that she has been wanting for several months. In this picture she has a yellow shirt, yellow ribbon, and blue ribbon on but at the dance she wore a white shirt with a green ribbon belt. She made sure to buy several different colors of ribbon for belts.

Justin and I were able to find a hat on-line that had spf and a wide brim. He's supposed to wear one now all the time. It came the other day and he wore it on Saturday. He said it was a tough to get used to but he'll keep trying. He's also supposed to wear sunscreen but we haven't gotten that far yet. If anyone has any suggestions for a sunscreen that isn't greasy and you can wear comforatbly all day, we'll listen. Anyway, he came home and said he is of course having to deal with comments from everyone he sees and yes, Uncle Vard actually laughed. Good thing Justin loves his Uncle Vard! Not to worry, Justin will find plenty of opportunity to return the friendship.

I haven't seen a softball/baseball schedule but the first games are next week. Kai's still not sure what position he gets to play but he thinks it's looking like outfield. We'll see. Seila is going to be one of the pitchers again this year.

We've had a good week and every night I've thought about blogging because I've had something worthy of remembering but I never get around to it, and of course, I've forgotten it all now. I'll upload a few pics that I took and maybe that will jog my memory. . . .

Ah yes, Sunday after dinner Justin had the kids take turns helping him clean up. I had my back to the sink and when I turned around, my heart was touched and filled with love. I thought it was the perfect picture. Justin still in his church clothes, teaching Kale how to serve others. Moments like this are what keep my spirits up and keep me going. Moments like this are what I dream of and hope for. When I keep my eyes open, I see. I mean no offense to anyone but I really believe I have the best husband and children on the earth!! So, because of this moment, my entire Sunday turned out great!

The sad thing is that I tried to make rolls and this is what we ended up with. When I turned them out of the pan, they fell apart and they did not seperate into rolls. I mean they fell apart into chunks. For some reason, I cannot make rolls. I can make bread and other pastries but not rolls. Go figure. The picture does not show the full effect.

Tuesday night we decided that for dessert we would play a game. The game is called "dollar dessert". I gave everyone one dollar and they could buy whatever they wanted for ice cream toppings. I bought the ice cream. We kept all the toppings secret until we got home and Justin and I layed them all out on the counter and then called the kids in for "dollar dessert". Okay, we pulled out the toppings from the fridge too. This was one of the creations that we ended up with. We had Fun Dip powder, Rocky Road candy bar, Peeps, sour gummy worms, Rolos, and Nerds. It was fun and as anticipated, they asked to do it again the next night.