New Easter Dresses

Each year I make the girls new Easter dresses! I had bought fabric a few weeks ago and it just sat on my sewing desk collecting dust! Well, of course it is Saturday night, the eve of Easter and the fabric sits un-cut on my desk. I spent Saturday running kids to friends in Kuna, shopping, and anything but sewing. Finally it is 10pm and kids are going to bed and Kristina says to me "I can't wait to see my new Easter dress!" Great! How can I not stay up and get these done now! So it took me 1/2 hr to cut the fabric and then by 2:30 am after many, many yards of gathering we had Easter skirts! I had found Emily's dress about a month ago and that is what I matched the girl's skirts to. They are darling!

Emily's 1st Easter

Emily's 1st Easter! She is also 5 months old on Easter Day! Time sure flies by!

Living Portrait Museum

Logan's 5th grade class has been preparing to present a living portrait museum. This project required them to prepare a biography paper on an influential American. They learned the research and writing process and then had to write a speech that they were to memorize. The museum portion required them to dress up as their chosen character from history and make a "frame" from which they would give their speech. Logan did a great job! He was proud of himself for memorizing such a long speech and we were proud of him too! All of the students in his class participated in this project and they lined walls of the gym and gave their speeches as people walked up to them. It was great to see all of the costumes and children! Oh, and his influential American was William Penn!

Food Meme

What is a Meme anyway? I have seen them floating around. So I googled it and found this cool link all about Memes. The Daily Meme
So thanks to LDS Mom, here is my first Meme!

What do you usually eat for breakfast? I love to have some toast and oatmeal, not the instant, flavored kind. I love fruit too! But a lot of mornings lunch comes along and I have fogotten about breakfast!

Have you ever tasted caviar? No, not interested.

What is your favorite cookie? Warm, homemade chocolate chip oatmeal.

Do you prefer sweet or salty snacks? I usually like sweet, but if I eat a salty I usually have to follow it with a sweet!

Do you drink milk or are you lactose intolerant? I was lactose intolerant until I got pregnant! Now I can drink milk but don't much unless with a warm cookie or certain meals that milk just tastes good with!

Do you like spinach? I love canned spinach with some vinegar! Ohh my mouth is watering!

Do you like liver? NO!!!!

Do you prefer milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Milk chocolate everytime! I'd rather not have any if it's not milk chocolate!

Italian, Chinese, or Mexican food? I have favorite dishes in each but I would probably choose, well, it depends on the day I guess.

Do you chew gum? No.

I tag anyone who reads this blog. Copy this post, switch my answers for yours, and post the Food Meme to your blog.

Baby LOVES watermelon

Emily is all hands these days! If it is within her reach she will try to get it and then get it into her mouth! It doesn't matter if it is your finger, your shirt, the edge of the table, or the food that you are trying to eat while holding her. We have been letting her try some of the foods we eat. Watermelon was a big hit! She sucked on it with such vigor she actually got a chunk off that I had to promptly dig out of her mouth. If she had teeth she would have devoured that piece of watermelon. She loves strawberries too! She seems too young at 4 and 1/2 months to be so into food. But who can blame her on the fruit? I ate so much fruit while I was pregnant she must have it running through her veins.

Another Digital Scrapbook Page

Here is my second attempt at a digital page. It is so much fun! I think I have a new addiction.

Link to a great digital scrapbooking site

Here is a link to a great website providing tons of free digital scrapbook stuff.
http://www.freedigitalscrapbooking.com/index.html

Digital Scrapbooking

I started scrapbooking about 13 years ago. I had one child and plenty of time to make all of these elaborate pages. My oldest child has three or four scrapbooks that are about four inches thick with double-sided pages. Then child #2 came along and I still kept up pretty well. When children #3, 4, and 5 came all at the same time I was sunk!

We are avid photographers and will take dozens if not more of the many family events like birthdays, at the park, holidays, etc. Since we have gone digital it is not exaggerating to say that I have thousands of photos from the last 8 years. That would be a fortune to print and scrapbook! Not to mention the time it will take! I have kept their school photos and miscellaneous awards and papers all organized in their scrapbooks. It is just the photos of birthdays, Cub Scouts, Christmas, etc. that are not there!

My children love to get their books out and look at them and remember all of the stories that they have been told about themselves. This is especially true of my 3 children from Kazakhstan. They each have 1 and a half books chronicling their lives from Kazakhstan to the present (what I have done).

With the digital scrapbooking world exploding I am anxious to try and scrapbook the impossible pile of digital photos that are collecting digital dust! There are so very many freebies out there for digital scrapbooking so I don't have to drive to get the paper or other scrapbook needs! I don't have to clear a space on my craft table or clean-up when I am done either!

So here is my first digitally scrapbooked page. It was totally fun! I designed the whole thing using Photoshop. I have been using Photoshop for awhile as the webmaster for my children's school. (www.compasscharter.org) The big photo in the background is of all the cars for the race, with Carson and Logan's cars 3rd and 4th up from their photo in the center.

The possibilities are just as endless are they are when you are using scissors and paper! More to come!!!!!

Blogging and Baking....

Okay, so I started making cookies for the kids after school snack. The first batch turned out beautifully! I then loaded up the baby into her stroller and away we went to meet the kids at the bus. We all came home, had some cookies and I proceeded to put another batch into the oven. I set the timer. Kids were working on their homework around the table. Grandma Murphy was there with them, someone had the baby so I thought "Aha, a moment to blog!" Upstairs I went since my laptop I had in the kitchen had died! :( Then 10 minutes went by, 20 minutes went by, and I think I smell something! "Hey Kristina, did you turn the timer off?" "Yes mom I did !" I ask myself why would I smell burnt cookies and ran downstairs. I found that yes they had turned the timer off 10 minutes ago when it went off but had only just pulled the cookies out of the oven! Needless to say they were just a little over done, I mean burnt!!!!! And this was the batch that I put nuts into for Steve. I NEVER cook with nuts! I thought chopped pecans sounded good in my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!(Pregnancy has changed me!) I was so proud of myself for putting nuts in! I was so frustrated with the kids that they would run up and just turn off the timer without telling me or looking into the oven since they knew I was making cookies for them! Well the moral of this story is not to bake and blog at the same time! (The cookies were so burnt, that Steve, who likes crunchy cookies, spit out the bite he took!!!!)

Printing your blog

I have been wanting to print my blog and LDS Mom reminded me of that. But whenever I printed it gave me blank pages before and after my post and included all of the sidebar info that I don't necessarily want to print with every post. So to Google I went!
I found a cool tool! It is a widget to add to your blog so your blog can be printed in nice format without all of the sidebar info. This widget is put onto your blog page and will show you your current month's posts and let you choose which to print. There is a printer icon at the end of every post after you have posted. Or you can use the button that is installed. It then generates a PDF of your posts! It looks great! Give it a shot!

Printing Your Blog

So sweet....

There are sweet moments in life that you just have to hang on to. Yesterday, Logan was doing his reading and I needed someone to take Emily while I helped one of the other kids. Logan says "bring her here and I will read to her". It was really fun to see how laid back Emily was sitting there or rather sliding there in his lap. Emily is so at ease with all of her brothers and sisters showering her with attention and affection. She loves to watch them jumping on the trampoline or just watch them walking around. It is great for the kids to have the opportunity to help their little sister too.

Mmmmm.....

Our ward has a cooking class once a month. They usually have a theme each time and recently the theme was wheat bread. I didn't go to the class but I did get the recipe and gave it a shot. I have been making bread since I was about 14 and have tried many recipies over the last 25+ years. This new recipe is the best! It has a couple of ingredients that I have never added to bread and wouldn't thought of one of them either. That magic ingredient is lemon juice. Apparently the citric acid helps with the yeast. This new recipe also uses gluten, which I have never used either. As you can see they are nice sized loaves. The bread is just the right consistency and moisture. The flavor is good too. The sweetener is honey. There is only 2/3 Cup for this batch of 4 loaves. This recipe mixes up in my mixer, raises once and bakes. If I have my wheat ground already I can have 4 loaves done in about 1-1/2 hrs. I really need to make 8 to last, but I would rather fresher bread and make it more often.
After making 4 loaves, there is only one left. I think if I get back to making bread regularly the novelty of fresh bread will wear off and it won't disappear as fast as it comes out of the oven. It sure does taste good!

Emily Again!

She is such a happy girl!

I run to get the camera to try

and capture those beautiful smiles!

Cub Scout Blue & Gold Banquet - Feller's Cake Bake

This year's theme of the Cub Scout Blue & Gold Banquet was Chinese New Year. The boys have to design and decorate a cake on that theme. The mother is only allowed to bake the cake. ALL of the rest is up to the boys and their dad. It is usually a last minute dash to get the cake decorated and to the church on time. It seems year after year as they give awards we always seem to get the "Most Animated" award. This year this cake got the "Best Teamwork" award. With two cub scouts this can be quite a task to just get the boys to agree on the same thing, let alone share a cake entry! The pinewood derby is up for next month, which is another father and sons activity. The excitement here is to help the boys remember to be happy for their brother if they do better than themselves. We have many discussions about being a good sport and reminding them it is supposed to be fun. Last year I think Carson and Logan did very well, but ultimately Carson's car was the faster of the two boys.

At one point we had all three boys in Cub Scouts doing a car, talk about exciting! Now ONLY two doing this stuff! This is our last Feller's Cake Bake and last Pinewood Derby! In September Logan will be going on to 11 year old Scouts and January '09 Carson will be done with Cub Scouts too! It's a good thing Steve is the Scoutmaster! I am not sure how I am going to get three boys to get their Eagle Scout done!

My Afternoon Naptime Treat

Our ward has started a "Block of the Month" enrichment group. I think I can handle getting my bed done one block at a time. I am not sure that I really want to take a year to do it though. It will be fun to learn different patterns each month and then incorporate those into one complete quilt for my bed. I have made each of the kids a quilt for their bed and I have made a number of wall quilts and lap quilts too. So now it is time to have one for my room. I am due to have a new bedroom set anyway!

I have been surfing through the blogosphere and found a great quilting blog. I have placed a link in my Fun Blogs section to Crazy Mom Quilts. This gals is quite the quilter and has online tutorials and videos. She also has quilt-a-long that looks quite fun! Check it out!

Holidays are more fun with baby!

Emily is just adorable in her bunny ears! I found these at the dollar store and just couldn't resist! Having a baby around brings excitement back to the holidays that the kids kind of outgrow a little more each year.
There are many debates over whether the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Clause are real or not. When they ask me I just tell them those who don't believe, don't receive!

A Good Book

I just finished reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. It was a very thought provoking book. It is set in Pre-revolutionary China and follows a farmer and his family from the beginnings of their farm and land ownership through to their famine days and on to their rich days. It was interesting to see how their perspectives on life changes as their income level changes. It is amazing to see how men and women are valued so differently. Family is everything regardless of the good and bad choices family members make. I am not so good at writing a review that would be motivational to reading the book. But I did enjoy it and would recommend it. It is fun to see into another culture and time. There was a movie done in the 1930s about based on this book. I think I will get it from Netflix. It will be fun to see the story brought to life.

Locks of Love!!!

We have grown Katie's hair long and really haven't cut it except for a trim here and there over the last 8 years. She had really short hair when we brought her home from the Orphanage. Recently, she decided that she would use the curling iron on her own and did a pretty good job. She has loved putting soft curlers in her hair at night to have curly hair, and not just for Sundays.

Yesterday I had my sister cut my long hair off. When Katie came home from school she saw my shorter hair and decided today was the day for her too! We have been measuring quite frequently to see if her hair is long enough to send to Locks of Love. And yes it was long enough to donate and still have hair that would be close to her shoulders. Locks of Love makes hair pieces for children with cancer. I thought it would be a cool thing for Katie to know that she could help some other little girl who is very sick to feel pretty and not feel bad about losing her hair. I told her it seemed silly to just throw the hair away if we could wait just long enough so we could donate it we could do something really nice for someone else.

So Katie tells me to be quick so she doesn't change her mind! Her shorter hair is very cute and makes her look so grown up!

Mirror Mirror on the wall.....

My sister held Emily up to the mirror in her hallway and Emily was fascinated with the baby in the mirror! It is so much fun to watch her grow and absorb the world around her! She is such a joy! And did I mention cute?

Croquet Fun!

While Grandma was here she had them working on projects around the house. They were happy to help for the most part! She also took the time to teach them a game of croquet. They had fun and it was a perfect day for it too!