The Sun!

By the time we hit our like 300th rain day in a row, you can bet we were ready to get out of town for Memorial Day weekend.  Now, I'm used to spending the day at the cemetary, but this trip was fun too.  We headed to Hurricane (pronounce that Hurr-i-cun, ya'll) to hang out with my brother, Mark his wife Elaine, my sister Betsey, and all the cousins.  Here are a few of the highlights (and lowlights...)

Got in late Thursday night.  Highlight of the drive? Eating at Jason's Deli and figuring out how to rig up the laptop to watch a movie. 

Lowlight: My brother had some kind of episode Friday morning scaring us into thinking he had had some kind of heart attack or blod clot issue.  It's too long of a story, but he hurt his leg a couple of months ago and the troubles keep on coming!  Still not sure what happened, but they did find pneumonia so he was admitted.

Highlight: The kids were having a blast playing with each other and had no problems whatsoever!  Elaine was able to stay quite a while at the hospital, I was able to go in and visit, and John got to read and read and read.  That night we took a nice walk to an awesome park for a change of scenery.

Highlight:  Saturday we found out the age restriction had been lifted for Mark's floor so we ALL went in to see him.  That's 5 adults and 11 kids.  We had a great time.  The littler kids even left him a nice present of hot breath and fingerprints all over the window. 

After that we ate a picnic lunch on the Tabernacle lawn, then walked a few paces to the town square (sounds so quaint!) to the new splash park and water ways.  Best part?  FREE!  And the kids had a blast. 

One of the following two pictures is a pose and one is not...any ideas which is which?

Lowlight:  Ran into an old highschool pal and completely forgot her name.  Wouldn't be so bad but I ran into her at Christmas and did the same thing.  BRAIN???  WHERE ARE YOU???

Highlight:  Ran home, bathed my kids, and sent them all (yes, 11 of them) to see Kung Fu Panda 2.  No adults this time.  We headed into the hospital with Bajio food in tow for a nice relaxing dinner.  Mark had other visitors while we ate and then some, (including my awesome Uncle Dale!) and then we got down to business.  You know how they say laughter is the best medicine?  Well, he should be doing fine now!  We were laughing and carrying on that the nurse told us she could hear us with the door closed.  At one point he was supposed to be taking his tylenol, when something set him off.  The tylenol and water went spewing all over the bed, the floor, and his gown.  Elaine had to do the cross-legged hop into the bathroom as fast as she could! 

Lowlight:  We thought he'd be home on Sunday but it was not to be.  He still had a fever and that had to be dealt with before the discharge.

Highlight:  When Elaine and Melanie (my neice) played their piano duet in Sacrament Meeting, someone on the stand called so Mark could hear it.  Phones do come in handy!  Sunday afternoon included lots of yummy food and yummy naps.  And the kids did the dishes!  Here are Maeci and Jack doing their share:

Highlight: Monday morning I got to go to Ace to look around. (It's not just a hardware store!)  Plus, free popcorn.  Nice.  Mark came home about an hour before we wanted to leave so we were glad to see him!  We stopped at Cove Fort on the way home and remembered why we went to Hurricane.  Freezing! (I guess that part was a lowlight).  Made it home just after 10.  Katie Anne fell asleep about 15 minutes before we got here.  Debating the use of Benadryl on our next trip!

Wacky Wednesday

Last week I had planned to make these cute little bird nests with the kids for Wacky Wednesday, but due to a lack of supplies I thought I had on hand and also a lack of energy, we went with using water color pencils instead.  They are not messy, require little to no clean up or set up,everyone liked it, and we added to our spring decorations anyway!  By prefacing it with "There is only one color of each pencil so we have to be so nice and share" we did all right!

I showed them the two ways to go...one is where you color directly on the picture, then use a little water to sort of smooth it out.  The other is to draw a nice patch on a scratch paper, then dip your wet (but not too wet!) paint brush in the color and paint as you would with any other water color.  I think they all turned out fun.  One of my kids isn't too hip on the artsy stuff.  It's hard for him to not be able to get his hands to do what his mind can see (I for sure know how that feels! Story of my life!) but I'm proud of him for trying and not getting too frustrated.

Jane was upset about this same issue...I told her she could use them whenever she wanted and then maybe by the time she was big she would be as good as she wanted.  She threw her paintbrush and yelled, "What if I never buy these when I'm big?!"  Ummm....

Yesterday for Wacky Wednesday we flipflopped our evening and afternoon.  Right after school we headed to USU here in Brigham to listen to some story tellers.  The first one was an 8 year old little girl who performed Pinkalicious.  She did a great job and remembered everything with out the book or cue cards start to finish.  I don't know if I could do that!   The next gal was in high school and recited Heckedy Peg which is a fun story about doing as your mother tells you.  Two professors read the True Story of the Three Little Pigs.  I was thinking while I was listening that I should have entered.  I may not be a professional, but I'm a pretty good story reader (I'm not too good at memorizing so I'll have to see if that's required...).  Anyway, it was a fun little activity.  Our evening was then spent in practicing, homework, laundry folding...good times.

Wacky Wednesday...

Last week the kids wanted a real Wacky Wednesday, not the kind where I haul all the laundry downstairs and we watch a movie while we fold the clothes.  So, Jack loaned me his book and kit he won in a "Beat the Teach" reading contest at school.  He won the science kit and another book on weird facts and we found out that some perfume is actually made with whale vomit.  Yup.  Makes you smell real purty.  Anyway, this science kit had some fun and easy things to do, including little packets for some of the experiments.  One packet had diaper dust in it.  After dumping it in a ziplock bag, you add water a little at a time and see just how much water a tablespoon of diaper dust can hold.  Let me tell ya, it kind of makes me feel bad for some of my really bad mommy days when their diapers hung down to their knees.  Sorry kids.

The other packet held GID powder.  I didn't know what GID meant until I read the experiment and just for your texting information, GID means Glow-In-the-Dark!  Nice!  So we made up the goo and slathered it all over our hands and ran in the closet, together, to wave our hands around and ooh and aah. 

The next one you can do without any little fancy packets.  Pour some milk in a rectangular dish, then put a drop of food coloring in the milk.  Put one drop of dishwashing liquid on top of the food coloring and the food coloring "SWIRLS AROUND MADLY".  (Direct quote from the book).  We thought it was so pretty, we took a picture of it. As you can see, we tried lots of colors and put them around the edges then they swirled around madly. 

This week was Wacky Wednesday all day in honor of Jane's 6th birthday.  She has talked about it almost since her last birthday so I felt just a teeny bit of pressure to make it fun.  We started with cold cereal, since she had requested breakfast for dinner we didn't have to do much this morning!  She was so excited to have Grandparent's Day at school today and got to wear her crown through the whole program.  Grandma and Grandpa Morrill brought her first present of the day, and she was thrilled to get a couple of fun cards in the mail. 

I put her presents out early to build a little anticipation and it worked...she was very excited!  After dinner breakfast we headed to the highschool for a stake talent show, but ditched out early for cake.  Thank you very much, I made that myself, and yes, it is very lopsided but who cares, eh!

So, there you have it, Wacky Wednesday.  And because I was feeling kind of wacky by the end of a long day, I made these...

because I could not find one thing with green on it for Jane to wear to school tomorrow so we made something very obvious to keep her from getting pinched!  Inspired by Pikadilly Charm, (mine are just barrettes).

Wacky Wednesday

My mom came over with a Wacky Wednesday craft after school on Wednesday...my sister and niece joined in on the fun.  We took clear glass ornaments and dripped paint in them and let the paint colors swirl together.  They turned out kind of pretty, though we tried to rush the process a little.  Here are some instructions if you want to try it out for yourself: http://www.save-on-crafts.com/howtomakcero.html.

Since we did it in the afternoon we still had the evening to face with John at young mens.  I hate to say that I had been in a pretty bad mood ALL day (hate PPD!!!).  Anyway, we decided to head to Shopko and find a present for John from the kids and see some Christmas lights on the way.  We stopped at the Tabernacle to see the nativity up close and I'm happy to say that my mood changed (mostly) for the better.  It's too bad I didn't go at 7:00 that morning!  We found what we wanted for John at shopko, even found some cute teacher gifts (thank you clearance BEFORE the holiday!) and almost made it out of the store in tact, only remembering at the last minute that Jeffrey has TWO teachers at school so we retraced our steps to make sure she got the same thing as his other teacher. You might imagine how that ended up...losing at least one of the kids at every turn, everyone having to go to the bathroom or get a drink, having to pass up the toy isles, then still checking out.  Anyway, the moral of the story is, to get in a better mood, visit the nativity, and also, remember how many teachers your kids have.