better late than never

I'm a little late on my Easter post, we had a good day, my plan was to do our egg hunt after church, the day began with these cute eggs from playmobil that had a toy inside.

Church isn't until 1pm and as the girls were completely ready and ancy to hunt for more eggs we ended up doing the Easter egg hunt before church, it was lots of fun.

This is not at all related, when I was primary president we gave a towel like this to each child turning 8. I lucked out because my super talented 2nd counselor made them all, I think she free handed the CTR and did a tight zigzag stitch around the letters, she made about 8 of them in an hour, its fairly inexpensive too because a plain white towel is only a few dollars and she used scrap fabric for the letters, they were super cute and so I wanted to make one for my friend in England (the one who introduced me to the gospel) who has a daughter turning 8 this month. I used this idea, I really need friends to sew with, I was having problems sewing mine, problems with the machine, needle, material who knows what, it took me about 3 hours. I'm pleased with how it turned out though, I just hope it arrives in time!

self control & geriatric dogs

I've been feeling a little blah! lately, I eat too much sugar and watch too much TV, these things are becoming apparent as I have gained about 15lbs since leaving LA which sucks because I have also been working out 4 days a week, I'm also tired most of the time because I stay up late watching TV, then I'm tired the next day so after my girls go to bed I'm too tired to do anything and so I watch TV, stay up too late and the cycle repeats itself. So this week I am on a no sugar no TV break, I'm an all or nothing type and saying I am just going to eat a small treat each day or just watch 1 show doesn't work. Anyway, so far so good, a few sugar cravings but I'm managing and for my diversion from TV I checked out a book from the library, An Assembly Such as This, its Pride & Prejudice from Darcy's perspective, I'm only 1 chapter in but enjoying it so far and not feeling so brain dead from watching TV.

Then this is our dog, she's old, she just turned 12, see all that gray? the past few weeks she's been hobbling around, on Saturday 1/2 way around the block she gave up and sat down, Eric had to wait with her until she was ready to get up, we've been pretty worried about her so I took her to the vet on Monday, guess what he told me? "she's old" he also told me 3 of her 4 legs were hurting, he gave me some pain meds for her so we are going to see if they help, its really sad to watch her struggle, I think it makes me wonder if this is what old age is like, it creeps up on you and kinda sucks.

Spring break adventures day 5

Yeah, again not so adventurous, here is what my girls did Friday morning, something they do fairly often and love to do, color while listening to Junie B Jones on the ipod, then went grocery shopping, oh and apparently Kate did some photography.

Spring Break adventures - day 3 & 4

Yesterday and today have not been so exciting or adventurous, the girls went to grandma's yesterday to play with their cousins and I headed to the DMV to get my Utah license and register my car here, I guess that means we're staying. Today the girls and I went to see HOP, I know it got terrible reviews but I actually thought it was OK as far as a movie could be with a talking bunny in it, the girls liked it too. What made it even better was that for the 11:45 show we were having some projector issues, by the time they decided it wasn't going to work it was 12:20 and the next show was at 1pm, we all got free tickets plus if you took your ticket stubs to the kiosk we could exchange them for the 1pm showing, so we got to see HOP for free plus now I have 3 free tickets. I'm a little frugal when it comes to buying concessions at the movie theater but as it was lunch time and we had free tickets I bought a big tub of popcorn for the girls.

When we got home from the movies Sara's new doll house had arrived, she began talking before Christmas about getting a new doll house, she already had the fisher price one so I told her if she sold the one she had she could get a new one, we sold the other one a few months ago, after it sold I asked her if she wanted me to order the new one to which she replied that she wanted to wait a while, not sure what we were waiting for but fine by me, then on Monday Sara asked "when is my new doll house getting here?" and so I ordered it, today it arrived, took about 2 hrs to put together, its cute and she and Kate had a lot of fun playing with it. Also I hit a home run with dinner tonight making these, usually someone doesn't like dinner but tonight everyone loved it, I substituted ground turkey and doubled the sauce.

Spring Break Adventures - Day 2

So day two didn't bring anything as exciting as hiking the Y, the girls wanted to go swimming and so that was pretty much our outing of the day. During spring break or any holiday from school for that matter my kids I'm sure are like most others in the fact that they want to watch TV and play video games to their hearts desire, I'm not opposed to either of these but if I allowed it I'm sure these activities would begin as soon as they woke up, in order to delay this as much possible I make the girls a chore chart. I'm not great at giving my girls chores, I never had chores growing up but I have come up with somethings that I want them to do each day, their chores aren't all that difficult, some are just good habit forming things like saying their morning prayers (we usually do a family prayer in the morning but I am bad at having them kneel by their bed an saying their own individual prayer), brushing their teeth and some are things that I want to get done like walk the dog, tidying up the bathroom and wiping down the counters, making their beds and some are just things they need to do before TV like reading for 20 mins (for Kate) and practicing letters for Sara. I did add a few things that I haven't done before that I want the girls to start doing like set the table for dinner and clear the table and wipe it (if they finish everything else they can watch TV or play the wii before these chores as these can only happen right at dinner time), so far so good, another I added is for one of then each day to help prepare dinner, here is a picture of Sara peeling sweet potatoes for dinner, she really liked doing it and did amazing and yes she made a mess but it swept up in no time once she was done.

So anyway, like I said its not really stuff they have to do, I like them playing together and if they do that for a few hours in the morning and don't get their chores done until 3pm so be it, the only consequence of not doing their chores is no TV or video games until they do, yesterday (yeah only day 2) Kate announced she wasn't doing her chores that day, fine with be but by 6pm she was scrambling to get them done because she wanted to play the wii for a little while.

Spring break adventures - Day 1

The girls have the week off school this week, yipee, I love it. Today we hiked to the Y on the mountain in Provo, it was a beautiful day, the trail which is 1.2 miles to the top wasn't too bad, fairly steep on the first few switchbacks but the last 5 or so aren't too steep, good thing because the closer we got to the top the more snow there was. The Y was covered in snow so I really want to take the girls up again when they can actually see it. Beautiful day, beautiful spring weather and we got totally fried, got to remember the sunscreen next time!

The beginning of the hike and around the first switchback there was still snow.

View from the top, Kate is flexing her "I made it" muscles.

Field Trip Friday

Today Kate has a field trip to the Hogle Zoo, wish her 1st grade luck, today it is rain/snowing and in the low 40's but you couldn't find a more excited 1st grader. To get the girls to school on time we need to be out of the door by 8:20, usually around that time I'm hustling them "hurry up, we gotta get going" today however by 8am Kate was asking "can we go already?"