Feeding the Goats

Every morning lately the first thing Ashley asks is if she can go feed the goats.  She's scared of them if she's in the fence with them or if they are out of the fence with her but she LOVES them when they are properly contained.  :)  She picks grass and flowers and other weeds and feeds them through the fence. They eat it happily even though they have the exact same stuff on their side of the fence.  They just love the attention she gives them.

A Fairy Spotting

Tonight we were having a movie night watching Bambi when Alexis called out excitedly that she saw a fairy.  She said she was sure she saw one fly past Emily's head.  Emily was quite disappointed she didn't see it, but still happy that Alexis did.  We're hoping to do a fun little fairy day this month since it is national fairy month and the girls love fairies so much.  (They have for years.)  I'm trying to find fun little crafts and activities to do, complete with a picnic outdoors to see if we can spot any of the mythical little creatures.  :)

Ashley's Special Day

We had Ashley's 4th Birthday party a few days before her birthday so that all the grandparents could be there. But on her actual birthday I wanted to make it a special day for her.  So we took her to her favorite park in the morning, fed some ducks, went out for an ice cream cone, baked some cupcakes, played with bubbles, played a few of her favorite board games like Candyland and Busytown game.  We also played a few of her favorite pretend games like baby bunny, baby dolls, and mommy witch/fairy, and read lots of stories.  It was a sweet special day that we all enjoyed spending with her.  :)

Memorial Day

Memorial Day we woke up early and headed over to the church for a great breakfast.  They had eggs with veges, bacon, pancakes, and fresh fruit.  Ashley had never had bacon before and she was impressed!  With every bite she kept saying "Yum!  This is so good!"  :)  After that we headed back to the house and prepared things for our barbecue.   The grandparents and my brother and sister were already up here since we had Ashley's birthday party yesterday and we also invited Don's brother and sister and their families up, as well.  It was a lot of fun.  We had plenty of great food and the kids had a blast playing in water and running around outside.  I think the slip and slide was the favorite, although the water kept going out, since it had been so dry and we're have well water.  But they still had fun with the little wading pool and had lots of water fights.  We're so glad everyone was able to come up and visit.  :)

Ashley's 4th Birthday

We had a sweet little family party with the grandparents for Ashley's 4th Birthday this year.  She has been talking about her birthday for weeks now!  She has been so excited to have a party with "Pink balloons, presents, and pink cupcakes."  :)  She decided on a baby doll theme so I printed out pictures of baby dolls and accessories and taped them to the wall along with her pink balloons and streamers.  She picked out all the decorations herself at the dollar store, including a pink mylar balloon that said "It's a Girl" on it.  We had to laugh at that and agree that she was a girl.  On the day of the party she gave her very first scripture in church.  She did so great and wasn't shy at all about getting up in front of everyone.  Later in the afternoon we had the party.  We started out with  games.  We played baby crawling races, toss the baby toys into the toy chest, and pin the pacifier on the baby.  Then the girls and I did a puppet show for her.  She wanted to join in, as well, so she had fun doing it with us.  It was all about some big sisters taking care of a baby.  It was really cute.  :)  Then she opened her gifts.  She received a new pink princess dress, dress up shoes, a crown, twin baby dolls, a snow white play set, twin princess babies, a magnetic play set, a little tent, a scooter, and an alphabet magnet play set.  EVERY gift she opened she would cry out, "Oh!  It's my FAVORITE!  I love it!"  It was so sweet.  She gave everyone hugs and kisses afterwards.  Then we lit her four little candles on top of one of her pink cupcakes and sang to her.  She was so happy.  :)  I think she only licked the icing off the top of the cupcake and then she ran off to play wit her new toys.  Ashley is such a sweet little girl.  She loves her big sisters and are always following them around and wanting to play with them.   She loves princesses, babies, and pink.  She love to play outside in the water and to feed our goats.  She loves reading books with Mommy and playing board games with her family.  She doesn't care if she wins or loses.  She just loves to play and will actually try to "cheat" on purpose in ways to make the game last longer.  :)  We love her so much and love having her in our family.  We are so blessed by her sweet little spirit.  :)

Puppets With Grandma and Grandpa

Our kids have truly wonderful grandparents on both sides of the family.  We are so blessed to be able to live near them so they can have a wonderful relationship and memories of them someday as adults.  My parents come every other week to stay at our house for a night or two as they work at the temple.  They always call ahead of time when they are turning into our neighborhood to "call out the watch out!"  The girls then run to the front window to watch them pull up.  This is always followed by jumping up and down and squeals of "Grandma!  Grandpa!"  My parents are really good about playing with our kids.  They play all sorts of make believe games with them such as "Grandpa Tiger" and "Baby Poor".  On this particular night they were playing puppets with them.  It was so fun for them as they did the various voices and made up silly stories.  I know these will always be moments they will treasure.

Life of Fred

This is a VERY popular way to find Alexis these days.  This is a new math series called "Life of Fred" and it is WONDERFUL!  The whole series from Elementary Math clear through Calculus uses a story format and shows kids how math is interwoven into real life.  There are lots of problems they figure out along the way and they REALLY start to crave and LOVE math!  Alexis has been working her way independently through the elementary books - there is no way she would even consider waiting for me, she is so much in LOVE with this series, LOL.  :)  The earlier ones are more of a review for her and even the later ones are stuff she had just learned, for the most part.  I figure she'll be through them in a couple of more months and we'll start on the fractions and percentages book.  As for Emily, we're working through the series together and she LOVES it too and looks forward to the next chapter every day.  :)

Mommy's Beauty Parlor and Tea Party

The girls were all needing hair trims and so I thought I would make it fun for them by making a beauty parlor game out of it.  I've done this before and we always have so much fun with it.  :)  I set up a little table and got out their play makeup and some light pink nail polish.  I had a waiting room set up with "magazines" - aka picture books - where they all waited for their turn.  I made sure to speak in a nice southern accent to make it even more fun.  I trimmed their hair, painted their toenails, and applied some play makeup.  They LOVED it, as usual, and when I was done, they insisted on doing me, as well.  They did my hair and painted my toenails and applied some play makeup to me.  Unfortunately my lips started tingling from the makeup they put on me so I quickly washed it off and then I took one benadryl to be on the safe side.  After we cleaned up from beauty parlor I took their pictures and then we went to our tea party.  We used our little porcelain Winnie the Pooh tea party dishes and had the cookies we baked yesterday.  After that we went upstairs and the girls played while I worked on cleaning out the homeschool supply closet.  Unfortunately the benadryl kicked in and I ended up laying down on the bed in the room they were playing and fell asleep.  I woke up and hour and a half later at 5:45, with no dinner prepared.  They were so sweet and had played so quietly and not even complained of being hungry.  So I put them in the car and we drove to get Little Ceasars.  It wasn't until I was back in the car driving home that I realized why people were looking at me weird at the pizza shop.  Apparently I forgot I was still wearing the hairstyle they had given me.  :)

Digging a Pool and Little Worms

We were sitting out back relaxing one day when we somehow started discussing that it would be neat to have one of those above ground popup type pools that the kids could swim in all summer.  But I said it was impossible because our land is so uneven.  Don started looking at it and said he thought he could level an area out.  We debated back and forth for a couple of weeks - I am the most indecisive person in the world - and we decided to give it a try!  While Don was out of town the girls and I have been going out every evening for about an hour and digging.  It's a slow process for us, but Don is much quicker, so we'll see how it goes.  They are having fun, though and Ashley discovered lots of worms in the ground.  I talked her into holding one and she loved it!  She tells me they are very tickley.  :)

Sleeping Princess

Ashley has been wanting to dress very feminine and all in pink, lately.  She wants to wear dresses everyday.  At night pink pajamas with tops and bottoms are alright as long as she can wear her pink sparkly dress up skirt over top of it.  ;)  She also loves her little baby piglet and carries him to bed every night to sleep with.  Sometimes she'll come downstairs and lay on our ottoman and fall asleep next to me, like she is in this picture.  It's so sweet and I enjoy the time snuggling her while I read or work on our family webpage.  :)

Mother/Daughter Activity night

For Activities Day at church they had a mother/Daughter activity.  Alexis was so excited that I got to go with her again - I had helped out at a sewing activity just a few weeks earlier.  The girls made crowns and then they did their mother's hair.  I really lucked out.  Alexis is such a sweetie and so she decided to just pull my hair into two sweet braids and put green bows at the end "so they would match my shirt."  ;)  She kept asking me the whole time if I were sure this was alright, because she didn't want to embarrass me.  She kept looking around the room and shaking her head and saying, "I feel sorry for some of these moms."  :)  Everyone had fun, though, and were good sports.  At the end they talked a bit about manners and had refreshments.  It was a very nice evening.

Happy Mother's Day!

I had such a nice Mother's Day thanks to my sweet family.  :)  This morning Alexis set her alarm clock so she and Emily could get up early and cook me breakfast in bed. Alexis made me some scrambled eggs and Emily made the toast. Then Daddy added some fruit and orange juice to my tray. Ashley was sleeping with me when they all three came into the bedroom. The woke me up singing to me and Ashley woke up at the same time. She saw the girls with the tray and stretched and said, "Oh! Thank you so much!" :) The rest of the day was great, too. The three girls serenaded me with "Mother I Love You" this afternoon.  They had been practicing it all week.  I would hear them sneaking off to practice it upstairs.  It was so cute.  Alexis would lead the other two girls and was such a little teacher to them gently correcting them and having them repeat lines.  :)  When they performed it , they all held hands and swayed with the music.  They replaced the word "mother" with "mommy".  It was darling and I videotaped it.  They also each gave me adorable little homemade cards, and a new ice cream maker we can use for homemade ice cream this summer. I am so thankful I get the opportunity to be the mother to three such precious little girls. ♥  I am also so thankful for my own mother.  She is such as big part of my life and of who I am today.  She taught me so much and is always there whenever I need her.  I love her so much.  

Jumping Rope

Ever since we read "The Secret Garden", Alexis has been interested in jumping rope.  Every day she goes outside after lunch and tries to see how many times in a row she jump.  She has asked me what Jump Roping rhymes I know of she can chant while she jumps and I've taught her a few and a couple of her friends have taught her a couple more.  She also makes up her own.  She's determined to make it to 100 jumps in a row. It's really cute to watch her practice so hard and with such determination.  :)

Super Moon and Star Gazing

We decided Sunday Evening to let the girls stay up late and look at the stars and moon through the telescope Alexis got for her birthday.  It was an absolutely PERFECT night for it!  We put Ashley to bed and at 9:00 we headed outside and set up some chairs.  It took us a while to find the stars through the telescope but we finally got the hang of it.  We saw a few stars and Venus, as well.  The moon finally rose above the trees enough for us to view it and it was spectacular!  It looked s neat through the telescope.  About this time I went to check on Ashley and she was awake and crying because she couldn't find anyone. :(  So I wrapped her in a blanket and gave her dozens of kisses and told her we were so sorry and asked if she wanted to come out with us to look at the moon.   She was very happy about this and she cuddled on my lap for quite a while while we all gazed at the moon and, of course, took a turn looking through the telescope.  It was so relaxing just sitting there talking and enjoying the beauty.  We all sang the "Goodbye" song from "Bear in the Big Blue House" that he sings with Luna together.  Then a little after 11:00 we decided we should really call it a night and took them back inside.   Emily said she was chilly and wanted hot chocolate so Daddy fixed some and I got "Leave it to Beaver" on to watch while we sipped our cocoa and Ashley fell back to sleep on the ottoman with her little pillow and blanket.  It was a beautiful night.  :)

Baby Bunnies

Grandma holding one of the bunnies

the bunnies' nest

We had some high winds here that blew over our goat house.  I went out to look at it and found a pile of fur on the ground on what would have been the inside of the goat's house.  I moved it a bit with my foot and saw something moving under it.  I peeked and thought it was a nest of baby mice with a mother.  So I decided the next day I would get a shovel and dig out around them and transfer them to Dawe's Auboritum so we wouldn't have mice multiplying in our woods.  So the next day I moved the fur again to ensure the mother was with them and I thought I saw the mother, only there were three of them and they were all the same size.  So I got to looking closer and realized they were 3 baby bunnies!  There was no way were going to move them!  :)  We had read online that the mother isn't bothered by human smell and she actually only comes once a night between 12:00 and 5:00 to feed her babies for 5 minutes.  We read if you check them first thing in the morning and their tummies are full and they are nice and warm, you know the mother is taking care of them.  So we checked them every morning and they were well cared for.  But the were inside the goat's house and I was always worried one the goats were going to step on them or lay down on top of them and smother them.  Well their mother must have felt the same way because after a week, she moved them.  :(  We read if she feels they are in danger at all she will do this.  We were very sad, especially the girls.  We've searched and searched but have been unable to find them.  We figure in a few more weeks we might find some little bunnies hopping around our strawberry patch and then we'll know it's them.  :)