Pippi Longstocking Night!

I surprised the girls one evening with a Pippi Longstocking Night!  I told them we were having pizza for dinner.  We went to Little Caesars and picked up pizza.  But then when we got home I told them I was very sorry, but the kitchen floor was atrocious and needed cleaned before we could eat.  I then threw bunch of bubbles I quickly mixed up all over the kitchen floor with a bit of water and played "Scrubbing Day" from Pippi Longstocking.  They giggled and scrubbed the floor by skating around to the music with rags on their feet.  Then I told them we were "running away" and we ran away to the deck and had a picnic with our pizza.  When that was over we came inside and I told them there was a "splunk" on the loose and we can't touch the floor.  So we climbed through an obstacle course of chairs and pillows.  At the end I handed out instruments and we had a parade.  Then, of course we ended with the Pippi Longstocking movie - but not before we had chocolate cookies for a treat.  And of course I had to throw the cookies at them, just like Pippi threw the ice cream to the kids in the movie. It was such a fun, memorable evening.  I love nights with out of the ordinary family activities "just for fun."  

If You Give a Child Some Felt......

Meet Hansel and Gretel.  We have 2 fully stocked art stacked crates of art supplies right next to our kitchen table.  Using felt, scissors, tape, and a little imagination and this little girl is never bored.

One Homeschool Day March - AKA St. Patricks Day!

Time to share one day of our homeschool in the month of March.  I picked our family's celebration of St. Patrick's Day.  Not exactly a typical day, but a fun one to record.  Also, it actually takes place on March 21st, since Daddy was flying on the 17th and since we couldn't have it then, Friday seemed like a great party day.  ;)

12:00 - Sleeping

3:45 - Up to nurse Adam

6:23 - Nurse Adam

7:47 - Woke up for the day.  Daddy watched Adam while I showered and dressed and got everyone else up. Everyone dressed (in green, of course!) and came downstairs.

8:30 - We had our special St. Patrick's Day breakfast.  I NEVER buy cereal with marshmallows.  It just doesn't seem like a healthy breakfast at all.  EXCEPT one day a year.  St. Patrick's Day we always buy Lucky Charms and the girls look forward to it.  So everyone ate Lucky Charms while they watched Curious George.

Unfortunately it looks like a leprechaun has been to our house and stolen one of everyone's shoes and hid them in silly places.  They haven't found them yet, but when they do, they will pleased because there is a few pieces of candy in each shoe.

We dressed Adam up in a St. Patrick's Day hat and took a few pictures.  

Emily's  pants she was going to wear were still in the drier so she designed a blanket skirt to wear.  

9:42 - We have our morning devotional.  We say a prayer and sing "Families Can Be Together Forever."  Then we read a book I got from the library all about Rainbows.  It's fascinating and even I learn something. After that I pulled out a Magic School Bus Science kit that their Nana got them for Christmas that I have been saving.  It's all about Rainbows!  Perfect!  So they spent the next hour going through every experiment.  

Adam was having fun playing with Daddy's boots during part of this time.  I also read him a couple of stories and played with him when the girls didn't need my help.

Bubbles were part on one experiment and Adam was fascinated.

11:12 - They finished all the experiments and Alexis baked some cupcakes for our party tonight.

Emily and Ashley drew St. Patrick's Day decorations on our living room windows with dry erase markers.

They made some rainbows and shamrocks to decorate.

Of course the younger sisters had to lick the cupcake bowl.

12:16 - Everyone got lunch and we read a St. Patrick's Day story. 

Ashley finishing her apple while watching a bird outside.

12:47 - The children head outside to play in these beautiful, sunny temperatures.  Ashley took her doll along with her that she fashioned a partial construction paper dress for.  

The older two girls took off and rode their bike and scooter around the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, Emily took a spill and scraped herself up pretty bad, so they ended up walking the last bit home.

I nurseed and bandaged her up and she rested on the couch for an hour or so, watching "The Andy Griffith Show" while everyone else continued to play outside.

Adam enjoyed crawling around and playing with nature....and eating dirt.

She ran inside to make some shoes for her doll.

Adam had fun in the sandbox.

Alexis pushed the little ones on the swings.

Ashley dug for treasure.

Daddy was working on building a greenhouse and Alexis was his assistant.  She helped hold and measure things.  He's hoping to have it done in the next day or so and then he'll move this garden barrel thing he built inside and start growing things right away.

Emily began feeling better so she joined us outside again.

5:12 - Everyone headed back inside and we washed up and ate dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, and salad.  

6:00 - After dinner everyone did their evening chores and then they frosted the cupcakes for our party.  Grandma and Aunt Becca came up for Aunt Becca's Spring Break and got to be here for our party, too.

We also made Shamrock pretzels.  

7:00 - My little leprechauns were ready for our family St. Patrick's Day party.

We played toss the gold coins into the leprechaun's pot.

Next we played find the leprechaun's coin.  After that we played their favorite game.  Daddy is the leprechaun and he has a pot of gold (a pot of chocolate).  He hides the pot in one spot and himself in another.  The goal is to find the pot of gold before you find the leprechaun.  If you find the leprechaun first, then he gets to tickle you and then rushes off to a new hiding spot.  I believe they found the leprechaun 6 times before they finally found the pot of gold.  :)

After that we put on Darby O'Gill and had a yummy fruit rainbow along with the pretzels and cupcakes.  After a couple of snacks, I put Adam to bed.

9:45 - We read scriptures, sung a hymn, said a prayer and everyone headed to bed.  I cleaned up a little and then Don and I talked with my mom and sister a bit before heading to bed.

Playdough Fun

I love peaceful, relaxing morning.  This morning little ones happily played with play dough while Alexis and I read a bit in her "Beautiful Girlhood" book.

When Mother Cleans....

This seems to happen EVERY TIME.  I find an out of the ordinary project that needs done.  Today it was the library room.  Our bookshelves were a mess.  These are the set of bookshelves I keep the children's books and music books.  I didn't take a before picture, but basically I emptied every shelf, did some major purging of books that really didn't add to the intellectual/virtue/beauty of our home, and then dusted and put the beloved books back on the shelves.  Meanwhile children were running in and out, chatting with me, playing, offering to help here and there, and basically having free range of the rest of the home.  When I was finished, my bookshelves looked so pretty and clean.  And then I walked into the hallway and noticed the playroom.  And then the living room.  Oh, well.  At least my bookshelves in the library room looked clean.  And we all pitched in and had the rest of the house tidied before too long.

Visiting Aunt Becca's School

We visited Grandma and Grandpa for a few days and on one of those days they had a snow day for the local schools.  Aunt Becca is a long term substitute teacher and still had to be there so we went over to her school to visit her.  Imagine my surprise to find out she was teaching in the exact same classroom that I did my student teaching in!  Back then it was Mrs. Edward's 2nd grade class.  It was always neat, tidy, and friendly.  Now it is a 2nd grade classroom to a different lady who doesn't keep it so tidy.  There is A LOT of extra stuff around, but Becca deals with it gracefully and does an excellent job teaching.  We enjoyed visiting Aunt Becca and seeing where she teaches and it brought back a lot of memories for me.  

Stake Conference

I snapped a couple of pictures with my phone during Stake Conference.  They were really reverent the first hour and 45 minutes.  But the last 15 minutes these two little ones got a bit antsy on those hard chairs.  (To be honest, so did we.)  So we let them quietly play with a little ball on the floor.  It all was going well until Ashley didn't pass the ball quickly enough to Adam and he consequently let out an ear piercing scream.  Everyone around us just laughed as Don quickly scooped him up.