Easter Baking

We decided to try a new cookie recipe before Easter. I got the recipe from here and the idea is that you use pastel colored M&Ms on top of green-dyed oatmeal cookies so that it looks like Easter eggs hiding in the grass. I found egg-shaped pastel M&Ms and thought I'd hit the jackpot. They were pretty fun and very yummy.

Cat was an enthusiastic helper, as always.

Jack was an enthusiastic sampler, as always.
Eliza had a good time hanging out with us in the kitchen.

And when the older two got bored, they helped out by washing dishes. Er... sort of. At least, there was water and dishes involved.

Do they look like Easter eggs hiding in the grass?

Who cares. At least they tasted good.


A couple of weeks later we made Resurrection Rolls for the first time (I used the top recipe on this page). I'm sure most of you have heard of these, but just in case... you use prepared dough (I happened to have some biscuit dough in the fridge and it worked fine) or you make your own dough, and wrap it around a marshmallow. The marshmallow represents Christ's body in a tomb, and when you bake the roll, the marshmallow "disappears." The roll is hollow when you bite into it, just like Christ's tomb was empty on Easter morning.


While I made the rolls with Cat and Jack, Ben kept Eliza happy by making silly faces.


And, for the record, these were pretty yummy too. (But next time I think I'd rather make my own dough. I'll probably try biscuit dough before anything else. My friend Paula Deen gave me a really good and easy recipe.)

We went twice in one week.

We've lived 30 minutes from Fort Frederica National Monument for the last 4 1/2 years. We finally visited at the beginning of April.


Fort Frederica has a really interesting history. It was established in 1736 by James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony of Georgia. At the time, Georgia was considered debatable land between England and Spain, so Fort Frederica was built to protect the English from the Spanish in Florida. It never got very big - only about 500 colonial residents - but it had two notable residents in addition to James Oglethorpe.


John and Charles Wesley, eventual founders of the Methodist Church, led a movement for people to seek to have a personal experience with Jesus Christ.

Here is a depiction of what Fort Frederica probably looked like in the 1730s-1740s...


And this is what it looks like today...


My sister, Megan, brought her family down for a few days during Spring Break hoping to spend some time at the beach. But it ended up being too cool for the beach, so we took a trip out to see the Fort instead.


Ben was working when I went with our kids and Megan's family, and it turned out that our admission was good for 7 days, so our whole family went back that weekend for free. Awesome!

I thought the history of the settlement was really interesting - I always try to imagine living in a time and place like the one I'm visiting, but I can never really see myself doing it. They were in a tiny town an ocean away from everything familiar to them. They lived under constant fear of attack. The houses were tiny. And knowing how bad the bugs are now, living as close to the marsh as these folks did, I can only imagine how bad they were before pest control existed. Life must have been tough! But at least they could enjoy these views every day. I think that would have helped me.


Yep, the beauty of the landscape was the most impressive thing to me about our visit. These pictures do NOT do it justice.

Sorry, I feel like I'm rambling. What's this blog about again? Oh yeah. Our kids. So... they had a great time. Cat was somewhat interested in the history. Jack was very interested in walking on the ruins and, well, you're actually not supposed to do that. Eliza was happy just to hang out with Mom and/or Dad. It was a great place to visit. Twice.

Visiting Great Grandpa

We took a couple of days at the beginning of Spring Break to drive down to South Florida to visit my Grandpa. Here are my kids + my cousin's daughter, Nancy (same age as Jack) + my Grandpa.

My Dad (known 'round these parts as Pops) and Kyle were visiting too, so we all had a good time together. Of course, the pool was Cat's favorite! And we spent as much time outside as we could... let's just say the kids couldn't do as much damage out there as they could in the house!

Grandpa and Pops gave the kids little Easter baskets with some fun surprises in them. The bubbles were a big hit!
One of my goals during the visit was to find out more about some old photos that belong to my Grandpa. We spent a lot of time doing this...

Here are a few of the pictures we talked about. Most of the pictures we looked at were over 70 years old... and some were 90 or more!
I brought the photos home with me and I took notes on what Grandpa told me about them. Hopefully I can put that together into a book or something. We'll see what happens...

General Conference Weekend

I've really come a long way in how I approach General Conference with children. I still really love General Conference - the talks, the stories, the music, just the Spirit of listening to the Lord's chosen leaders of His Church. But because I want my children to enjoy conference as well, but I don't expect them to enjoy the same things I enjoy, I focus more on making it a positive experience for them when it's broadcast live than I do on listening and understanding everything that's said. I hear some things and benefit from the broadcast itself, but I plan on learning a lot more after it's over and I'm not with my children - I read the talks in the Ensign and I listen to them on my iPod. No, my kids don't love Conference, but still. This approach seems to work for us right now.

So I had an idea this time to get a spiral bound book of index cards and have Cat find pictures of certain items to glue on each page. We have tons of Friend and Ensign magazines that we will not move to UT with us, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity for her to have a free-for-all cut-it-up magazine scavenger hunt. And I planned to use the book as a Sacrament Meeting entertainment item in the future. She enjoyed making the book. For about 10 minutes on Saturday. And about 20 minutes on Sunday. Haha. But the large stack of magazines provided fun for all the children, the entire weekend.


Of course we made our traditional crepes for breakfast on Saturday and donuts for breakfast on Sunday.
Side note: I really do love donuts. But this is the first time I'd had them in a while. Then, on Tuesday I was hanging out with my Dad in Florida and he took us out to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. And on Thursday my sister was visiting us at our house and wanted to make donuts so she made some cut-a-hole-out-of-premade-biscuit-dough-and-fry-it-up donuts that were pretty yummy too. Donuts 3 times in one week?? Yes!!


Here are some glimpses of our living room on Sunday of conference weekend. I'll let you decide which pictures were taken during the sessions and which were not. :-)

A fun-filled April Fool's Day

I've gotten into April Fool's quite a bit in the past, but this year I only did one little prank. I opened 2 bags of cookies, poured out the cookies, and put Goldfish inside. Then I sealed them up with double-stick tape. (Idea from FamilyFun.) It actually took some convincing to get the kids to eat something before we left to take Cat to school (usually we don't since she gets breakfast at school and we always seem to be pressed for time). Jack didn't seem to notice or maybe didn't care that he was eating Goldfish instead of cookies. Cat was amused but not at all annoyed or upset.

April Fool's Day was also her school's Wacky Tacky Hair Day. So she slept with her hair in 4 braids the night before and had some nice poofy pigtails for school that day. Can you tell that she was excited?

And April Fool's was ALSO her school's Field Day.
Here, Cat is sitting with her class. Can you pick her out?

Cat with her teacher:

Cat with her BFF:

All ready for the next event!

Almost Cat's turn for the Potato Race. (No, not Potato Sack Race.)
In this event, each person had to use a hockey stick to roll a potato down the field, around a cone, and back to the starting line. It took a while, especially considering the fact that I'm pretty sure most of these children have never even seen a hockey stick, let alone used one.
But they had fun!

After school, Cat went outside to play. She thought it would be fun to cover herself in mud. Oh, and she covered her brother in mud, too. (Jack didn't think it was so fun.) Below is a picture of Cat's muddiness.... but she was having so much fun getting dirty that she got even muddier after I took this picture.

Thank goodness Ben got home early so that he could address the muddy children while I made dinner. Cat was dirty enough at that point that he decided she should remove her clothes outside and hose herself off before getting in the bath. Yeah. It was bad. But she really had a blast getting dirty. Is there a word for a girl who loves all things girly, and also enjoys pouring mud on herself? Hmm.... well-rounded?

That night we had a family movie night and watched a new movie together. Cat had been begging us for cotton candy for a few weeks, so we splurged and spent $5 on 3 little tubs of cotton candy at the grocery store - we only ate 2 of them - but it set the tone for a fun night of hanging out together.

Cat dubbed it "the best day ever."

Paint Making

It was pretty rainy here a couple of weeks ago, so we didn't spend very much time outside. One evening, Cat kept begging to go play outside and I wouldn't let her. I was feeling like a pretty bad Mom, though, and after a while I finally gave in. We all went out to the front patio for outside time. As always happens, the kids had a great time doing whatever. On this particular day, that was "making pink paint."

The process was pretty simple.
1. Collect petals and leaves to tint the collected rainwater pink.
2. Stir with sticks.
3. Get eaten alive by bugs.

We stayed outside as long as we could stand it, at which time we went in to enjoy dinner bug-free.

Colin's Bday

We got to celebrate my nephew's birthday with him at Chuck E. Cheese's.
(Where a kid can be a kid.) It was so fun!

C & J did a little driving and a little bike-flying.


The girls tried out the horseback riding.


And of course, we enjoyed some cake.

Cousin birthday parties are the best.

We were so glad to be able to celebrate with you, Colin!

Coloring Fun

Cat missed 2 days of school a couple of weeks ago because she had a stomach bug. She was a trooper, though, and we were so thankful that other than some unpleasant diapers, the rest of us were okay.

We decided to do a simple crafty project that Friday morning to keep everyone happy and busy for a little while. I printed out some simple pictures online and did my best to re-create them on large sheets of paper.

I drew Jack's "Circus Train" first. (Of course, it only has a giraffe, a gorilla, and some balloons. Perfect circus, right?) I was hoping he would stay busy coloring while I got to work on Cat's princess, but this is about all the coloring he did on his own.

Once I started drawing Cat's princess, all Jack wanted to do was color on her paper. So once she could begin her coloring, I sat down with Jack and did a lot of coloring with him... or maybe he told me what colors he wanted different things to be and I colored it for him. But at least we worked on it together. :-) And now it hangs proudly on the wall in his room.

Cat spent a lot of time on her princess. She colored, glued on some fabric scraps
I gave her, and even added some sequins and pompoms.

Hers is now up on the back of her bedroom door.
There, she can admire it, but Jack and Eliza
aren't likely to pull things off of it.

Chugger Cheese's

A couple of weeks ago I was outside with the kids.

Cat and Jack were out in the grass and I was hoping that
Eliza would hang out with me on the deck.


She didn't stay long, once she saw all the fun that Cat and Jack were having.
(It's hard to crawl in a dress! Ready for her to start walking right about now...)

Some friends in our ward gave us an awesome play house a few months ago and Cat plays with it all the time! On this particular day, it housed Cat's latest entrepreneurial endeavor: Chugger Cheese's.

Look! Soup!

Delicious.


Come on in and meet the friendly staff.


Cat: owner, executive chef


Eliza: sous chef


Once you finish your meal, we invite you to enjoy the view from the rooftop terrace.


"There they go... hanging from the rafters again."

And feel free to climb a few trees as you explore the extensive grounds.

But beware. You might get moss stuck on your bum.

"Y'all come back now, ya hear?"