Spring Has Sprung

A couple of weeks ago we bought flowers and planted them all around our little patio.  It sure makes everything look pretty and beautiful outside.  I liked that it was something Kyle and I could do together out in the warm sunshine with Jack Johnson music in the background.  On the inside of the house I rearranged all my pictures on the walls since I couldn't afford to do anything else to decorate.  I liked the end result and I'm glad I have a handy man around to patch up all the nail holes and make new ones where I want them.  :)

Last Monday the Eddy family arrived and stayed with us for a week.  We had a lot of fun showing them around downtown Chicago and also to our favorite places like Ty Warner Park, the Yorktown Mall TreeHouse, Charming Charlie's, and Waterfall Glen.  We ate deep dish pizza from Giordano's and sandwiches from Potbelly's.  Mostly we just let the cousins play and get to know each other.  It was a really fun week.

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The other great thing that has just happened is that Megan has completed her Food Pyramid!!  I still cannot believe what a difference that piece of posterboard has made in our lives.  Our dinnertimes are now peaceful with no crying, counting, coaxing, screaming, or spankings.  Meg learned about the food groups with some help from some books from the library and has spent the past couple of months earning stickers for each food she finishes from her plate.  It's total bribery, but it has worked!

When she completed each food group she would get to go to the dollar store and pick out a prize.  I told her that when she finished the whole pyramid she could go to the zoo and last night she FINALLY drank her last glass of water (we did plain water without flavor instead of the sweets/fats group) and so now we can plan a trip to the zoo.  I haven't decided if we'll go to Brookfield or the Lincoln Park Zoo, but I don't care!  I'm just so happy that our Father in Heaven answers prayers and helps us figure out how to have peace in our homes and how to help us keep our kids healthy.  This has really been a miracle in our home.  Kyle and I are so proud of her and I know she is very proud of herself too for making good choices.

Crafting Up A Storm

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I've been keeping busy lately with little projects.  I made a new dress for Megan a few weeks ago.  I think it turned out really cute and she loves it.  

I have a ton of scrap fabric from all sorts of things and have been trying to think of ways to use it up.  I made a "stable" using scraps and cardboard.  It's not very pretty and my stitching is horrendous but it got the job done.  Meg loves having a place for her ponies to sleep.  I also made three diaper clutches but forgot to post pictures of those.  Now all the diapers and wipes are contained a little better inside my giant mom-bag.  I made some wallets out of scrap fabric for when I just want my ID and credit card for when I'm out without the kiddos.  They use a ponytail holder for the elastic to keep them closed!  I loved that the stable, diaper clutch, and wallets didn't cost me a thing and were all very simple to make.  

Now for the really cool stuff - the PLAYHOUSE! My neighbor made a card-table playhouse for her little boy using felt.  It's a barn with all sorts of "activities" for him to do on the outside of it like an orange tree and a stream with fish in it and a mailbox with letters inside.  What's amazing is that she did it all without a pattern and it turned out so incredibly adorable.  I wanted to make a house too but I found a pattern by McCall because I can't trust myself without one.  Thanks to some awesome coupons and a pattern sale ($0.99 each) at Joann's, I was able to make this dreamy little cottage for the kids.  It's supposed to have shingles on the sides of the roof, but mine kept turning out all wrong and I couldn't figure out how to make them look like the picture.  I kept taking it apart over and over and finally just decided it was cute without the shingles.  Oh, well.   It's also supposed to have felt flowers and bushes around it, but I really liked how it looked without them and didn't want to make it look sort of tacky.  I may decide to put them on at a later time.

The magnetic menu board! I made this at my ward's craft group last week and I'm so excited to start utilizing it.   I try to meal plan but I would always end up with little pieces of paper marking all my recipes in my cookbooks and then I'd make a shopping list but then stuff would happen during the week and I'd either forget all about what my plan was or I'd forget things from the store that I thought I had.  

I had a really fun time making the board.  It's all on a sheet of metal and decorated with scrapbook paper.  We adhered the paper onto the board using this AWESOME machine that one of our crafty leaders brought  which turns any paper you roll through it into a sticker...AMAZING!  That way we didn't have to mess with modge podge and deal with bubbles and wait forever for it all to dry.  (THANK YOU AMY!!)  So after we got all our papers layed out we made the magnets - one for each day of the week - and put a cute ribbon through to hang it up with.  I came home and typed up all my "menu items" and came up with an ingenious (I think) system for finding the recipe - I numbered each of my cookbooks and then on each menu item I listed the cookbook number and then then page number.  Then, on the back of each menu item I listed all the ingredients and the amounts so that I can create my shopping list and then be CERTAIN that I have everything ready BEFORE it's time to start dinner.  

Easter 2012

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Our Little Ballerina

This is the story of a little princess who was having a hard time staying in her seat and paying attention in Primary. It all started when one day she told her mother, "I want to take ballet classes!" The wise Queen thought about this and said, "we'll see". As if by magic, that day a message arrived in the royal mailbox from the kingdom's library. The message said that there would be one free introductory ballet class on April 10, 2012, held at the library for all princesses in the kingdom aged 3 to 6.

The Queen was very pleased to have such a wonderful opportunity for her daughter, but she knew that in order for the princess to earn such a great privilege she would need to prove she could behave herself in a class and listen to a teacher. The Queen set the princess on her lap and told her daughter, "You must show me you can listen to a teacher and do just what she says in order to have a ballet lesson. That means no running around and playing when all the other children are listening and being reverent. So, for the next few weeks I will be watching and I will ask your Primary teacher how you do and, if you are good, then you may have a ballet lesson."

The princess agreed that this was a good way to Choose the Right and worked very hard for nearly two months. Each week she stayed in her seat during Sharing Time and listened to the lessons being taught. She also followed instructions from her teachers very well. After church each week she reported to the King and Queen about what she had learned.

The day of the ballet lesson arrived and there was much anticipation and excitement in the royal palace. The Queen granted the little princess permission to wear her royal tu-tu all day long and to the lesson too! The little princess could hardly wait for the lesson to begin...

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The moral of the story - if you want a little princess to sit still, bribe her with a chance to dance!

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Happy Valentine's Day from our family to yours!

What I've Been Up To

We got back from Utah and I needed something to do...so I grabbed one of those $0.99 patterns I bought a couple of months ago and got to work. It didn't take very long to make all three, thanks to "simplicity". It was fun and Meg LOVES them, which makes me happy. Logan was feeling left out though - he kept trying to put on the skirts after Megan tried them on. I'll make something for him too, but it probably won't be until Halloween. :)

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Catch-Up

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Logan's hair was getting long enough in the back that Kyle started putting it in a ponytail to get his point across that his boy needed a haircut, so one night he got out the "buzzers" and just did it. Logan was such a good boy. He stood very still and let his daddy cut his hair and make him look VERY handsome!

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Auntie Linda in Rhode Island spoiled us ROTTEN this year. :) The kids LOVED the presents and we loved watching them have so much fun. They had as much fun with the boxes and we decided it would be really easy to just ship them to Grandma and Grandpa's house rather than drive in the car.

But we did drive - 21 hours - and made it to Utah in peace and safety to spend Christmas with the Robinette Clan. The kids were PERFECT the whole drive and we felt very blessed to have such good kids. We had a wonderful Christmas weekend, as you can see -

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