Easter Fun

On Easter Morning, the kids woke up and found this:

So then they did this:

The puzzle said, "Your baskets are in the bathtub!" They didn't quite get what they were supposed to do at first. I had to basically tell them. Once they got it, they did this:

But the baskets weren't in that bathtub. Fortunately, Leah said, "Let's go check the other bathtub." To that, Eli responded, "What other bathtub?" Since the kids never bathe in our shower, Eli didn't think there was another bathtub. I knew this would trick them and make it harder to find their Easter baskets. Is that mean? Fortunately, they went to the correct bathtub and found this:

After finding their baskets, the kids removed them from the bathtub and did this:

Not pictured: Noah eating all his jellybeans without us knowing.

I hope your Easter was just as fun and a lot less confusing!

Preschool Fun

Recently, we had a preschool field trip to our local fire department. Fortunately, it was during Spring Break, so Eli got to tag along. It was lots of fun!! We got to take a tour of the Fire Station, meet some real fire fighters, and even watch one of them slide down the pole! The most valuable part of the experience was when one fire fighter put on his full suit including oxygen mask. It was good for the kids to see what he looked and sounded like. My kids all thought he breathed like Darth Vader. The fire fighters said kids are often afraid of them when they are in their full suits and will hide from them during a fire. Hopefully seeing him all dressed up will help the kids not be so scared.

I highly recommend scheduling a tour and bringing some friends along. The following Monday for Family Home Evening, we had a lesson on fire and earthquake safety. We taught the kids what to do and even practiced. We even set off the smoke detectors (so loud!!) and had the kids practice opening their windows so they can crawl out. Don't worry, we live on the bottom floor. They would actually have to climb up to get to ground level. Now I hope we never have to use this valuable information!!

A bit of a brag post

But since I'm not the only one responsible for the creation in this post, I guess I'm not being too braggy, right?

A few years ago, we bought a new table and chairs from Ikea. That's certainly something I'll never do again. There's a reason why it was so inexpensive. That reason is, you'll have to replace the chairs not too long after buying them because they won't stay together, not even after re-gluing them several times.

We thought about buying new chairs, but I didn't want to pay all the money to do it. So, I came up with a better, cheaper solution.

Thanks to the help of my brother, Mike, his tools and garage, and about $12 worth of wood, we now have this bench:

We did keep the chairs that were still in one piece, but I don't expect them to last much longer. After all the crappy Ikea chairs have been thrown away, we will still have a very solid bench that fits lots of cute, little bums.

Apparently Noah can read

Yesterday when we are at the grocery store, Noah picked up a bottle of chocolate syrup and said, "I can read this."

"Oh yeah?" I responded. "What does it say?"

"Says, 'Chocolate milk in mine sippy cup!' " he read.

It's a good thing Hershey's chocolate is better than it's grammar.

Pics of the Faves

Good Mom Moment....continued

In response to a comment left by my sister-in-law, Shaina, about my Good Mom Moment post, I am posting this picture:

Yes, I did hang up my pictures, just not on the fridge. Leah's other art overwhelms that location. But I did have plenty of wall space. Can you guess which three pictures are mine? (sorry it's not a very clear picture)

Good Mom Moment

I did St. Patrick's Day crafts with Noah and Leah for an hour and a half today. This good mom moment did happen to come after a bad mom moment, which was letting them watch TV for 3 hours while I did stuff. I always feel bad when I do that, but it just has to happen sometimes.

Noah's crafty projects consisted mostly of him cutting paper with safety scissors. That's his favorite thing to do and so I let him snip away.

Leah on the other hand is a bit more colorful. First she made a picture of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Then she made a heart flower out of paper and a popsicle stick. Finally, I printed some leprechaun coloring pages off the internet for her to color.

Now don't think I didn't participate!! I also created a rainbow and pot of gold picture as well as completed two coloring pages. I like to color too, you know.