St. Patrick's Day- The new Holiday at our House

St. Patrick's Day is not a holiday in my book.  We didn't do anything for it growing up except wear green and make excuses to pinch people.  But this year it was a full blown holiday at our house and I have no idea how it happened.  Well actually it is probably my fault since I bought them a St. Patricks Day book last year (oops).  They have read the book many times over the past year and have now created ideas of their own about how the day is supposed to go.

This year the night before St. Patricks day they decided to make traps and a little house to trap the leprechaun.  They really wanted to see the leprechaun and Addie even wanted him to write her a note.  Jensen was SO sure he would catch him in his trap.  BUT just like in our book, no child has ever caught the leprechaun and we didn't either.  Yet, the leprechauns did leave some green foot prints around the house, a thank you note to Addie for the comfortable house that she built them, a box of Lucky Charms cereal, and some gold candy.  So I would say our kids were pretty lucky the next morning.  Their squeals of excitement were way too fun (almost better then Christmas morning excitement).  They ran all over the house looking for signs that the leprechaun had been there.  They loved the foot prints and were SO excited to eat cereal for breakfast.  It made all the craziness worth it.  :)

Addie's house she made for the leprechaun.  Very nicely decorated :)

What the Leprechaun left for them in the morning-

        

The Mermaid Sisters- A Play

In January and February Adalyn was involved with a little theater group.  It was called Storybook Theater.  It is a fun group that would meet every Wednesday after school for 8 weeks.  They would plan, practice, and then perform a little play together.  The play that they did this time was called the Mermaid Sisters (a spin off from The Little Mermaid).  Adalyn heard about it at school and was SO excited when she found out that she could be a mermaid.  She LOVES mermaids.  She also loves being on stage so we thought it would be the perfect activity for her.  

She worked so hard during those 8 weeks to practice and memorize her lines.  She ended up getting to be one of the mermaid sisters and her name was Coral.  The cast helped design the costumes and the set on stage.  Feb 28th they did a performance for all the families and parents.  

The little play was too cute!  My boys were laughing hysterically through the whole thing and they just loved seeing Addie as a mermaid.  Addie herself was all smiles and giggles the whole time too.  It was such a great experience for her and we hope she gets to do it again soon!  Well done Adalyn, we love being your parents and seeing you do things that you love!  

    

Preschool Book Club 2017-2018

One night last fall when I was blogging I had an idea about doing a preschool book club.  I immediately loved the idea and quickly talked to McKay to see if he would do it with me.  He is SO sweet and supportive and of course said yes right away.  I posted my idea on Facebook and thankfully had many responses from my friends and neighbors who would love to have their kids join our preschool book club.  This little book club has been the best thing these past few months.  My boys have loved it, I love it, and it is the perfect activity for us to do during these "preschool" years.

What it is is a once a month activity that we have in our house on the Friday that McKay has off work.  The book club lasts for an hour and a half.  Each month I find 3-4 picture books that we love and then we do activities that go along with those books (I do most of the planning, but McKay is SO helpful in making the activities run smoothly).  We sometimes have a theme to the month's books and sometimes the books are just randomly chosen.  The themes we have done are Frogs, Bears (everyone's favorite), cookies/food theme, Monsters, Halloween, and Christmas.  Declin and Jensen have really looked forward to book club each month and I think it is a great activity that they are able to do with their friends and their family (especially their dad, they love having him there doing the activities with them).

I am going to include a list of the books that we have done so far, just to help me remember them for the future.  Anyone have a favorite children's book that we should add to our list?  I am always looking for new ideas.     

-The Gingerbread Man by: Karen Schmidt
-If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by:Laura Numeroff
-Pete's a Pizza by: William Steig
-We're Going on a Bear Hunt by: Helen Oxenbury
-Mix it Up by: Herve Tullet
-Princess and the Frog (cannot remember the Author)
-The Napping House by: Audrey Wood
-The Little Engine that Could by: Watty Piper
-Froggy's First Kiss by: Johnathan London
-Go Away Big Green Monster by: Ed Emberley
-The Runaway Bunny by: Margaret Wise Brown
-Five Little Speckled Frogs 
-Snowmen at Night by: Caralyn Buehner
-The Big Pumpkin by: Erica Silverman
-5 Little Pumpkins by: Iris Van Rynbach
-You Should You Should by: Ginny Tilby
-Corduroy by: Don Freeman
-Where's My Teddy? by: Jez Alborough
-Elmer by:David Mckee

I know there are a few more that I am forgetting, and I will probably add to this list as I remember them.  

Book Club has been the perfect thing for me to use my love of teaching preschool, yet it is only once a month so I am not overwhelmed with it all the time.  It is awesome and I hope we are able to do it next year too (even with baby #5) :)  


  

28 Years Old

February 17th is my birthday.  This year I turned 28 years old.  I am pretty sure I could do the same thing every year on my birthday for the rest of my life and I would be perfectly happy. 

Here it is...

Sleep in, McKay takes the day off work, we spend the day as a family, eat dessert and ice cream, and then a date in the evening with yummy food and a bit of shopping.  That is exactly what I did this year and very close to what I did last year as well.  I love it and it makes me feel special.

For my presents I got some new maternity clothes.  Not super exciting, but super necessary.  Even better was that my mom went on the shopping trip with me and helped me pick the clothes out.  The kids went shopping with McKay and picked out a spray bottle, new chapstick, and a Valentines snow globe.  They were so excited to give me their gifts.  :)  Love them!   

A big thank you to McKay for making my day special.  So glad to have you by my side. 

   

Happy Love Day 2018

I have said this before, but I love Valentines day.  Probably didn't love it in jr. high and high school, but these days it is a pretty nice day to celebrate all the loved ones I have in my life.  I also love it since it is usually the same week as my birthday, which makes it a party week. 

This year was our first year experiencing Valentines day at a public school.  At Addie's charter school last year they did not celebrate any holidays so Valentines day was just another day of school.  But this year they did a little celebrating in her 1st grade classroom.  Each child decorated a box and they all brought small Valentines for each other.  Her Valentines box idea came straight from Pinterest and her valentines for her friends were the store bought variety with a candy taped to them.  I am not fancy.  :)  We are trying to keep the expectations low around here.  :)

While Addie was at school I took the other kids on a special Valentines day outing.  I really wasn't in the mood to give the kids more toys or candy for Valentines day (just more stuff to clutter the house) so we opted for a Valentines date.  We went to Battle Zone here in Idaho Falls.  It is a kids play place with Arcade games and blow up slides and bounce houses.  It was our first time there and my boys loved it, but there wasn't much that Magnolia could do.  She mostly just walked around and watched the boys play.

  

Dinner that evening was a special family dinner.  The kids dressed up in costumes, we decorated the table a little, and we had a fun dinner together.  

It was an extra special day as well since Valentines day marked 20 weeks (aka the half way point) of this pregnancy with baby #5.  I am now calling this baby our "holiday" baby since we found out on Halloween weekend that we were pregnant with him, his 20 week mark was on Valentines day, and he is due on the 4th of July.  We love celebrating these milestones with him and are so grateful he is growing so well.  We love you SO much little guy!

One last note about Valentines day... The weekend before Valentines day we went to Utah for a quick visit.  While we were there my parents were sweet and made Valentine sugar cookies with the kids.  The kids had a grand time baking and decorating with grandma and grandpa and I was glad we were able to make the mess at their house ;)  

Hope everyone had a happy Valentines day!

 

I Like you January

On to 2018!  I didn't think I was going to post anything about January because lets be honest... does anything exciting happen in January?  The most exciting thing that happened for us that month was finding out that baby #5 is a boy and we already took care of that in a previous blog post.  So not too much more to report.

But after looking through my photos I found some cute ones from January and decided to include them on the blog. 

This January ended up being a good month for us.  Normally I dread January's, but this year we only had mild sickness in the house, the weather was super mild for an Idaho winter, and my morning sickness finally went away.  I was finally feeling like a normal human being again!! 

Declin became a Sunbeam in Primary and after a couple rough weeks with the transition from nursery he has done great. 

We played at kids town and the kids loved their new activities that they added.

We played in our new basement a lot and enjoyed the space to run around (even while we were couped up inside)

We played outside in the semi nice weather. We hardly got ANY snow this year and most of it came while we were in Utah over Christmas. 

 We went on lots of dates.  The older kids and I went on dates.  Both of their dates ended at Orange Leaf (they love that they get to pick out their own toppings for their frozen yogurt).  McKay and I also figured out a new date schedule that we are trying to maintain throughout 2018.  He plans one date a month, I plan one date a month, and then we have one temple date each month.  Some of the dates are at home dates on a Friday night after the kids go to bed and then the rest we get a babysitter for them.  Wow guys, dates at this stage of life are SO hard to find time for, yet SO important.  It is such a balancing act. 

Thank you for being good to us January!  We can be friends now :)