My Sweet Little Diva

It's no secret that Kate is our little diva. She is the girliest little girl and calls herself a "true princess". She demands attention, has her own agenda, and follows no rules but her own.
Prancing around in sisters' tank tops, purple pants, purple high heels, and purple mardi gras beads are just part of the routine for Kate. But for all the sass she has in her, she has a little heart of gold too.

Like tonight when she came and said to me, "I've been watching Carter and he surely fell fast asleep. Don't worry, you don't need to tuck him in cause I did it."

And sure enough, there was brother, out cold, with all the blankets tucked around him and his stuffed animals laying on the pillow beside his head.

Sometimes, my kids just melt my heart.

Singing Time Sundays -Magic Cups

I have so many fun things to blog about. Snowmobile trip, new nephew, etc, but I promised myself that Sunday posts would be about Sundays. So sorry, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see fun pictures.

This singing time is one of the easiest around. I learned about it from a primary workshop I went to last year. All you need are three matching cups- paper, plastic whatever so long as they aren't see through- (and next time I do it, I'm upping it to 5 for sr.) and a wadded up piece of paper or a cotton ball. Hide the paper under the cups, do the switcheroo mix up of the cups and let the kids come choose a cup. If they choose a cup with the paper underneath, they get to choose the song we sing. If they come up empty handed, I get to choose the song.

The kids LOVE this game. It is a fun one to use when you're just needing some fun singing and not needing to work so much on the song of the month. Like I said before, 3 cups might be a little too easy for sr. (I rarely can trick them, they keep their eyes on the cup with the paper like little hawks.) so I think I'm going to add a few more cups next time.

Try-It-Tuesday -- Chocolate Mousse

Today's feature comes from "Get Off Your Butt and Bake", one of my most favorite recipe blogs. Man there are so many yummy things there that I want to try!

I'm telling you this chocolate mousse is to die for! It is the perfect thing for those weeks when ONLY chocolate will suffice. (You know... the weeks where you cry at the Olympians winning gold, you lay in your bed and have a pity party because you're not good at anything, not even housekeeping, and all your children have to do is look at you cross eyed to make your blood boil. This may or may not have been me last week, I'm just saying.) Seriously, make this stuff and then just TRY to stay out of it.

Be sure to make both the chocolate part and the vanilla cream part. It's lovely served alone, (I served it in these fun chocolate bowls from Wish Trish's blog) would be delicious in a pie crust or pastry puff, or even frozen as a smooth ice creamy treat.

I'm using the picture from her blog. Go there to see more pictures of the recipe process.
Heavenly Chocolate Mousse
8 oz chocolate
1/4 c. water
2 Tb. butter
Heat until melted and smooth. Set aside and let cool.

3 egg yolks
2 Tb. sugar
1/4 c. water
In a heavy sauce pan over low heat, whisk above ingredients together until mixture reaches 160 degrees. It only takes about 4-5 minutes. The mixture looks like a thin custard. Remove from heat and whisk into cooled chocolate mixture. Let cool, stirring occasionally.

Whip up a pint of whipping cream (I added some sugar and vanilla to it.) then gently fold into chocolate. Refrigerate at least one hour.

Vanilla Cream
1 small box Vanilla instant pudding
1 1/3 c. cold water
1 can sweetened condensed milk
Mix together with wire whip. Set in fridge to firm up. Then fold in 2 1/2 c. Cool Whip.

Winter Fun

First we scrounge for winter clothes in Grammy's coat closet.






(He looks like such a punk in the picture. It cracks me up.)

Then Grampy fires up the tractor and everyone piles on the sleds.
Even the dogs join in the fun.

Singing Time Sundays - Chalkboard pictures

So today was one of those EXTREMELY unplanned days. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do for singing time. In fact I was digging through my stuff during the prelude music to find the hearts from last week to see if I could kind of do a review with them. Well, the hearts were no where to be found (they appeared later at the bottom of the abyss I call my bag) so I grabbed some chalk from the library and improvised.

I let the kids come up and draw a picture to represent each phrase of the song. And then we sang it. Remember last week how I said I didn't feel like the kids knew the song quite yet? Well, they surprised me today. They do know it and pretty well.

They had fun drawing the pictures (I mean, have you ever met a kid who doesn't love chalk and a chalkboard?) and as I erased them I thought, "I really should have taken a picture of these for my blog before I erased them." The kids are such better artists than I am.

We are working on the last phrase of the song, holding the word "ask" the right length and cutting off together so we don't get a bunch of snakes singing. I pretended to judge them like they were in the Olympics for how well they did the cut off. Boy, they REALLY wanted that gold medal. I didn't give it to them right off either. They had to work for, but they eventually accomplished it and I think next week we'll be able to sing the song the whole way through without visual helps.

As a side note, I always throw in a couple of wiggle songs for jr primary. They need it. I'll do it right in the middle of learning the new song if I have to. We get our wiggles out, then calm down and are ready to focus again.

Time Heals All Wounds

When I put Carter to bed last night I had one last look at his tongue. The area between the two bite marks had also split causing one giant gaping slash in the tongue. Ughhhhh...yah, it was bad and caused me to worry just a bit.

I sometimes fancy myself an "un-diploma-ed" doctor and knew from my "reading" (learned from the time Kate fell off the edge of the tub and all but bit a hole through her lip) that tongues/mouths heal really fast and that stitches aren't usually needed. But Carter's hole was the biggest tongue hole I've ever seen. So I called my doc brother-in-law and he reassured me, that no, Carter wouldn't need a stitch.

Sure enough, when Carter woke up this morning there is NO hole whatsoever in his tongue. It's a little bruised and swollen looking, but the hole has completely closed up. CRAZY how quickly the body can heal itself! It's still REALLY sore, but I'm guessing by tomorrow that part will be pretty much gone too.

And after all this tongue trauma I have to wonder HOW ON EARTH someone could pierce their tongue on purpose??? YIKES!

Update on Carter's Teeth

Warning: For you queasy folk, there is going to be a slightly graphic tongue picture at the bottom of this post.

I really have some fun things to blog about and cute pictures to post, but first I'm going to give the latest on Carter. Remember that tooth that abscessed and needed to be pulled? Well, last week we went and tried to do it, but Carter wouldn't even open his mouth. He's had work done before without being sedated and I wanted to give it try without sedation, but it was a no go. So this morning, bright and early we found ourselves at the dentist to drink the sleepy drink.

He is SO funny on that stuff. It works almost instantly for him and he's very hallucinogenic on it too. He kept seeing "fairies" and would try to catch them. They were able to get the tooth out, fill a couple of cavities and replace an old lose filling. There is still more work to be done and we'll go in for round two in a couple of weeks. And yes, we'll be using the sedative again.

As well as the sedative, they numbed him too, so when he woke up, he kept chewing on his tongue. He REFUSED to leave the cotton, washrag, etc. in his mouth so finally Jarom had to just stick his finger in Carter's mouth so he'd quit biting on his tongue. He even bit Jarom a few times.

Well, low and behold, the kid did some major damage to his tongue. He bit two GIANT holes in it. The numbness has worn off and the poor kid's tongue is ULTRA sore. He can't even eat yogurt without crying. Thank goodness the tongue is the fastest healing part of the body!

Singing Time Sundays - Football and Hearts

Last week I was out of town and had a substitute cover singing time for me, so I'm not exactly sure how this game went over, but I think it was probably fun. Since it was Super Bowl Sunday, I made a football field, much like this one:
found on Primary Singing Ideas , and then I also made "chips" (because chips are a must to eat during the super bowl) out of yellow triangle shaped papers. On the chips I had what song to sing and how far the ball got to move. (Ex. Sing I Am A Child of God and move 15 yds.) There were also some bad chips thrown in the mix too. (Ex. Interception, move back 20 yds.) The kids took turns pulling a chip out of the bag and following the instructions. If the ball got to the touch down, the kids got to choose a favorite/wiggle song to sing.

This week, being Valentines day and all, I copied the hearts idea straight from the same blog as above.
I mixed the halves up and the kids had to put them together and then learn that line of the song, until all the hearts had been put back together. Then we put the lines/phrases in order and sang through the song in its entirety. For jr. primary, I would sing the song or line as we went to help them out, but the sr. kids wanted a challenge so I didn't sing it at all before they put the hearts together. I think the idea worked OKAY, not great, we still need some serious review on this song over the next couple of weeks before I'd be willing to say it was learned. But this gave us a good start. And I sure am thankful for creative people that share their ideas so I can copy!

Sharing the love.

Just got back from Carter's Valentine class party.
He's being such a nice boy, sharing his loot with Kate.
Notice the lazy mom "box"in the background?
Yah, I just cut out some hearts and his name and he glued them to a bag.
It worked.
And I think he had a GREAT Valentine's party.

(Now, we go to the DREADED dentist again, in 3 hours, and pull out the tooth that is abscessing. Happy Valentine's kid,uggghhh.)

TLC

The girls went to a 4-H spa day a couple weeks ago. They learned how to take care of their skin, manicures, pedicures, and hair techniques. Let me just say they were in heaven. They came home with a handout on how to make homemade face masks. I think they soaked their feet about 30 times in the homemade bath salts they brought home. And then they recreated the entire spa experience (in my front room) complete with yogurt masks and relaxing music playing in the background. Silly girls.

Keagen's Baptism

We went to Utah last weekend to witness Keagan's baptism. He looked so handsome in his new suit and tie. We are so excited and proud of him!

Getting together with family is always an exciting event. This trip didn't disappoint. The little boys of our family (and we have MANY little boys...10 to be exact) have entered a new phase of life. They love each other immensely, but this weekend there was more scrap fighting going on than ever before. From Mike Tyson bitten ear attempts, wild cats claws, and good old fashion TKO's, these boys were bloodied and bruised. I couldn't help but laugh at them sitting in a row at church, each with a battle wound attesting to the weekend of togetherness. The funny thing is....is that after all is said and done and the crying has stopped, they go right back to being best friends again.

Cowboys and Indians

Just a couple pictures I wanted to be sure were in my blog books at some point.

My dad

His brother.

I guess boys never do grow up. :)

It's a Big Day

Today is bittersweet for me. Despite the facts that I took piano lessons for over 10 years, have a college degree in music ed., and taught lessons for nearly 10 years, I can not seem to get my act together enough to teach my own children. It's not a matter of "mom-doesn't-work-as-the-teacher". No, my kids LOVE to have their lessons and beg for them. It's more an issue of "mom-doesn't-want-to-right-now-we'll-get-to-it-later" and then later turns into to 6 weeks later. It's my fault, all my fault, that my kids don't play better. I have been having SUCH guilt over it. (Especially for Alyssa, she loves to play, and is quite good -she taught herself practically everything though.) I decided to let the guilt go, and sign her up with a real teacher. Today is the day. And although I am QUITE disappointed in myself -feels like I failed a bit- (and a little sick that I'm paying someone else to do the same thing I used to get paid for) I am SO excited for her to get the attention she deserves. She's so excited she can hardly wait for 3:30 to get here.

Also, tonight is LOST!!! Love this show. I'm so excited it's back on, but very sad too as this is the final season. Boo-hoo!!

Saturday Sledding Fun

A couple of Saturdays ago, we braved the cold and the wind and took the kids sledding for a short while.

They loved being sling-shot down the hill by dad. They'd spin circles the whole way down. I'm sure I would have barfed had I tried that.



Hang on the those sleds Halle! Did I mention it was windy?Man it was windy and cold and miserable. But the kids didn't mind one bit. I, on the other hand, am a wimp and I've decided, officially old. For some reason I could only find enough hats for the kids, so I wrapped a scarf around my head, tied it under my chin, and didn't care one iota about my Bob Cratchitt appearance. That's the part that let me know I was old. I just didn't care how I looked, I wanted to be warm. (Side note: Check out poor little Kate trying her best to get back up the hill.)









Good times were had by all.