April Milestones...

Rylan perfected sitting up ;o)

taken April 14th

And he also started this......

He now "motors" where ever he wants to go!

I have recently been reminded of how quickly they move too!

He was playing in the family room and we have a door to our basement stairs that the kids had left open. I went to tell Rich something out front on Saturday and when I came back just a few seconds later I found him with his hands on the top stair, rocking and lunging back and forth! Luckily the stairs are now carpeted and even more luckily, he didn't go down them~ but it sure could have happened!

He also has 2 little teeth! .... and LOVES to bite now!

His bottom left tooth came in April 29th, and his bottom right came in the next day... April 30th

Easter Morning

I love the excitement that a holiday brings!!!

Brinley with her basket :o)

Everyone checking out the sweets!

I don't even think anyone noticed all the new Sunday clothes

on the back of the couch until they had thoroughly investigated there baskets!

Macie already diggin in

Kenzie checking out her Marshmallow eggs

Now we noticed them :o)

Micailey with hers

Brin with hers~

I wish Photoshop could fix eyes that are shut!

It seems to happen quite a lot at our house

Macie and her "twirly" dress

They were all so excited! We had LOTS of spinning!

The boys got new shirts and ties :o)

Dallas and Rylan with Ry's basket.

I didn't get a picture of them with there Sunday clothes,

but Dallas got a new suit, white shirt & tie, and Rylan got 2 little shirts~

Rich's dad spoke in his ward on Easter Sunday so we were able to

join them for Sacrament and Dinner after.

I love the look on Jordan's face in this pic :o)

.... and everyone is actually looking at the camera and semi-smiling!

Happy Easter Everyone!!!

Grandma's Annual Egg Hunt

Every one coming down! So Excited!
Macie showing me the egg she found

The search is on!

Opening all the eggs to see what candy they got :oD

YUMM!

Love this!

I will be doing this almost immediately!

I have 3 5x7 photo albums w/sheet protectors already attached that I was going to put family pics in for a quiet book~ But combine that with this... I'm SOOOOO EXCITED! We tried file folders the last few weeks but they zoom right through them and get up for a new one and it creates a circus! I might put the folders in a binder like I've seen done a few times, but this will be slick I think!

You can even print out your childs photo in the cartoon/color book setting on your computer or in a computer photo program so they can color themselves! How fun is that!

http://iammommahearmeroar.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-post-quiet-book-from-icandy.html

Coloring Easter Eggs

Every year we get together with the Harris side of the family and color Easter Eggs. Shana (step mom) boils 10 eggs per child... if you do that math for my family of 8~ we have a TON of eggs! :o) The kids LOVE it! ~Contrary to the look on Micailey's face-it's the photo she loves till you remind her that she is going to look like that on the blog for all to see :o) She smiled for a re-do pic, but it was blurry :o) So here it is, posted for all to see

This is a few of the cousins that were able to come, the others are at the other table in the background. Shana is a brave soul to invite that many kids to dye eggs in her beautiful home!!!

Macie had a little too much unsupervised fun! She didn't make a mess, she just enjoyed dipping her egg wand in the dye and "stamping" it on the paper towels. She was quite content for quite a while as you can tell by the lovely shade of blue that she dyed her hand :o)

We have so much fun with this tradition and the kids LOVE it!

Thanks Dad & Shana for risking your kitchen to let your grandkids enjoy this tradition together!

More Easter to come another day....

Easter Family Night

When I was trying to decide what to have for dinner, I thought it would be fun to make a big round loaf of bread similar to what Christ might have eaten and dip it in oils and spices. Then I thought, what kind of other food might they have had. The closest possibility we came up with was a recipe from Morocco for chicken that Rich loves (we still need to figure out the"ONE" we had, but this recipe is close), grapes, and a cabbage salad & sorry ~ no wine, just apple juice... wanted grape juice but I didn't think of it in time to buy some. During dinner we talked about "The Last Supper" and who was there, & what Christ asked his disciples to do. Afterwards, Micailey gave us the "Easter" lesson with the 12 eggs that have a piece of the Easter Story in them that she had made at Achievement Days. She got a taste of what it is like to try to keep 8 monkeys quiet and still for a lesson :o) which was a good thing because sometimes she needs a little reminding. She kept saying things like ... "Is anyone even listening?", or "grr! This is taking forever!" hahahaha... sounds SOOO familiar! But she did a good job!

This is or yummy Easter Dinner

These cute little cupcakes I copied off of a blog.

They were so easy & fast & turned out so cute!

They are also debuting my tiered Easter plates I made :o)

So fun!

The girls holding their little chickadee's

Don't mind the naked girl :o)

We strip the little ones when they eat to save on clothing stains:o)

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter on Sunday!

"Recycled" Jean Skirt~

The girls have 2 cute skirts that we bought at JCPenney a long time ago that inspired this idea.

We have a ton of almost brand new pants of the girls with holes in the knees (cause apparently after 1st grade you just HAVE to crawl all over the school floors till you wear holes in them). So I decided instead of throwing them out I would let them pick out some fabric and turn them in to skirts (that we don't have enough of). So this is Brin's pick. This one took 2 hours last night after bed because I didn't really know exactly what I was doing :o) ...hopefully I can make Mackenzie's much faster! There are a few thing's I'll do a little different too ~

Spring Projects :o)

I'm having a little trouble finding a lot of Easter/Spring projects that I fall in love with, but here are a few :o) These are empty pickle jars with a new purpose! Love it! I've actually started making this one.... but I ran out of white spray paint so it's on hold for a bit. :o( http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/04/pickle-jar-project.html

This is a fun one too. These are paper mache eggs & wood implements that have been painted. They used the hole reinforcement tabs as a stencil to make the dots. {clever} I found these on a link party and can not find them anywhere now...

I'm also going to make a version of these treat bags. I think they are bright & fun.

http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/04/looking-back-easter-projects.html

I like these free subway art prints too. They have had one for every holiday since Thanksgiving. I just print them out on the computer in 8x10 and rotate them in my frame. They have them for birthday's too. http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/search/label/subway%20art

I've really been into these cute tiered serving dishes lately. I have the stuff to make this cute one, plus a couple for Easter, and a more formal one. ~ Now I just need to plan a party so I can use them :o)

http://thecraftingchicks.com/2011/03/diy-treat-stands.html

Our Conference Candy Trial...

So, in my last post, I said we really wanted to try doing the candy bucket idea :o)

Rich was gone all week to Tennessee and I was in charge of a huge Wizard of Oz production for the Relief Society Birthday dinner in our ward, so needless to say... I did not have time to go buy cute little pails and stuff... I was lucky enough to have Rich slow down on Friday so I could jump out of the car and run in to just get the candy... BUT~ we did it!

So I'm here to report :o)

I remembered I had these little colorful buckets in my Easter stuff, so I tried to make little tags for them... next time, we'll forgo the tags ~ at least till more of the children can read. What I really needed was a Picture of the word, then the little kids would have had a better chance of listening for them.

Brin actually did really well, it was Jordan, Cohen, & Macie that needed the extra help

So, once we established the rules, this is what they did :o)

I don't know how much they got out of it other than they heard most of they key words, but they did listen the whole time and we didn't have any complaining and the "when is it going to be over" or "how much longer" comments, so that was a plus!

When we started this little game, the peanut M&M's (Mom's favorite) were in the "Family" word bucket. That was all fine and dandy until the Primary President gave her talk... she said "Family" about every other word!!! We blew through the little bucket of M&M's and had to replace them with something much smaller (and less desirable)... jelly belly's :o) It seriously turned into a joke, the kids couldn't even get back to their seats till they were back up for another "Family" treat! It gave them all the giggles! :o) So they better remember at least her topic right! :o)

Oh, and we had a little snitch too!

And she knew exactly which candies were the "good" ones :o)

All in all~ most of the kids liked this little game better than bingo and the pages.

bad thing... you go through a lot of candy for each session... when you have 7 kids eating it anyway :o) But, we're doing it for tomorrow too, so we'll see if it changes the 2nd time around :o)

Hope you all are enjoying Conference Weekend!