Birthday Weekend

My youngest and my oldest children's birthdays are one day apart. I allow my kids to have friend birthday parties every other year and I don't know how I managed to get the two kids whose birthdays are next to each other having a birthday party the same year. It was an eventful three days.

To top it all off I had an article due this week that I stayed up till 1 a.m. finishing on Thursday night, knowing full well what Friday had in store for me: A party, a baseball game, sending Isaac off to Father and Son's and a marathon cake decorating night.

Isaac had his birthday party on Friday because his actual birthday is on Sunday. Anway, I am completely worn out but I feel as if I totally pampered my little people and that makes me feel good.

Isaac celebrated with several of his friends at the swimming pool. I am not really sure how many were there since he kept inviting more as the day wore on. Isaac has half days on Fridays so we brought his charter school friends straight from school and met his other friends at the pool.

They had some rousing games of swim frisbee and even though the slide got shut down due to lightning, there was enough good natured water rough housing, eating of pizza, cupcakes and soda to keep everyone happy for two hours. Isaac's smile never left his face. Isaac scored in the money department but he also loved his gifts of battleship, a nerf gun, a football frisbee contraption and the dollar store squishy ball. Tomorrow his guitar hero should arrive in the mail and their will be birthday bliss.

Isaac came home sick from the Father Son outing and what I thought was just an overdose of fun and junk food turned out to be a two day fever and a cough. I am happy he had such a great Friday because his actual birthday didn't turn out all that fun. Who can have fun when they are sick? However a salmon dinner courtesy of his Nana and Papa (he chose salmon for his birthday dinner) gifts and movie watching helped out a lot he also liked his mint chocolate brownie sunday complete with 11 candles. (Oh my that makes me feel old)

Hey Isaac, my boy that makes me laugh everyday, yell sometimes, pray often, and so very very proud, I am so lucky you are my son. I honestly don't know what I would do without you. You may make feel old but actually you keep me young as I try to keep up with your inquisitive mind and adventerous spirit.

LiLi Turns 4.

Lia has been dying for a castle cake and a princess party. I simply had to indulge her for her first friend birthday party. Unfortunately, the castle cake she wanted cost $40. So I swallowed my cake making fears, which are well founded in bad past experiences and set out to make her a castle cake based on a video I found at howdini.com. I have to say that it's no Cake Challenge cake, but with the help of her 7 year-old sister I pulled off a passable cake that we were quite happy with. And Lia was happy she got her castle cake.

Lia had a full house of friends and family on Saturday. The boys acted out their parts as knights quite well and the girls, most of them devoted and wonderful cousins, were the perfect princesses.

Making princess crowns and knight shields.

The Pinata was a big hit and everyone took severall wacks until we brought in the heavy hitter, Isaac to finally spill the candy onto the basement floor.

We had a little pin the fire on the dragon. Isaac drew the dragon. Notice Lia's Nana Ora in the background. I think it is amazing that Lia gets to have her 96 year old great grandma at her birthday party.Thanks everyone for coming. We finished off the night by having a barbeque at Tom's parents house. Lia had her birthday dinner request of peanut butter and jelly and grapes. That is so much easier than salmon.

Happy Birthday my Lia, my baby who keeps my parenting skills honed, tells me she loves me "more than anyone" everyday, and has a wicked sense of humor that keeps us all in stitches. I can't believe you are 4 years old and already so smart and fun to be around, and definitely your Daddy's girl.

Well there it is the marathon weekend. I survived and now I am going to spend the week cleaning the house and the car.

Monday Write A Little

Actually since I am going to be writing a lot this week, I have an article due for Elan Magazine, I thought I would do a quick writing excercise.

I thought it was so great when Alton Brown did a couple of haikus on the Iron Chef the other night so I am going to attempt a haiku about my great Memorial Day weekend.

OK I tried and it didn't work I am much too impatient tonight for the patient laboring it takes to write a haiku so I am going to just give you this.

Friday
Gardening in the spring rain, laughing at a great movie while sharing a large family size popcorn with the 5 hugs and one aunt.

Sunday
Napping and church.
fighting a migraine and drifting off to sleep after husband makes dinner.

Monday
Gardening, gardening, vegetable planting in the cool spring breezes.
Cooking up the first corn on the cobs of the coming summer season and eating a friend's homemade butter and icecream. Laughing at neices and the chaos of friends and family.
Life is bliss this weekend. Except for that little stint with the migraine.

Recitals

Please bear with me. I am posting the videos of Rebecca and Isaac's recital on here. The visual on the recording is blurry and not all of you are going to want to hear my kids playing the piano. But for those family members who would have been there if possible these songs are for you. I thought both my kids did really well. This was Becca's first recital and I am truly proud of her. Isaac just continues to get better and better. I am just happy all that chauffering and nagging to practice pays off.

Talkative Tuesday A Week with My Sisters

My sisters have always been my best friends. I have not seen my sisters for two years and let's just say I get homesick for their company. This week my sister and her four kids came to visit me. My own children had the week off from school and so it was perfect timing. We had such a blast and managed to keep the kids busy. We talked and laughed and reminisced. It was good crazy times. I think my kids had 30 seconds of boredom total. And that my friends is a miracle in itself.




Our Week started out with a trip to the Washington Community Swimming Pool where the kids completely wore themselves out with 2 1/2 hours of play.


I had the kids all by myself one day and we made pretzels and candles. Crazy Aunt Rachelle decided it was OK to have a marshmallow cookout in the kitchen over Isaac's homemade candle.





Saturday we were joined by Tom and my brother Jake and we made a long adventure of it in Zion Park. Isaac and Jacob are standing in front of their namesakes at the Court of the Patriarchs. We visited the weeping wall and took the river walk. I have been to Zion numerous times and this is the first time I have done these trails. They were smile inducing beautiful.

On Sunday, Tom cooked us a great dinner and did the dishes, always a good Mother's day gift. I also got a long nap and the much needed game of sister Boggle.

Monday we decided to explore Fiddlers Canyon, the actual Canyon up the road from my home. We set off on our grand adventure where we found a fun little water hole, a charming creek, dragonflies, lizards, a few scraped knees. Colette slid down a small incline and Isaac kept disappearing, only to reappear on some giant rock above us. We came back with pockets full of rocks and thirsty hungry kids. I can't wait to hike back there again.





The older kids finished out the entire rest of the day playing games. Here they are enjoying the spring weather on the front porch. OK sometimes I just had to send them all outside.


We saw them off Tuesday morning and Isaac was literally holding back tears. My sweet almost 11, can barely get more than a grunt for a response child, just could not bear to see them go. I have to admit it was hard. Now I am going to be playing catch up all week so it is possible this will be my only post.

Daughters and Beauty

I have been really excited about my article that was just published today at todaysmama.com. I really feel like teaching our daughters self-esteem and the meaning of beautiful is a vital part of our jobs as mothers. This article deals with this topic and includes some wonderful quotes by Kari Ann Young, who happens to be a mutual friend of many of ours. You can check it out here .

I am busy this week with my sister and her kids so I will not be posting again till next week.

Talented Thursday and my Food Storage epiphanies

I should be writing an article that is due in a few days. But true to form I am procrastinating until the last minute.

My week has been so crazy. Monday started with a very fun trip to St. George for my niece's birthday. Elise is my Lia's same age, they are only a month apart. And Lia loves Elise. For two days after the birthday party and trip to Jumping Jacks I got a play by play of everything that happened from Lia. Tom and I left the festivities a little early to attend a Rick Springfield concert at Tuachahn theatre. I have to admit I had no idea what this guy sang. Although once I got there I recognized most of his songs. We got free tickets and I have to say that he was very entertaining and the crowd was hilarious. This is only the third concert I have ever attended. None of which have been one of my favorite performers. I think I may have to get Stephanie to take me with her to Rascal Flatts.

Isaac had his second baseball game this week and he did a little better but he is trying hard to improve his game. Friday is game #3.Gymnastics finished up until next September, so that is one thing off my schedule. But I know it will get filled with other things. Becca is so excited she passed off enough skills (and they have a lot) to move onto level 1.

I am busy trying to get ready for my sister and four kids who are going to visit me for six days and that includes cleaning out a section of the basement to make into a makeshift guest room.

OK enough updates.
What I really want to blog about today is my Food Storage epiphanies. Because I started my food blog pantry eats, I have been making a conscious effort to cook with my food storage and pantry staples more often. I used to think those year supply lists they gave out were ridiculous. Who really eats 5 pound of salt a year. I have to admit that I have taken these lists with a wink and a nod, until now. This week I ran out and stocked up on enough salt for at least three months. I have discovered that flour, wheat, honey, rice and all these other staples really are usable in a real diet and that I actually do need the major amounts listed on those handy year supply lists. It has been such an eye opener. I have also learned a lot about what additional items I want or need in my food storage. Seriously, I can't live without some chocolate, artichoke hearts and lots and lots of fruit. I am really grateful that I have started to cook outside my comfort zone. I feel like I could actually understand what it means to start being frugal and self sufficient. And that leads me to the Talented Thursday portion of my post.

Courtesy of my food storage stocking efforts, I now have a lot of tuna in my basement. In an effort to get creative I tried this beautiful and yummy recipe by one of my new favorite food bloggers, Sunscaper. She always has such creative recipes on her blog. Tonight I made her recipe for TMTs or Tuna Melt Tomatoes. My family actually ate them, including miss picky Becca. I am not going to post them on my food blog because they were from someone else's post but you can just go visit this great blogger for the recipe. My only suggestion is to add a little extra mayo. The melts were a little dry. And don't substitute dried bread crumbs for the authentic Panko (which will now become part of my food storage needs by the way) The Panko makes all the difference.

Random Saturday

It was a long busy week. It seems as if each week disappears more quickly than the next. I had a crazy schedule today that got blown out of the water by those sneaky migraines. I swear I have lost more time to migraines than anything else.

But I did have a few random higlights to share:
Isaac had his first baseball game today. They got tromped. But they are a brand new team, while most of the little league teams have already played together for awhile. Isaac was a little annoyed that he struck out. He kept jumping out of the way of the ball, so he thought it was the pitcher's fault. But even I could see that he was crowding the plate. It was a freezing windy cold day and the girls and I wimped out towards the end and waited out the last inning in the car. Two more games next week and I have high hopes it will be a better experience for all.

I can't believe my kids' 4th term of school is over next week. They get a break the first week in May and then their summer vacation starts June 30th. I just want to let any of you who have wondered about the school know how happy I am with the charter school. Yes, they are still working out a few bugs but every school has problems. I just love the way my children are encouraged to move on to the next level of learning once they have mastered a set of skills. Just in case any of you are curious about the school you can attend the open house next week.
SATURDAY, MAY 2, 2009- GPA RUMMAGE/CRAFT FAIR, CARNIVAL AND OPEN HOUSE TOURS FROM 7:30 AM TILL 2:30 PM

And to end this post on a humorous note:
As soon as I felt my migraine slipping away today around 7 p.m. Lia came and told me the dishwasher was leaking soap. Sure enough, Isaac had put the Dawn hand dish washing soap instead of the actual dishwasher soap into the soap dispenser. We are still trying to get all the foam out of the dishwasher 2 hours later. Sometimes I wonder if that boy ever thinks before he does things. He knows which soap to use. Anyway it made me laugh. What child hasn't had an experience like this?