Getting Down with Mother Goose

The first week of May was K's First Grade Music Program at school. All three first grade classes sang and danced to Getting Down with Mother Goose.The children were asked to draw pictures of each of the different nursery rhymes and the best pictures were used on the back drop. K's cow was used; she did a wonderful job. She definitely did NOT get her artistic ability from me.

K's cow on the backdrop.

 Here is the full backdrop with all the nursery animals 

and dozens of Humpty Dumpty's.

K and Tanner singing one of the first songs. She had a hard time at the beginning of the show. She needed to use the bathroom but didn't want to leave without permission. She finally got her teachers attention and was able to go but ended up missing her class's musical performance where they all played xylophones:(

 

All three first grade classes, about 90 children.

K's performance of Patty Cake, Patty Cake.

I thought this song was adorable!

Mother's Day

We awoke to a beautiful warm, sunny day and enjoyed a tasty breakfast of eggs, bacon, and pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream which M made. The girls played outside until we got ready for church. M took some adorable pictures of our girls before heading out.

 

L gave me a potted flower and a butterfly picture made from her footprints. K gave me a candle holder she made at school along with a sweet card.

 

M made us a tasty dinner of steak, cheesy potatoes and steamed veggies. He also gave me a pretty pair of cluster earrings. It has been a wonderful day.

Primary Idol

Last night our primary kids got to participate in a fun activity at church. Each primary class learned the moves to a song and performed it for all the parents. It was a lot of fun to watch and the kids had a blast! I hope that this becomes a new tradition in our ward.

Here are our wonderful judges.
I love Louette's get up! She said to call her Grandma Gaga!

Our lovely Brooke was the hostess for the evening.
She is beautiful and so witty.

The Sunbeam Class rendition of The Itsy Bitsy Spider.
L was cute as the sunshine and I love Jack as the spider.
These kids were way too cute! It was the best
version of this song I have ever heard!

The CTR6 Class rendition of Kung Foo Fighting.
They did an awesome job!
The whole audience was loving every minute of it!
K really wants a light saber now:)

Even the Primary Presidency got in on the action!
This was the funniest performance by far!
I love how our pregnant Brook won the race!

This evening was simple but fun for everyone and only lasted 2 hours. We dropped off our kids for the first hour so they could learn the dance moves for their song and then came back for the second hour to see them perform. All the groups did a great job. I could never learn dance moves and then perform them in only an hour! After the show we enjoyed ice cream cones.

Hugner Games with the Girls

A small group of friends and I went to see the Hunger Games midnight showing opening night. We got there at 8:30 and got inside pretty quickly. We visited, wandered the halls, and played cards until the movie started.

Kristine, Me, Margaret, and LaDawn.

Brooke dressed as Mrs. Effie Trinket. Everywhere
she went, people stopped her to get a photo with her.
It was so much fun to see the reaction of everyone!

Brooke and her daughter, Avery, dressed as Katniss.

Margarett with Brooke, Avery and Becca.

Generally there are a lot more of us who go to these movies together but this time most of the husbands wanted to see the movie with their wives, so some didn't go to the opening.

I loved this movie! I thought it was very well done and the acting was great! So much better than that other teen movie (you know which one I'm talking about). The movie followed the storyline pretty well and almost everything was just as I imagined it would be when I read the story. I was glad they didn't make it gory so it was appropriate for the target audience. I can't wait to see the next one in the series!

Snow Day 2012

Who cares if the calendar says it's the second day of spring? Obviously Mother Nature doesn't care because there is 5 inches of snow outside my window! It's the most snow I have seen on the valley floor in quite some time and the kids are loving it!

Snow Angels

Catching snowflakes to look at.

Our snowman.

Building another snowman.

Now it's time for hot chocolate!!

A Jurassic Bash!

We spread K's birthday out over a couple of days this year due to illness and church activities. On Friday we took the girls down to the church so K could break her dinosaur pinata she helped daddy make. She had a hard time busting through the tough reptilian-like skin. and generously allowed her sister to take a few swings too. They broke off the head first and then went to town beating the bum. Eventually they got it pretty well open and had a lot of fun in the process.

I love K's expression in the photo above!

We picked up a Little Caesar's pizza on the way home to eat since L wasn't feeling so well yet. After dinner we had donut cake, opened gifts and watched a movie. K loved her gifts, especially the dinosaur box we got her. We found it on craigslist last fall for cheap and it came filled with all these dinosaurs. She has played with it every day so far! My cute little paleontologist:)
On Monday night we took K to Red Robin for her free birthday meal. She really liked it when the waiters sang to her and brought her a hot fudge sundae to eat.
K is in first grade this year and loving it! She is in the accelerated reading group, which isn't surprising given her love of books. Her teacher is impressed by her ability to read large words; she says dinosaur names just roll off of K's tongue. She also is a great speller and story writer.

At home K is always willing to help out in the kitchen and loves to bake. She also likes to take charge in games she plays with her sister. They seem to be getting along better these days and play for longer periods of time without fighting.

At church K is a big help to her sister in Primary. L is a sunbeam this year and K helps her out with all the songs and games they play. L gave a prayer recently in class and she asked K to come up and help her out. I love hearing from the Primary teachers that they are so sweet to each other in class.

Besides dinosaurs and reading, K really likes swimming. She has been taking swim classes through parks and rec for the past two years. Her swim teacher recently told us that she is a natural and should be put on a swim team next year. She also will be starting soccer in a week and loves to play that as well. She has gotten into rollerskating lately and received a pair from her bahmah for her birthday. She can't wait until the rain stops so she can start skating around the neighborhood.

I can hardly believe how grown up she is getting. She is so independent and hard-working. I love to spending time alone with her. She always has interesting things to say and thoughts to share. I hope as she continues to grow that we will become closer and our relationship will become stronger. She is definitely the apple of my eye.

Pinata

K was sad that she didn't get a chance to hit the pinata at her school Valentine's Day party so M thought it would be fun to have her make one. He blew up two balloons and had K paper mache them. He attached the two balloons after she was done and started making it look like a t-Rex. K had no idea at first what it was they were doing but once we told her it was a pinata she was very excited.
M spent one weekend making the spine, tail, face, and feet. He did a wonderful job, I was very impressed with how it was coming along. On another weekend he put the girls in the garage to paint it green.


Once it was all dried, M added stripes and eyes. He did a great job and the dino looks pretty realistic, it even stands on it's own.

I think he is a very ferocious looking dinosaur and can't wait until K takes a bat to him! M stuffed him with lots of fun goodies for K's birthday. When we told her she was going to break it she was very excited about it.

Skate World

During Dr. Seuss week K's school rented out the local skate rink for all the kids to use. K went with her dad and used her new skates she got from Bahmah. She had a really good time but needs to practice some more. I remember when my best friend and I went skating almost every weekend when we were kids. It was so much fun and great exercise too!

When Couponing is Worth it

A good friend of mine got me into couponing about nine months ago. It is very time consuming and we don't always get the good coupons that they get up in Portland, but sometimes it is so worth the effort.

This week I was able to get all this for $4.25 plus I got a $2 off a purchase of $2 or more catalina and a free baked cookies with my next purchase catalina from Albertson's. How did I do this you ask? I will tell you.
Sunday's paper had doubler coupons in it. I had five doublers which I combined with coupons I printed off line or cut out of the paper. Doing this I got the paper towels for free and the deodorant for 59 cents each. The cereal was two for five dollars but I had coupons for those and paid only $5.25 for all four boxes. I was supposed to get a catalina for a free milk and $2 off my next purchase of $2 or more but the catalinas didn't print out. I went to the customer service desk where they gave me $4.40 for the price of their most expensive milk and pulled a $2 catalina out of their coupon bag. I used the cash to buy the Albertson's brand milk and made $1.11 off of the purchase.

I hear that once upon a time couponers could get fab deals like this every week but with the coupon craze going on now many stores have had to change their policies. I do save a lot of money couponing though. I do most of my shopping at Winco, which already has good prices so adding in the coupons makes it great. I also go to Target (which have their own store coupons you can combine with manufacture coupons), Wal-Mart (though now that our Target is turning into a super Target I won't go there as often), and occasionally Albertson's when they have really good deals on cereal and such.

One of my other friends, Sue, finds great deals at Grocery Outlet. I still haven't made it to ours yet. It isn't on this side of town and I hate traveling very far for a good deal. I don't shop at Costco near as much as I used to. They have great food, especially their produce, but their prices aren't nearly as good as I thought they were. Now we do a lot of bulk shopping at Cash n' Carry which is on our side of town, so that's a plus.

I have made a goal of only spending $200 a month on groceries and household items. This website has a budget challenge going on where you keep track of what you spend and save then you are entered each week into a drawing for a free gift card. I already won a $20 gift card to Amazon! They also have an excel spread sheet you can download to keep track of your spending. It is great and has helped keep me on task for the budget I set for this year.

If you haven't done couponing, I suggest you start. It's a great way to save money on the things you already buy. It can be a little overwhelming at first but there are lots of great websites that can help you figure it out. Here are the ones I love to go to:
Frugal Living NW
Thrifty and Thriving
Fabulously Frugal
You can also go to these websites for printable coupons:
Coupons.com
RedPlum.com
SmartSource.com
FreeCoupons.com

Hearts, Candy, and Notes of Love

Last week we had a FHE lesson on Love and how we can demonstrate it to each other. After the lesson I pulled out this pretty box of chocolates. I told the girls we could only have a chocolate after writing a nice note about someone in the family and putting it in the chocolates place. After our Valentine's dinner we read the notes that were left in the box. The girls left a lot of cute notes in the box. I got the idea from this website.

I made the girls some heart shaped pancakes
for breakfast on Valentine's Day.

L had a fun party at preschool on Monday. They played games, made crafts, and exchanged valentines. For snack they had hot cocoa, heart shaped frosted cookies, and gold fish. She had a really good time and was so excited to show me all candy she received.
I was able to go help out at K's Valentine's Day party on Tuesday. There was a heart-shaped pinata filled with candy and the kids took turns trying to break open. It only took four swipes before all the candy came plummeting out. It was a free for all trying to get their cups full of the sweet innards. They exchanged valentines and ate a snack consisting of gold fish, pretzels, popcorn and, of course, candy. K only ate two pieces and saved the rest for later. I have taught her well:)
After dinner at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, our favorite, we stopped in at Star Bucks to buy some dessert with our $2 bills. Some anti-gun group organized a boy-cot of Star Bucks across America on February 14th because Star Bucks allows people to conceal carry in their stores. Because of this many gun owners went out of their way to purchase something at Star Bucks and to use $2 bills in honor of the second amendment. We bought some tasty little cream cakes and brownies. The girls loved their cream cakes.
We exchanged gifts with each other. The girls made valentines for all of us and we gave the girls chocolate filled hearts. M made me some metal paper holders for my awesome memo board he made me before Christmas. I should really make a post about that.
We had a wonderful Valentine's Day together. The girls got a ton of candy which they will nibble on here and there for the next week or so. Then they will forget it even exists and I will donate it to the girls at church. I love that my girls aren't candy hounds. They would prefer veggies or fruit to candy. Their teeth will thank me later.