Thanksgiving Craft

Today at preschool we made this fun craft. We used beans and split peas. They have been glued into an old CD holder that I had. This is mine, of course the preschooler's were a bit messier. I thought the project was really fun and am going to take the supplies to Thanksgiving dinner. I thought the kids and the teenager's would have fun making the craft. I am Art Mom in Mike's 5th grade class. I only go in once a week. We have done some fun projects. I will post them. This one of the ideas that I found on minimatisse.blogspot.com/2010/06/reuse.html

More Updates

Matt made it onto his Jr. High Basketball team. I was pretty excited about his first day wearing his Sunday clothes to school. He just sort of rolls his eyes and smiles at me. The games have been fun to watch. I can't believe he is getting so big.

I love this picture of Matt and Kali.

Mike's football team took first place in the playoffs.

Mike is a great kids with tons of enthusiam! His teachers love him, his coaches love him and his family loves him.



Bronson is in another play. He is going to be Tiny Tim in Roger's Memorial Theater's performance of A Christmas Carol. This will be the last play at the old theatre. Then they will become Legacy Pointe Theatre. Bron performs on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then on the Saturday Matinees.

I thought this was a funny picture of Bron. However, this has been his attitude lately. (someone help me!!)

Kristy had her baby yesterday. We went to the hospital to visit. Kali loved the baby. She is a doll - just perfect.

Fall Leaves

Our new house has lots of trees. We have never needed to rake up leaves before. The kids loved playing in them. By the third or fourth day of needing to rake up leaves they were not quite as enthusiastic.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

I know I am late updating. Life has been extremely crazy lately.

Mike was a rockstar for Halloween.

Bron was the robot from Yo! Gabba! Gabba! We worked on the project together. It was a pretty cool costume.

For Halloween Kali was a butterfly. After three days of dressing up for different events, Kali was more than ready to go trick-or-treating. Even with lots of rain and cold weather, Kali LOVED trick-or-treating. After about 30 minutes mom was more than done. Kali was very upset about going home while her brothers got to continue trick-or-treating.

Our New Home

In the middle of July we purchased a home just up the street from where we were living. By August 1st we had our house completely vacant and listed with an agent. This home offers much more room for our children and we were all excited for the move. I have finally got some pictures to post. On the upper level is my preschool, Kali's room and Bronson's room.

The walls in Kali's room were blue. Rather than repainting them I thought that if I could find some cute flowers I could just paint some grass along the bottom. I had thought that the flowers I purchased were big, but when they came I realized that the 17" was not the diameter of the flower, but included the stem. They are darling wall stickers, but not nearly as big as I wanted. I decided to just paint the large flowers myself. I love how they turned out. I wish this picture was brighter, but the window makes taking a picture difficult.

The previous owner was an amazing artist and had painted a beautiful waterfall mural. This is in Bron's room. She had been working on a mural on all the walls, but had not finished. I do like to paint, but am no where near talented enough to complete her mural. We kept the waterfall, but had to cover up the other parts. The top of the waterfall was unfinished (that's why it just kind of ends the way it does). I painted the walls brown and did the clouds and sky. We need to put a wood molding between the walls and the sky. Then it won't look like such an odd stopping point for the mural. It is way fun to lay on his bed and look up on at the sky. If it wasn't such a pain I would paint the ceiling in the preschool room like this. Maybe some day . . .

Here is a better shot of the mural. She really was a great artist.

Here are some shots of my preschool room. For those of you who are familiar with my preschool, I put the Kindness Pledge on the wall with vinyl that I cut from a friends cricket machine.I found the cute animal face cubbies at Target.And then my mural!!! I love it. The walls were previously pink. I painted them brown, and then with the help of friends and sisters, we hung the murals.

Overall, I am very excited about my cute preschool room. There are two ceiling fans and lots of light from the three windows. There is also a big closet that I keep most of the toys in. The bathroom is connected to the preschool room - which is perfect.

That's all the pictures I have for now. Matt and Mike's room is in the basement. It is great to have the kids seperated at bedtime. Someday I will get around to decorating their room - then I'll post it.

A is for Apple

Today was our my first day of preschool for the 2010-2011 school year. I have eight kids in the class. They seem to be a great group of kids. My mom is going to help me out with Kali on some of the preschool days, but right now she is in Germany so . . .

Kali had her first day of preschool today!

She loved it and was very well behaved. She won't be coming every day, but at least once a week.

Summer Fun

Wow! I was just looking at my blog and realized that I never updated with all of my fun summer pictures. This has been a crazy summer - but we still managed to do lots of fun stuff with our great neighbors.

One of our favorite outings was up Mueller Park Canyon for a hot dog roast.

We road the Farmington trail. This was tons of fun.

We tried visiting several different parks throughout the Salt Lake area. This is the Murray City Park.Copperton Park. (out by the Copper mine).

Castle Park in Farmington.

ANNIE GET YOUR GUN!

Bron has had so much fun being in the play Annie Get Your Gun over at Roger's Memorial Theatre. He only has two weeks left and I am sure he will miss it when he is done. I will post more pictures from the play if I get the chance. There are two casts. His cast is the right half.

Water Fun . . . Not So Fun

The kids love to jump on the trampoline in the sprinklers.



I was thinking Kali might like to play out in the sun and water with the boys. We had put her Dora castle in storage for the last few months and she had completely forgotten about it. She was super excited when I set it up for her. I was thinking we could put a little water in the bottom of the castle and Kali could play in the water. I guess I should have put the water in before I showed her the castle. I had also bought a little caterpillar that sprays water. I let her play in the castle and then I turned on the caterpillar.

Needless to say, this did not make her happy.
On a side note: It took a long time to blow the whole castle up and get the yard set up for the water - hauling hoses around, etc. I probably spent about 45 minutes on a 90 degree day setting up. Within three minutes Kali was screaming and the fun was over. YEAH! What a day.

Swimming At Grandma's

The summer is finally warming up and we have had the chance to spend some great times at Grandma and Grandpa's pool. Kali is not sure what she thinks about the water. We have managed to take her down the slide a few times.

Things Are Not Always As They Seem

I was talking with a friend the other day. She was telling me that it's funny, she feels like she is cool, and hip, and cute and not really any different than she did 10 years ago. Then she will catch a reflection of herself in a store window or something and think "Oh shoot, I do look like a 34-year-old mother of five." (which isn't a really bad thing). This does seem to be the way life goes.

I was with my kids at a friends house the other day. We were eating lunch and the kids were playing. The little girls were putting play make-up on eachother. One of the four-year-olds wanted to put some on Kali. She did a decent job for a four-year-old. But then Kali got into the makeup and added some touches of her own. When she came out of the bedroom we were all saying, "Wow Kali, you look so pretty." Kali loved it and would smile at each of the mothers.




When we were ready to leave I took Kali into the bathroom to see how she looked. This was her response when she looked in the mirror.



Kind of how I feel sometimes!