Crazy Hair/Mismatch Day

Friday was fun for the girls. Apparently is was Crazy Hair/Mismatched Clothes Day. I never heard anything about this on any calenders or flier's from school, but luckily Sarah remembered about 2 minutes before the bus would be arriving. I've never seen her change her clothes so fast. We had no time to change her hairdo, but I decided that putting a billion bows in her hair would make her hair nutty enough to be considered "crazy". She had so much fun and told me all about all the other funny hairdos and clothes people wore. Thank goodness she remembered. She hates missing out.

Before school, as Sarah explained what the day was, I thought to myself that this was definitely Natalie's cup of tea. Every day is mismatch day for her! We got her ready later in the day and had to kick up the mismatching a notch to make it fun for Natalie. I let her wear a Hawaiian looking skirt the girls play dress up in all the time. It paired up quite nicely with her striped tights and patterned shirt. Someone commented that Natalie's bows in her three pony-tails was very Punky Brewster-ish and very fitting for Miss Natalie. (o: Both girls looked pretty cute, but Angela didn't want to miss out either. I forgot to get her picture, but she wore a little playdress with tights that definitely didn't match. In the afternoon, I took all the girls to the doctor for Angela's check up. As I sat there in the busy waiting room, I realized that my girls must look ridiculous to people who weren't aware that it was Crazy Hair/Mismatch Day. (o: I thought to myself that it should be a national holiday - why should we have all the fun?
I have to laugh and include this picture. This is a look I get a lot from Sarah lately. The rolling of the eyes. She is mad at me for some reason in this picture, I don't remember why. It is very hard to remember because it's always something different. I am also told that I "don't understand" a lot. Eight year olds aren't that close to being teenagers are they? (o: I love my Sarah even though sometimes I'm not so sure she loves me!

One Fish, Two Fish . . .

Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday and my wonderful mother-in-law's birthday too. Two of my favorite people! To celebrate we did some fun Seussy sort of activities for dinner and FHE. Green eggs and ham was the menu for dinner. (Sarah was disappointed I didn't figure out how to color the ham green.) We also had a "One Fish Two Fish" guessing game (estimating how many fish were in the bowls), we played Fox in Socks - a relay game wearing socks on our hands. We did some Dr. Seuss activity pages, played Put the Hat on the Cat with Twilight (which she didn't really think was fun (o: ) and we made some fun Cat in the Hat treats. And we couldn't let Dr. Seuss have all the fun, we also called to sing to grandma. (o:

Darn - the green eggs covered my cool Dr. Seuss T-shirt. I'm a bit of a fanatic. (o:

We thought this funny egg was very appropriate for our Dr. Seuss dinner. It is the roundest egg I've ever seen. Just in case you were interested. Kind of quirky.

Beautiful Sarah

Sarah got a cute new dress too. It's hard to find cute dresses for her age that are modest and reasonably priced. I think she looks so pretty.

Fancy Nattie

Natalie got to have her "fancy" day on Sunday this week. (See Angela's post last week about our rotating "fancy" Sundays for the girls.) Natalie and Angela wore their new adorable red dresses we got for a great deal at Kohl's. I really like how Natalie's hair turned out - it was fun to try.

Just a quick Natalie tidbit. She's still my little fashionista, Punky Brewster and marches to the beat of her own drum wardrobe-ly speaking. When I came out of my closet in the clothes I picked for church on Sunday, I was surprised to see Natalie was right there waiting and with her finger on her chin. She very seriously said, "Nice choice mom." Referring to the clothing I chose. I was happy she approved. (o:

Star of the Week

Natalie was star of the week in her class recently (I forgot to get a picture of her poster before we sent it to school.) She is such a fun kid - I am so glad she is in our family. Some of the things we highlighted on her poster included...

Her love of fruits and vegetables (she'll pick an apple, edemame, nectarines or grapes over almost anything else.)

Her creative-ness - I included a picture of the banana butterfly she made recently. (o:

Beach trip pictures - Natalie loves the beach.

A picture with her grandmas and grandpas - Natalie LOVES her grandparents so much and talks about how much she misses them all the time.

Natalie and Twilight - Natalie is such an animal lover.

A "fashionable" pic - Natalie is always coming up with her own fashions.

Pictures playing with her sisters. Natalie loves playing Polly Pockets, princesses, pirate princesses, school, primary, T.V., interview, house and camping with Angela and Sarah.

I also had to include one of the many, many works of art Natalie has created.

Natalie is such a nut - she keeps us laughing and makes me smile!

We love you Natalie!

Spring Snow

All the drops of melting snow looks like sparkling diamonds in the sun on our Japanese Maple

I like the reflection of the trees in the water droplet...

We got about an inch or a little more of snow that we woke up to this morning. The way the school district has made their decisions this year, I honestly thought school would be at least delayed. Luckily, everything was right on schedule. (Or we might be going to school through July - making up snow days!)

Everything looked so beautiful this morning. After getting Sarah off to school and taking care of a little problem she had. (Long story short, my poor stressed out sweetie was too shy to talk to her teacher about getting behind on some work yesterday - that wasn't her fault - so I went to help work out the problem.) Anyway, when we got back I let Angela and Natalie run around and play in what I hope will be our last snowstorm for the year. (o:

It was beautiful because everything was covered in white and the sun was shining, melting everything quickly. All the little drops of melting snow in the sunshine were glittering and begging for pictures. (o: I took pictures until the girls were begging to go inside and finally get some breakfast! I was having too much fun . . .

I Only Believe in Science

That title will only make sense to those who've seen and appreciate the humor in Nacho Libre. I'm on a Nacho kick today . . .

So this week was the kids' Science O Rama at school.

Science O Rama is such a funny name for the kids' science fair - it makes me think of Chuck A Rama - are those still around in Utah? Good old Chuck A Rama. (o:

So Anyways (as Nacho Libre would say) -

We had a very busy week. Ahem . . . I had a very busy week. And I learned a very big lesson. What is that lesson, you say?

Don't wait until the last minute to do a science fair project. That is the lesson my friends.

Because if you do, you might end up staying up until 2:00 in the morning finishing up your child's lovely science fair board. So take it from me - procrastination stinks!

In my defense, I had no idea the part of actually putting all the "stuff" on the board would take HOURS. Yes, that's right, HOURS. Getting every little thing matted and figuring out where to place everything and making it look nice is very time consuming. (I am a little of a perfectionist, mind you.) But I have to say, I think they turned out pretty nice.

The saddest part is that because I did so much in the middle of the night, Sarah and Natalie didn't get to help much with the assembly like I imagined. On the other hand, if they would have been helping then it would have taken DAYS. (o: Next time, we're starting much earlier!

This one was Natalie's project. We hid Twilight's "stinky" food in the family room in different places and timed her to see how long it would take her to find it. We did three series of playing this game. The first time, we played 5 times in a row with no break. (Hiding the food in the same location, but changing location between series.) Then we waited for a few hours and played again waiting 5 minutes between the 5 searches. Then we waited another while before playing a last time - waiting 10 minutes between the 5 searches. The more time we spread between the "hide and treat" game, the longer it seemed to take Twilight to find her food. We had fun making the little charts at the bottom of the board. Natalie did these by hand (with my help) and I think she did a great job. I also love her picture she did on the left side. Natalie was one of only three Kindergartners who participated in the science fair. Her teacher was so cute and let Natalie present her board to the class. She made Natalie feel so special for doing her scientific research! (o: (See picture below of Natalie's presentation.)
I mentioned Sarah's experiment in an earlier post and here is her board. Daddy helped do some lovely graph's at the bottom, that turned out really nice. I think I already mentioned what Sarah did, but I'll review once more for our memory's sake (since this is our little family history). Sarah watered 5 plants with various liquids including milk, sugar water, lime drink, salt water and plain old water. We were surprised how well the milk and sugar water did. They actually grew better than the water sample until the very end of the two weeks. Surprise - the lime drink and salt water killed off the plants rather quickly!
On the left side of the board is the part of the experiment where Sarah watered white violas with colored water to see if they would turn colors (just like when you put cut carnations in a vase with colored water). After two weeks, there was no color. So, we concluded that the color molecules must not be able to travel through the root system. (Or they need to be watered for longer with the colored water.)
On the right side of the board we showed what happens when you water plants with various amounts of water. The more water the plants got, the taller they grew! However, the most watered plant had fewer flowers.


Sarah and Natalie were so excited and proud to have boards up at the science fair. That made the very late night catching up worth every minute. Apparently, Sarah's board will get to go to district, which she is TOTALLY excited about. I'm hoping maybe Natalie's will go too (I haven't heard the official results) because she will be sad if not. But that's the way it goes sometimes.

Another bonus for the science night was that OMSI came to the school and did some cool experiments and had some great displays and things for the kids to do and play with during the night.

One other little note that I am proud of . . . some of you might remember from our past e-mailings of the family Post that last spring I held a "Science Girls" club at our house every week. I was so proud to find out that Sarah's good friends, Monica and Taylor, who were in the club, both did science projects for the fair too. Not that it was all because of me - but the whole reason I did the little "club" was to help the girls feel confident in their abilities and excited about science. I loved looking at what Monica and Taylor worked on - they did awesome! It got me motivated to start up our little club again this summer. They've been asking all year...

Yeah for science! (o:

Fabulous Fire Fighter Field Trip

Angela just stared at this fireman with her mouth open like this the whole time he was getting on his gear.

We got to go on a fantastic field trip this week. We love going to the fire station (we went 2 years ago with Natalie's group). We felt so special - there were 6 firemen (more firemen than preschoolers!) who took us around their station. We toured their living quarters - the kitchen, bedrooms, living room, etc. The had dispatch call out a "practice" call to Smart Cookies and they showed the kids their cool trucks, fire suits and tools. It was awesome. The part I appreciated the most as a mom, was when one of the guys got all dressed up in his gear to show the kids that they might look a little scary (and sound scary - the mask sounds like Darth Vader), but if a fireman comes to your house in a fire, they are there to help. The fireman talked to the kids about not hiding or running away from them. As you can see in the picture above the fireman - Angela doesn't look too sure. (o:

We loved our field trip - these guys were so nice and I am so grateful for the service they give to our community. Especially since Sarah's scary accident on the playground last year. Having such kind, well-trained and professional people to call on in an emergency is such a blessing. Yeah for firemen!! (o:

Little Princess

I decided, since I have three girls, I should learn how to do something other than piggie tails and pony tails in their hair. (I still LOVE piggie tails and always will.) So I came up with a plan. It is too overwhelming to try and do fancy things with all the girls' hair every Sunday - it would take too long and I often have meetings on Sundays. So I had an idea to let the girls take turns each Sunday to be fancy. Angela got her turn first this last Sunday.

My friend Janessa (fellow mom of three girls) shared a blog that she found with fancy hair style instructions. (I added a link to the title of this post). Angela's hair-do in this picture is very beginner compared to some of the stuff I saw on the blog, but I am still proud of it. (O: Baby steps. If the girls are good and hold still during their "hair salon" session, then they are rewarded with painted fingernails. (o: Angela did very well - so she is showing off her lovely purple fingernails above. She LOVED being so fancy on Sunday. Natalie and Sarah were a bit jealous, but seem excited for their turns in the coming weeks. Thanks for the inspiration Janessa!

Yesterday...

Yesterday, while I did this (see explanation below) . . .
Angela did this! What a cutie!
Natalie joined her when she got home from school. . .

I love when the girls find good things to keep themselves busy while I am doing nutty things like trying to can butter. Ever heard of it? Well after canning 10 jars, I found out it is not really recommended, so don't do it. (o:

I got the idea from a food storage book. When I was having trouble and none of the jars were popping/sealing, I decided to send out a call for help. I wrote an e-mail to a girl who runs a really great website with recipes, tips and ideas for food storage. (The title of this post is linked to it) I asked if I was doing everything right. She was great and responded very quickly. She sent me a link to an article that gave some reasons why it's not recommended. Mainly because the "canning" method you use for it doesn't get hot enough to kill any potential bacteria.

For those of you who are wondering why in the heck I was trying to can butter and aren't familiar with food storage - here's the reason. Our church leaders really encourage families to gather food storage for "a rainy day". That way when weather events, natural disasters, job loss and other unpredictable events happen in our lives, we can take care of our families and have food ready. I have loved working on getting our several months supply of food. It was awesome when the snowstorm happened in December. We did have to eventually run to the store to get milk (but we have dried milk for a bigger emergency - I'm just not a big fan of the stuff) but we never had to worry about running out of food. I walked out to our shelves in the garage and always had what we needed for meals.

So anyway, I got to thinking that it would be nice to have butter on hand, but you can only keep so much in the fridge. When I saw the idea I thought it would be a nice addition to our food storage. Oh well! Crystal recommended keeping Crisco on hand and there are also some forms of powdered butter you can get, FYI.

Like a Kid in a Candy Store...

A few weeks ago Aaron Brother's Frame store was having a clearance sale. 75% off all their inventory! They were closing the location nearby and wanted to get rid of everything. I went three times during the sale. I couldn't get enough. There are so many things I've been waiting to hang up because I needed frames! I bought the three matching frames above and the prints inside them for less than $30! The frames are quite large - I don't know if you can tell. I was happy with the great deal I got. Ned* and I have always wanted to use our big entryway walls to make an art display. We've had the other two paintings for a while and were excited to add a few more to our collection.
These pictures have been waiting for nice frames for YEARS! I could never find the right frame for the right price. I love how these turned out. These are sketches by our good family friend Peggy - she is like an aunt to me. She is a great artist and gave me these beautiful cards years ago. I always thought they were too pretty to use and wanted to frame them for our lighthouse themed bathroom. They really make the bathroom look extra nice. Thanks Peggy!

I have a bazillion more frames to fill with pictures and prints. I have a few already with things in them waiting to be hung. I'll post more when I get things up.

The only sad part of the story is that I found out later that the store eventually put everything on sale for 90% off!!!! Wow - I guess it's good I didn't know - I would have bought more frames than I could ever hope to use. I LOVE frames!! I am grateful to have found some really screaming deals! Thanks to Shannan for giving me the heads up. (o:

My House Stinks

(Note: no we don't always make Sarah wear her bike helmet when she is gardening. (o: Only when it's for science experiments! he he )

It is science experiment season in the northwest.

The kids are working on science experiments for the science fair at school next week.

Sarah had a cool idea for hers...

She is giving some pea plants different kinds of liquids to "drink".

We are watering one with milk, one with lime margarita mix (it's an ingredient for Billy*'s ribs), sugar water, salt water and of course, boring old water.

After two weeks of watering, the smells from the various liquids (especially the milk) are getting pretty rank. I'm happy that tomorrow will be our last day for collecting data and we can throw out the stinky plants.

We did a couple other experiments with watering - this one was seeing how using different amounts of watering affects plants. I thought this turned out very cool. The "over watered" plant is very leggy and hardly has any flowers and the underwater plant has hardly grown and is looking sad.

Just in case you were wondering, plants don't like salt water.

Sarah and I were actually surprised how well the "milk" plant did. It looked very healthy up until just two days ago. I think the milk starting to spoil is the problem, otherwise, milk might actually not be such a bad thing to water with! (o: The sugar water plant has also done surprisingly well and is still doing good.

The sugar water one is second from the left and the water "control" plant is on the right. Obviously, the tried and true method of watering with water seems to be the best for plants. Surprise! (o:

We also did one more experiment with white flowers in soil. We tried watering two of the plants with red and blue colored water to see if the flowers would take on those colors. After two weeks, they are still as white as can be. It works with cut flowers in a vase, but doesn't seem to work for flowers in soil. Interesting. (o:

Natalie has also been doing an experiment, but we have had such disappointing results, we are going to try something else this weekend. We tried doing a taste test with Twilight using different flavored waters. She refused to drink ANY of them during our 4-6 hour long test periods. Stubborn cat! That's okay though, we have another cat experiment up our sleeves, she won't get off that easy! (o: Hopefully she'll feel up to a game of hide and go "treats" this weekend.