Tree and a Treehouse

Isabel had her first field trip this Thursday at the Ogden Treehouse museum. Ben and I were able to go with her. Tamina was able to take Adam and Sarah with Ari too! We have been to the Treehouse before, but never on a field trip. To start off the trip, we met in the theater and they read us a book and the kids acted out their parts with puppets. Isabel got to be the crow. Can you see her excitement?
She got a little more into it when she was able to use her puppet. (See the crows on the page)

She really didn't want to be by the other puppets. Adam loved the story. He and Ari seemed to enjoy this part. Adam was the bee and Ari was the fox in the story.

Once again, see how interested Isabel looks....

Once the story was over, the kids got to have free time. See the change in countenance? Here Isabel is on the train.

The kids loved the life size cow that you could milk. It was pretty cool if I do say so myself :)

Here is Ben trying to see where the stuff (milk) is coming from.

Then we went to the farm area where Ben could play with a small barn and tractor. It was cool becuase the tractor could fit into the barn. Then we were off to the map where they ran in circles and jumped around the states. Then it was off to the music room.

Isabel played the drums, while Ben climbed on them.

I thought this was a cute picture of Isable and Ari playing the drums. The kids hardly stood still long enough to take a picture of them. I think this place give kids temporary A.D.D. They have no attention span, cause they want to do it all, right now....

When we lost Adam, we finally found him up at the computer playing games. The tracing center was right there. The kids liked this. We only lost Ari once :) They ended free time and we had to go back to the theater for one last story. They had someone play the guitar and do different voices for animals and sing Old MacDonald before the story. I thought he did a really good job.

Before we left, we had snacks for all of the kids. Peanut butter crackers and juice boxes. We had the kids eat before they could get into the car. As we were getting into the car, Isabel looked at me and said, "that wasn't very much fun today, was it?" I was puzzled and said, "you love the treehouse, which part wasn't fun?" She replied, "the part where they made us do the stories and sit down." So the part that I thought was great, wasn't entertaining for Isabel. Funny, huh?! I think her favorite part was the cow. She kept wanting to go back and milk it. All in all a memorable first field trip!

Now for the other tree I have been working on. I found a cute idea for an advent calendar for Halloween on a blog (don't remember which one) and mentioned to Jen that we should make one. She found another cute idea for one on pottery barn for kids, so we decided to make one of our own. Here is what came out of our collaberative minds. Jen made a pattern for the tree, and we went from there.
Here is a close-up of the pieces that go in the pocket on the bottom of the tree. We had no patterns, just ideas. Jen, Kandi and Tamina made one too. All of us have different pieces to put on it. I decided to make mine stuffed, just like the ornaments for the Christmas tree advent calendar that mom had when we were growing up. My kids absolutely love it. They love carrying the pieces around and chasing each other with them! And yes, they are more cute than scary. I don't do scary very good.

These are 2 of my favorite pieces. I drew them on paper and then tried to make them. Brady told me that if I had a mummy it needed to have it's arms streched out reaching for someone. This was my second attempt at a mummy, and I liked it!

For not having a pattern for any of it, and for not having sewn anything for a long time (always had mom do it for me) I think it turned out pretty cute. Not a professional job by any means, but sure looks good on the wall!

Princess and Pumpkins

This little princess woke up this morning with chipmunk cheeks. Why do I call her a princess??? Well, although she already is her daddy's princess, we went to the dentist yesterday and she got 2 crowns. Couldn't let Ben beat her at anything! So crowns=princess status :)
Her is a picture of her showing off her new crowns. She did an excellent job. The dentist loved her enough to seal 2 of her other teeth for free :) Ben reacted to the medicine by being mean and sleeping. Isabel got super-emotional. She would just cry at everything. For those of you that know Isabel, it was more of her bellowing cry. Grandma Tracie came over to watch Ben while we went to the dentist, and she ended up taking Ben for the day. I held my crying-emotional 4yr old. She kept reminding me that she had a headache. She, unlike Ben, refused to sleep it off. She would start to fall asleep, then cry and sit up so she didn't have to sleep. It took about 4hrs for the medicine to wear off. Crying/whiney kids are the best! She called Brady when she was starting to feel better and told him that she had 2 new silver teeth. He then asked her what else she did during the day. Well, that was the wrong question. She started to get teary again and said,"I don't know what I did!!!", one of the effects of the medicine is amnesia. Supposedly she wont remember anything from yesterday. (at least most of the day). So I guess I know how my kids will act if they ever start using drugs....mean & super emotional! We will just keep praying we wont have to deal with that :)

For Family Home Evening on Monday we went out to Day Farms in Layton to go on a hayride and pick our pumpkins. The kids were very excited! Here is Ben riding on his! He finally decided on a pumpkin when we rolled it over and there was a worm under it. He asked the tractor driver if he could have the worm and the pumpkin. They said he could. He kept the worm til we got in the car and he tried to brush the dirt off of his pumpkin and squished his worm :( Sad moment.

Isabel loves picking pumpkins. She found hers, then helped her daddy pick out his. It was one of the biggest ones there :) We are going to paint them next week.

Here is a family picture before we picked out our pumpkins. It was a fun hayride :)

Grandma Tracie had a bad day on Monday. I asked Isabel what we could do for Grandma to help her have a better day. She thought a minute and said, "we should paint her a pumpkin!" I thought that would be a fun idea, so we went and got some miniature pumpkins after we picked out our big ones. Then I had the kids paint them.

They had a great time mixing paint and dunking the pumpkins in it!

Isabel liked to use glitter glue on hers....

Here is Ben's finished pumpkin.

And here is Isabel's finished pumpkin. They both used so much paint that it took over 8hrs to dry.

Hopefully they helped Grandma feel better! The kids sure had a fun time painting them for her!

Crowns and Cars

I would like to introduce the new King of the family to you. His name is Benjamin and he received his first crown on Thursday. In all seriousness, we went to the dentist to get his 2 cavities filled and they came out and told me that he needed a crown cause there was a crack under the cavity that would start to hurt him soon. So, Ben really is the first to get a crown in our family :)
The medicine they gave him (versed) made him loopy and hallucinate. I was sitting with him on the couch and saw him reaching at the ceiling. I asked him what he saw and he told me ,'motorcycles', then he kept reaching and grabbing at them saying ,"WO!". Jen and Kandi were over cause we were working out and Ben would slur their names and talk really loud....he was acting like a drunk baby. The dentist told me that Ben wouldn't remember anything for about 6 hours, so I didn't feel too bad laughing at his drunken behavior a few times......Zoey and Nara enjoyed it becuase they could play with whatever they wanted and Ben wouldn't come take it away. Isabel liked it because the TV was on most of the day cause he couldn't walk either, so we read books and watched movies.

The only way I could get him to look at his new tooth was to take a picture and then have him look at the picture. He is sad that I tell him no on certain candies and gum now. Don't want that beautiful new expensive tooth coming out anytime soon! The dentist said that it will come out naturally by the time he is 10-12yrs old. Isabel's apointment is on the 14th, so we will hope we don't have a queen in the family too :)

Onto the cars.......

Tamina took Sam into Primary Children's to have an EEG on Tuesday, so Adam and Ari came to play after school. When Tamina had Sam I took them dinner, sloppy joe cars, and since they were such a hit I decided that we should make cars again. Here is what mine looked like. (I know, the headlights aren't the best....)

I made wheat breadstick dough and cut squares, then we wrapped the hot dogs with it, baked it and had cut up pickles, cucumbers, carrotts, ketchup & mustard, pretzle sticks (to hold stuff together) and toothpicks to decoate it with. I let the kids go to town. They loved it! We spent an hour on lunch between wrapping the hot dogs, decorating, and eating. Below are everyones creations!

Here is everyone making them.

Adam made a submarine! It was pretty awesome. I think that he used 10 cucumbers. He was able to eat most of the creation! He didn't want pickle people, so he had pretzle stick people instead.

Isabel made a car with TONS of pickles and pretzles. She ate 1/2 a jar of dill pickles. She demolished hers and told me it was a car salad on her plate :)

Ben would stick a toothpick into his and then start giggling and saying 'wo'! It was funny and made me giggle :) He told me that his was an airplane, hence the reason he is flying it in the air. He ate almost ate 2 whole hot dog cars-airplanes.

Jen got in on the action! She had pickle passengers in the back :)

I can't remember what Ari said hers was, but I think that it was a boat becuase she didn't want wheels. She loved the carrotts (yes those are ones from the garden!) I was suprised, but she ate her whole hot dog car too!

All in all I would say that the cars were a success! With the leftover bread dough, I made one pan of cinnamon rolls. They were yummy! Adam even told me that I am the best cinnamon roll and frosting maker ever! I will definitely have to make wheat cinnamon rolls again, they were really yummy and then I won't feel guilty eating them cause they are healthy, right?!