Speaking of trees, we have been starting to put some of our trees and bushes in. We have these one type of tree that we have to have in our safety strip between the road and our sidewalk. Usually they cost $180 each, but one of the nurseries in town is going out of business so after waiting for their price to drop a few times I was able to get all the ones we needed for much cheaper. We have also started picking up some bushes as we have seen them on sale, but that has been difficult because we are not 100% sure exactly what we want it all to look like. Slowly, our grass has also been coming in, but so have a bunch of weeds. All of our neighbors yards look so great, so hopefully ours will get there some day, but it may take a few years.
Every fall we also like making up donuts. Actually, we enjoy this one so much we probably do it on a monthly basis now. Here are some apple fritters. These are really yummy. Apple fritters were always my favorite donut growing up, but I would have to say that these beat any store bought ones. They are also super easy - at least way easier than our yeast donuts that we sometimes do.
We also had General Conference. This year Rebecca and I decided to make the kids packets by hand. These ones worked really well and occupied them for at least 2 of the sessions (4 hours). We were busy eating for some of the other sessions (our traditional breakfast cinnamon rolls for both Saturday and Sunday and the children did some Legos too for part of one of the sessions.
Here is Julia's finished packet:
Their first job was to draw a coloring page for the cover for one of their siblings. Since Agnes was not able to do one, I let Julia draw her own.
Next they were to design a tie that I would have to wear if I were ever to speak in conference. Since that would never happen, I was able to confidently promise the children that I would wear these ties if it ever did.
This was a dot to dot I made. I was pretty impressed with my work. None of the children were able to guess that it was a temple prior to connecting the dots.
Word search
Conference bingo. They got treats as they crossed these words off. They started this bingo in the second session and through the remaining three they never heard the word "Bible". We ended up giving it to them once the final prayer was said though.
Then they were to draw four pictures of conference stories that they heard. Julia, Ethan, and Christian all remembered the stories of the missionary who kept breaking his prosthetic leg while riding his bike and the missionary who almost fell of the mountain side. I didn't think they were even listening during those talks so I was surprised that they each came up with those on their own. Julia asked if she could do a couple from previous conferences. She did one of a boy eating twinkies with pigs (it was okay because the twinkies were still in their wrappers) and one where cows were falling off a truck. Rebecca and I couldn't remember either of those stories, but Julia swore that they were shared in conference. Does anyone else recall these two stories?
We also had our annual Harry Potter party. Each year we try to get in all of the movies during the month of October and read some of the books too. We have been starting this tradition off with a party. This year the party include a dinner with some traditional food from England (Rebecca made bangers and mash with an onion gravy). We made all new wands for everyone. I was really glad about this because a few months back Christian was acting out the final scene from Harry Potter and he broke my Elder Wand in half. So now I have a new one. Then we played a polyjuice game. We had identified a few characters from Harry Potter that we could all choose to be. We pretended to drink our potion, then thought of who we wanted to be. But we couldn't get caught, which would happen if two people were pretending to be the same person. We would then reveal who we were and if there were two or more people who were they same, they were caught and out. We would then eliminate a couple characters and keep playing until only one or two people were left. The children picked up on this game quickly and really liked it. Then came a couple quidditch games. The first we had three laundry baskets on our two couches that face each other. Two children also sat on each couch with the baskets. There were three balls and the children tried to throw them in the baskets on the opposite couch, while the other team blocked and tried to throw the balls into their own baskets. The children really liked this one too. Our second quidditch game was find the snitch, which was just like sardines. In this game one person took the snitch ball and ran and hid somewhere in the house. Then everyone had to try to go find that person and when found hide with them until the last person finds the group. It was a fun party and we look forward to doing it again next year. If anyone wants to join us, they are more than welcome.
Our children had their parent teacher conferences this week. There teachers all talked about what great kids they are. The first grade teacher said that Christian already met all of the standards for first grade and so she is starting him on second grade expectations. Ethan and Julia are both reading maniacs, and Julia in particular seems like she is trying to break the school record for book reading points this year (they use the AR point system and the principal has promised a lunch with any student who gets up to 500 points). That is about 30-40 of the books that Julia reads (e.g., Princess Academy, Little House on the Prairie), so it really is a lot. The most recent series that they were into was The Dollhouse People.
Ethan has been into the Origami Star Wars books and he has been spending lots of time making those. Here are a couple Yodas we made together today.
Before coloring
After coloring
3 comments:
There was a talk in April 2010 that mentions putting cows into a truck. In that talk some calves got lost on the way to the corral, Maybe she remembers pieces and got them mixed up.
Yard looks good. So is the front and sides grass and the back a giant cement pad? What happened to the area under your deck? Thanks for the wand ideas, we made some a few months back as well and the kids love them.
I guess Ethan and Tucker are secretly talking about what Books to read because about a month ago Tucker discovered the Star wars origami books and has been using up all our paper making ewok clans. That harry potter party sounds like a lot of fun!
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