Charles and his friend Beau like to make videos, and they like to cook together. So they often will combine the two. On this particular day, I needed some cookies for an activity, and I asked the boys if they'd like to bake them. They were happy to oblige and they made 6 dozen Lion House chocolate chip cookies.
Elisabeth and Charles are in a different school district than Annabelle, Jane and Nora, and because of that, sometimes our days-off don't line up. This wouldn't be great if we were trying to plan a vacation, but we don't often do that in the middle of the year, so it works out well for us. I actually kinda liked having the smaller groups at home, and being able to do age-appropriate activities for each group when they were off. We started off each morning with normal chores and an extra chore (since we have extra time), and then we'd have something fun planned for the afternoon. But we always had to be home by 3 or so, because that's when the others get home and the crazy after school schedule begins where we're driving kids to all their activities.
Jane got her braces off on the first day of her spring break! She's most likely going to get them on again once all her adult teeth have grown in.
We walked to Walmart one day and picked up a treat.
While there, I noticed they are making some new barbies, that don't have your typical barbie look...a little overweight, with bigger thighs and smaller chests :).
A friend of mine, she was a neighbor last year until she moved to Montana, published her first book! So I bought a copy off Amazon and read it. It's a clean historical romance, so if you're looking for something in that genre, pick it up.
This is me always trying to be better with my food habits. I make plans and schedules for foods and then I try to stick to it. The weekends are the hardest, partly because all the kids are home all day and eating constantly, and they're wanting treats, and partly because I've accidentally trained my brain to think weekends mean more food and more fun food. It's a work in progress.
Tuesdays our theater has $5 movies, and mini popcorns for $1.50, so I took the girls to see Dumbo.
During the elementary kids Spring Break, Elisabeth had cheer tryouts. They needed a head shot turned in with her application, so we snapped this one and printed it at Costco. She also needed teachers signatures in each class for the two days leading up to try-outs (after they'd learned their routine and cheer; probably to make sure they weren't skipping to practice), and she had to have a teacher letter of recommendation, along with her transcript (over 3.0 GPA required; she's fine with her 3.9) and attendance from the year.
Wednesday night was cheer tryouts. They had to stay the entire time, while all 65 girls tried out, and for any call backs. By 930pm, she found out she made the team! Here she is with our friend/neighbor Emma, who was on Varsity last year, and made it again this year. We were a little surprised Elisabeth made it as they were only taking 37 girls, and 45 were returning (they had 2 big squads last year, between JV and Varsity), because it means she made it over some returners. She worked hard on getting her standing back tuck, which we knew was important, and she nailed it during tryouts!
That weekend was General Conference. Saturday and Sunday we hung around the house and watched it together. I love conference weekends. And how nice is it that we can watch from the comfort of our own homes, in our sweats if we want. I remember dressing up, while growing up in Seattle, and driving to the stake center to watch a session of conference.
Nora lost a big, important front tooth! She looks so stinkin' cute with that missing tooth!
A couple of months ago, we started a family scripture memorizing challenge. We pick a short scripture to memorize, we read it each morning together as part of our family scripture study, and if the kids have it memorized by the weekend (Nora gets a little help from us), then they can pick out a treat (around $1) for the weekend. Sometimes I"ll post them on the fridge so they can see them during the week. IT has worked well so far. Something fun: as we listened to general conference, 3 of the scriptures we had memorized were read aloud, and the kids all started reciting it with them! I guess we picked some good ones.
This is an amazing Creamy Coconut Korma recipe I came up with recently. And we've made it a couple of times since. I have it posted on my realfoodsmom.wordpress blog if you want to go look it up.
