Nursery Singing Time: DIY streamers

I finally got around to posting the instructions for making these!  You can find it here on the blog I write with my sisters.

Check out my post about the other things I do for Nursery singing time.

Handmade Christmas

When I was growing up, my family gave homemade gifts to each other every Christmas.  We each drew a name so we only had one gift to make.  With 6 kids I'm sure that's all my parents could handle.  My mom would help us with the crafty/sewing while my dad helped with any woodworking.  I have some really great memories of those homemade gifts both given and received.  My family still puts an emphasis on homemade in our gift exchange.  And I've tried to do the same in my own family. 

I only have 3 kids, so this year I decided that it might be nice to have each of them make something for both their siblings.  We'll see how it goes!  And I might make something for each of them, I haven't decided.  My oldest son has already decided what he wants to give his brother and sister and my second son has a few ideas as well.  I guess I'll end up deciding for my daughter, and probably making hers as well.  Unless someone out there has a great, useful gift that a 3-year-old can make!

As I've been browsing around the internet I've come across a few fun ideas for homemade gifts.  Not sure if I'll use any of these, but maybe you will!

• Design Mom on sibling gifts: has links to past gifts
• Felt Food (so cute!)
• Cozy pillow case
• Braided headbands
• Tin can knitting: either a gift or use to make gifts!

I'll post what my kids are doing for their gifts later on.  Since they don't read my blog, it won't spoil anything if I post before Christmas.

How does your family exchange gifts?  I'd love to hear about any cute homemade gift ideas you have!

Baking Bread

Math, science, home ec, and PE with a little history and religion. Tasty!

 

Science!

This spider built a web right outside our kitchen window this morning.  So for science today we observed it catching and consuming bugs.  Awesome.

Number Three

I just heard from a friend today that she is expecting! So exciting! Her story is very similar to mine, and it got me thinking and remembering the path it's been to get our family where it is today. Two boys, two years apart. Three years later I lost one at 12 weeks, and when I finally got pregnant after trying for three more years I was so afraid I would lose that one as well. I had so many ultrasounds just to make sure she was fine. It wasn't until the first trimester was over that I finally felt safe enough to admit to myself that I really was pregnant without making 'just in case' plans. It was probably my hardest pregnancy. But we got her here safely, and I'm so happy to have her! All of them! Truly, my cup runneth over.


Feeling blessed...

Cookies

My younger ds made chocolate chip cookies today!

I've put together some "adult skills" courses for the boys, and the first one is baking.  In a nutshell, they learn to bake several things independently and when they 'graduate' they throw a party for their friends and serve some of their favorites.  (There's also meal preparation, grocery shopping, and home maintenance classes, but that's another post.) 

Anyway, he choose to make the cookies for his first lesson so I told him that it was the very first recipe I learned how to make from my mom.  He thought about that a bit then said maybe he could teach it to his kids and did grandma learn it from her mom?  I didn't know the answer to that.  But I'm excited that he's excited about baking/cooking.

Making the cookies with him and then having creamed egg on toast for dinner got me thinking about learning to cook as a child.  Those two recipes are the oldest of the handful I can make from memory.  What I like to cook has changed a lot since then, but I'll never forget my first lessons.  I feel very fortunate to have had a mother who took the time to teach me.  Oh, and those first chocolate chip cookies are still the best.

What about you?  What was the first thing you learned to cook/bake?  What recipes can you cook from memory?  Who taught you?

When will she come?

Well it's 9 days till my due date, and no baby yet. So how about a little contest? Enter your guess for birth day and weight in the comments. The winner will get the satisfaction of being a better guesser than everyone else!

I hope she comes tonight and weighs 8lbs

BTW

We've finally moved into our house!! It is really nice, but there is dog hair EVERYWHERE! It's driving me nuts. I'm a little neurotic when it comes to housecleaning. Thankfully the floors are mostly hardwood, much easier to rid of doggie mess than carpet.

Also, the baby is a girl!! Rather, it is most likely a girl, we can't be 100% sure.

Just thought you'd like to know...

Family Fun

Ever been parasailing? You should try it! A family in our ward owns a parasailing business so when my sis and her dh were visiting this past weekend, we thought we'd try it out. FUN!! The boys enjoyed it so much my older ds keeps suggesting we go parasailing every Friday.

dh and younger ds

"Everything looked like toys!"

Sister and bil getting dunked

Me and older ds after a dunk

Details

I'm about 13 weeks along now, just entering the 2nd trimester. The baby is officially due Dec. 15, but both my boys were born 2 weeks early so we'll be ready for it to come by the end of Nov. That's three Dec. birthdays! (I think we're going to start celebrating half-birthdays instead.) I've been feeling pretty sick, but it seems to have subsided a little so I'm hopeful that stage will be over soon! The ultrasound picture is from 11 weeks. I was having a hard time really 'connecting' with this pregnancy. My last pregnancy ended in miscarriage at 11 weeks (the baby had died at 6 weeks) and I just couldn't get over the fear that this one would end the same way. So the ultrasound was purely for my reassurance that everything was okay. I can't tell you the relief I felt when I first saw the baby on the screen and it was moving! The heartbeat was strong and it's growth on target, even a little big (this is my family after all.) After that I felt confident enough to tell the boys. They were/are soooo excited! They immediately told everyone. My older ds keeps saying "I can't believe it's not a dream!" I think he's more excited about the baby than about Christmas. It's really cute.

This next part may be TMI, if you're not into NFP or other fertility stuff. You've been warned!

This baby is actually sort of a surprise. I say sort of because we've been trying for another child for over a year now, though without much hope. I use NFP and my charts were showing that my pre-peak cervical fluid was not of the quality or quantity so important to fertilization. We finally went to see a fertility specialist who uses the same NFP system in her practice that we use to see what our options were. The first step was to do several blood draws at different times in my cycle to determine what my hormone levels were. After some thought (and prayer) we decided that it was too much to undertake right now and that maybe adoption would be the best option for us. So that's where we were when, to my amazement, we were pregnant! My cervical fluid hadn't changed at all, and according to our "timing" I really shouldn't have been pregnant. So this is our miracle baby, there's really no other explanation!

I'll let you know in 8 weeks if it's a boy or a girl

Guess What!?

Breastfeeding in the news

New study results!

Breast-feeding boosts a child's IQ, says study
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

"Researchers looked at almost 14,000 children over a period of more than six years and found that those who had been breast-fed performed far better in IQ tests."
Click here for the full article.

Breastfeeding makes children smarter
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

A more detailed article about the same study.

ds Pics

When I got my new digital camera, we gave the old camera to my older ds. He loves it! Here are some of the photos he's taken.

Lego Creation (not sure what it is)

Our fave ice cream from CA

The boat made from his prize winning zucchini

Of course, he is especially fond of taking silly pictures. And being in silly pictures, which means he has to share with his younger brother.

He does a good job with a not-so-hot camera, IMHO. I love that he can take as many photos as he wants and I don't have to worry about wasted film!

Kids

Today at dinner my younger ds said "When the sun sets on Sunday, then it's Moonnight, because there's a moon and it's night." Makes perfect sense to me!

FHE

Last night for Family Home Evening my younger ds had the lesson. His idea was to have everyone draw pictures of something Jesus did. Here's what they came up with:

Older ds: Jesus and Peter walking on the water.
(Check out the guy in the boat)

Younger ds: The resurrection

The one kneeling down is Mary. Sadly, I wasn't there as I had a rehearsal. I was really impressed with what they came up. The whole thing was younger ds' own idea. I don't think I could have planned a better lesson myself.

Sad Good-bye

I've been meaning to post these pics for a while now. They were taken on our last visit to Disneyland and CA Adventure.

We got the whole family SoCal Annual passes for Christmas 2005. Expensive, but well worth it! If you divide the money spent on the passes by the number of days we went to the park(s), it ended up being maybe $5 a visit. You can't get that kind of family fun cheaper anywhere! We had only intended to keep the passes for a year, but the last week before they expired the boys decided that they liked the faster rides (ie. Big Thunder Mtn., Star Tours, etc.) So of course we had to renew!! Then my dh got his job here and we had to abandon our passes in the middle of the year. These pics were taken on the last day before the passes were blacked out for the summer, just before we left the parks forever (most likely). It was a sad, sad day. I still get misty looking at them.

Good-bye California Adventure!

Good-bye Disneyland!

Though they were expensive, I don't regret getting annual passes for a moment. We created some great family memories there and it was great to watch as the boys grew from Fantasyland to Adventure and Tomorrowland. I hope the boys will have some great childhood memories of that time to look back on.

Good-bye, old friend.

Wash day

I am so impressed with my boys! Today was their day to help with the laundry. They've gotten pretty good at it. My older ds can do the whole thing himself! He knows how to sort the clothes, how much soap to put in the washer, and where and how to set the dials. He also knows how the dryer works. And the best part is that he feels so accomplished knowing how to do it all himself, I rarely have to encourage him to do it. Now if I could only convince him that folding his clothes is cool too.

Easter

This year for Easter we decided to celebrate the whole week. The events of Easter are too important to our beliefs that we wanted to make sure it would be a holiday that they boys would enjoy, maybe not as much as Christmas, but at least more than Halloween! Basically we decided to have a devotional every day based upon the events in Christ's life for that day plus some little activity related to it.

We started out Palm Sunday by making 'palm leaves' out of construction paper and sticks and then doing a readers theatre (with simple costumes) of Christ's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. It was a big hit with the boys. They read the script probably 5 times through before I made them stop. On Wed. we acted out the parable of the talents and showed them the 30 pieces of silver (quarters) that were promised to Judas Iscariot. Thursday we had a meal like the meal Jesus may have eaten at the Last Supper. The boys liked eating on the floor but they weren't too crazy about the food. Friday we watched "To This End Was I Born". A bit graphic, even for me. Sunday we woke up the the Hallelujah Chorus and had fish and honey (minus the comb) for lunch.

In all, I think it was a good experience, though there are a few things I will change for next year. But I think the importance of the message got through to them, as evidenced by this picture my younger ds drew:

He told me the first person, in red, is Mary, the one in brown is Joseph, the other two are disciples. They are thinking about the tomb.

Maybe I need to focus more on the resurrection next year. ;)

Negativity and family life

I'm stealing the idea for this post from a friend's blog, but I'm sure she won't mind! I found it very interesting....

First some articles:

"Our Brain's Negative Bias" by Hara Marano

Basically, it says our brains pay more attention to negative input, therefore to have a healthy marriage (and other relationships), positive interaction has to outweigh negative by 5 to 1.

This statement really stuck out to me:
"Occasional big positive experiences--say, a birthday bash--are nice. But they don't make the necessary impact on our brain to override the tilt to negativity. It takes frequent small positive experiences to tip the scales toward happiness."

Actually, dh and I don't have much trouble getting enough positive interaction. I guess that's why we're still married after almost 9 years!

"The Positive - Negative Ratio" by Sarah Chana Radcliffe, M.Ed., C.Psych.Assoc.

In summary, parental power to discipline comes from establishing a good relationship with the child and a good relationship (from the child's POV) is created by more positive interactions, at a ratio of 4 to 1.

"If the parent consistently makes predominantly positive actions, the child will perceive the parent as loving.On the other hand, if the parent makes predominantly negative actions, the child will usually perceive the parent as unloving, even hurtful -- despite the fact that the parent might be filled with love for the child!
"The ideal positive-to-negative ratio is 80 to 20.That is, for every four positive actions a parent makes towards his child, he can afford to make one negative one."

I have actually believed this for some time, though I never had any research to back it up. ;) My younger ds had been acting up recently, being belligerent and spending a lot of time in 'time out'. Our usual methods didn't help at all, so I thought "maybe he just wants more attention and if I give him more positive attention, then he won't need to act up to get it." So my dh and I started giving him more hugs and telling him we loved him more often, esp. first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And it really helped! Of course, we're not perfect (who is) but things have definitely improved. I really didn't change any of my other discipline techniques. This says to me that it isn't how you discipline, it's how you treat your child when you are not disciplining them that make discipline effective.

At any rate I will be putting even more effort into creating positive interaction in my family!

Thanksgiving Eve

We have a tradition (the past few years) of having a "Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" dinner the night before Thanksgiving. We serve the dinner Charlie Brown served his friends and then watch the movie. The kids think it's a blast because they get candy for dinner! I like it because it means I don't have to cook dinner after cooking for Thanksgiving all day. Not very healthy, but I figure once a year isn't going to kill anyone.