Nursery Singing Time

I am the music leader for the primary (children's group) at our church.  That means every Sunday you will find me doing all kinds of crazy things to help the children learn the gospel through music.  A few months ago, my primary president asked if I could also go into the nursery (children 18 mos to 3 years) and teach them as well.  I was more than willing as my daughter is in that class and I know how much she loves music.  I will admit that I was apprehensive because is seemed a bit overwhelming to add that to my already busy schedule.  So of course I turned to the internet for help.  I took most of my ideas from here and here then modified them for my situation.  Here's what I do....

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.

A good day for art

Today was a good day.  We went to the homeschool art day at a different county library.  The kids really had a good time putting their projects together and looking at what the other kids had brought to display.     All the projects were so unique.  My older ds drew a LARGE picture of him and his cousins battling a dragon in oil pastels.   Younger ds did a Lego mosaic of Mario.  And dd did a finger painting (pic).  There were acrylics, watercolors, paper mache, Lego, etc on display.  One of the moms demonstrated a watercolor painting that really impressed the boys.  I don't have an artistic bone in my body, so I'm glad they could get a chance to see someone who does in action.  They also played with some air drying clay from Crayola that was fantastic.  I'm going to have to get me some of that.

And the kids were so well behaved.  The boys said nice things about every project.  Older ds sat with dd and shared his snacks with her.  He even listened when I told him he couldn't have any more snacks except carrots (after his second trip the the snack table).  I was so impressed with them.

Hooray for art, libraries, and homeschooling!

My maple

I just had to share this photo.  It's my Japanese maple from this past fall.  It looks even better in person.  When it turns red like this, it gives the whole house inside a rosy glow.  When we were looking at houses, we looked at a few that had Japanese maples and I made the off-hand comment that I would love to have one.  Of course it wasn't even on the radar for things we were looking for in a house, just on my "probably not going to happen" wishlist.  We didn't buy this house for the Japanese maple, but I'm so glad it's there.  It makes me happy to look at it, no matter the season.  It even looks beautiful in the winter.

Thankful for Tender Mercies

Bobotie and Sambal

Saturday night is 'international night' at our house, for dinner at least. I use a 4 week rotating calendar to plan our meals, so that's 4 different international dishes each month. We've got the usual stuff (stroganoff, curry, stir fry) but I wanted something else a little more exotic. When I ran across a recipe for bobotie in our "Around the World Cookbook" I knew I'd found what I was looking for. But it needed a side. Foodnetwork.com is the first place I go to find recipes and that's where I found this recipe for South African Sambal.

Of course I've modified it, though this time it was a serendipitous mistake rather than an intentional change. First, it turned out that I didn't have enough apples so I added some sliced grapes I had on hand to make up for the missing sweetness. Then I accidentally added the salt after the soak and squeeze rather then before. But it turned out to be a really nice combination of salty and sweet so I kept it along with a few other changes. Here's my version:

Ingredients
2 cups grated carrots
2 cups grated apples
1/4 cup bottle lemon juice (it just gets discarded so no sense using the good stuff here!)
Kosher salt
1 cup black grapes, halved
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 (scant) tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup rice vinegar
Juice of one lemon (works out great as the bobotie calls for zest but no juice)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions
Toss carrots and apples with lemon juice and 1 teaspoon salt, let sit 1/2 hour (about, I usually only manage 15 minutes), then squeeze with hands and discard any excess liquid. Add the grapes and cilantro. Combine remaining ingredients plus 1/2 teaspoon salt in a small bowl and mix well. Add to the salad and toss. Allow to sit refrigerated for several hours before serving (I almost never have time to do that!)

I've used blackberries (see photo) and other types of grapes, but black grapes are my favorite, if I can get them. Altogether it's a nice salty, sweet, sour, and spicy side and a vast improvement on the typical carrot/raisin/mayo salad, IMHO! Enjoy!

How do you plan your meals? Does this sound like something you'd like to try?

Halloween!!

I figured I'd better post this pic before Halloween is too far behind us:

Underdog, House, and Darth Vader

Homemade costumes really are much cuter then storebought. I'm especially pleased with how the Vader costume turned out. It is really quite impressive in person. Don't know who House is? I'm sorry. DH had a great time playing House for all his students on Halloween, complete with attitude and 'vicodin' (m&m's in a perscription bottle). Me? I did my best impression of a pumpkin by wearing an orange shirt and sitting around while the boys went Trick-or-treating. You don't want a picture of that, trust me.

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!?

Halloween (a little late)

Time to play catch up! I don't know how I missed posting this, but here are the boys 2007 Halloween costumes.


Younger ds is a cat, costume made by my mother. Older ds is a dog, costume made by me. I actually made his sweats with a pattern I drew myself because I could not find any cream colored sweats in the stores to match the hood fabric.

This is Fred. (Younger ds named him.) We made him out of milk jugs and hung him outside our door. We liked him so much we even made a pilgrim hat for him so he could stay up for Thanksgiving too. We were planning to give him a santa hat for Christmas, but the wind blew his legs off and he had to be recycled. Poor Fred.

My skirt

As promised, here's a pic of the skirt I sewed recently! Sorry, the pics aren't great, bad lighting. It's an a-line wraparound skirt. No waistband, no zippers. It uses snaptape to hold it together. The best thing about it is I didn't have to hem any of the edges since they are all frayed. I just sewed a straight stich, then a zig-zag, pulled out the extra threads and viola! EASY! And super cute.

Close up of a frayed hem

The book with the instructions. I highly recommend it!

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!

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.

Homemade Christmas: Cranberry Conserve

I canned a few jars of this cranberry conserve for local friends this past Christmas. Yummy! Just FYI, it's a conserve and not a preserve because it has nuts in it (pecans; I don't like walnuts). It also has golden raisins in it. Mmmmm. It goes great on bread or as a garnish on turkey or other poultry. Think leftover turkey sandwich. I think I'm going to have to make this a tradition every year.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

PS In case you didn't notice, I forgot to blog yesterday! Oh well, I'll just do like the public schools and have an extra "snow day" post on the 1st of May. Hopefully I won't miss any more days.

Homemade Christmas: Blues Afghan

I made this afghan for my sister who just returned from a mission in Spain. It's (sort of) my original pattern. I'm telling on myself here, but the two center squares are from this pattern. When it became apparent that I would not finish in time if I continued, I changed to the above simpler pattern.

I had an extra square that I sewed onto the back so it could be folded into this handy dandy pillow. Plus you can stick your feet in the pocket to keep them warm when it's unfolded.

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.

Homemade Christmas: Striped Lapghan

This is the Lapghan I made for my sil (dh's oldest sister). I actually bought the yarn at the beginning of the year, but didn't get started on it until the last quarter. Thankfully the pattern is really simple and it worked up quite quickly. It's made with Lion Brand Wool-Ease, so it's soft and washable and won't break the bank.

Homemade Christmas: Puppet Theatre

This gift was from my younger ds to my brother's oldest dd. As you can tell, he didn't make most of it. Here's the story: It was originally a gift for him, but when I asked him if he'd like to give it to his cousin, he was quite excited about it. (I'll make him another one at some point.) He and his older brother helped me design the layout on the front, and they made the sock puppets to go with it. It's hard to see, but there are four of them; a pink flowered one with sparkly pink hair, a brown dog, a purple striped snake, and a red striped 'alien'. We checked out a book from the library about making puppets, and for weeks it was the only thing they could talk about! They were really excited to give it to their cousin, they were just sure she would love it!

Gingerbread Houses

Can you guess whose is whose?

Cranberry Orange Vinegar

It's my first solo foray into home canning (aside from freezer jam, which doesn't really count)! I was afraid the whole time that it wouldn't work at all, but in the end all the jars sealed. Aren't they pretty? Next I'm going to try cranberry conserve.