The Cooks cooking again

Tonight we made pumpkin sugar cookies. It can't really be fall without pumpkin cookies, right? My favorite is the sheepish grin on Katelyn's face when she is getting caught sneaking frosting out of the bowl.

Today's art project...Layered wax bead citrus candles.

6 "B"'s

We are studying one of President Hinkley's 6 B's each week. This week we are studying be grateful. For our school cooking project we made cinnamon roll beehives. I got the idea off of sugardoodle.net. They suggested using the store bought cinnamon rolls, but we made ours from scratch. We made the dough, rolled it out a little thicker than usual, and cut the rolls. Then we rolled aluminum foil into a cone shaped ball with a flat bottom. We unrolled individual cinnamon rolls and loosely wrapped them around the foil balls and cooked them. When they were done we pulled out the foil and drizzled yellow dyed frosting over them. To finish the look we printed bee clip art, cut it out, glued it to toothpicks and stuck it into our beehives. Katelyn mostly snitched the dough and cinnamon sugar. When I told her to stop she looked me right in the eye and said, "I tant, I dust lub it (I can't, I just love it)."

Be Grateful

Be Smart

Be Clean

Be True

Be Humble

Be Prayerful

Finishing the unfinished

Project # 1 - Continuing education requirements to keep my RRT.
Note - If I were working this would be complete, but as it stands I needed 27 hours.
Plan - Online distance education.
How long have I put this off - 5 years
How long did it take to complete - 9 months
Status - COMPLETE!

Project # 2 - Get my blog posts formatted for a blog book and ordered.
Note - I have wanted to do this for some time and finally found a website that could do it.
Plan - Work on it at night after the girls went to bed.
How long have I put this off - Since I started my blog in October of 07.
How long did it take to complete - about 3 months
Status - COMPLETE!

Project # 3 - A dress.
Note - my mom made this dress for Kyleigh and left it with me to do the very, very, very few finishing touches.
Plan - I either consciously or subconsciously forgot about the dress.
How long have I put this off - about 2 years.
How long did it take to complete - less that 15 minutes (Ouch).
Status - COMPLETE
P.S. It fits Katelyn now.

Project # 4 - Matching aprons for me and the girls.
Note - they match the aprons I made for Holly and Naiya for Naiya's first birthday.
Plan - Get it done when I have time.
How long have I put this off - about 6 months.
How long did it take - 5 hours (one afternoon).
Status - COMPLETE

I love it when I am on a roll.

School Projects

We have been having so much fun with home school this year. We do the traditional subjects including math, reading, worksheets on various subjects, handwriting, spelling, spanish, computer work, geography, and typing. We have also been having lots of fun with art, science projects, and cooking. Last week we sucked an egg into a jar using matches and the principle of air pressure. I'm not sure that Kyleigh gets the principles now, but the experiments are cool and both of the girls enjoy them. Art has always been a favorite of ours and we have been finding lots of fun projects on familyfun.com. That is where I got the idea for this bat that flaps its wings.


To help motivate Kyleigh we have a secret task every day. I have a poster that has all of the ingredients to a recipe of her choosing on the wall. Each day I write down a subject on a sticky note and hide it under "the secret task" panel on the poster. If she does well in that subject (ie. she doesn't whine or complain, focuses on the task at hand and tries her best) she gets to mark off an ingredient for that day. Her first recipe that she got to make was oreo cheesecake. She did all of the work to make the treat, with help from myself and Katelyn. She was very proud of herself.

Tsunami scare

At 12:07 p.m. today I had Kyleigh go upstairs to retrieve my charging phone so I could call Russ to see if he was coming home for lunch. I saw that I had 11 missed calls. When I saw Rusty's name as all the missed calls I immediately called him back. He has NEVER called me that many times. He told he had received an email on his phone that there was a tsunami warning for 1:11 p.m. He wanted me to get on the weather service website and check for updates and specifics. What can you do in 1 hour and 4 minutes to prepare for potential disaster? Maybe fill up a few water bottles and start praying. That's not enough when I have a family to protect. I am again resolved to improve my food and water storage.

P.S. The watch was officially for the Samoan islands but could have been as far reaching as Hawaii. The watch had since been cancelled, but an advisory is still in effect. I guess we won't be going surfing tonight.

Family Home Evening

For family home evening tonight we had a lesson on pioneers. This is our log cabin treat, built out of fudge bar cookies.

I found a new favorite family home evening blog site. Check it out at nataliesfhespot.blogspot.com