Family Home Evening Lessons

For Family Home Evening one night, I taught a lesson on the Liahona using the pictures from the gospel art kit. Madeline does really well with pictures and pointing things out to her and asking her questions. So using the gospel art kit picture I proceed to tell her about the Liahona. We talked about how the Liahona only worked through faith and obedience. I then got out a Liahona that I made and using batteries to represent faith and obedience we then talk about what faith means and what it means to be obedient. I then demostrate to the children how if we just have faith, the Liahona does not light up, we need to have both faith and obedience for the Liahona to work. We then list things that Heavenly Father has asked us to do in our everyday lives. Afterwards, we did a little compass activity. I had a prize hidden and using the compass and following the directions written the kids were able to find their prize which was our refreshment. The kids really enjoyed the lesson and then were able to learn how to use a compass.




















The batteries represent "faith" and one represents "obedience" the light bulb is there to show how when you have both it lights up and points the way. Of course Grant put all this together for me, I just had the wild idea.


















A picture of my "Liahona" a large egg that I found at the store. Thankgoodness for Easter time.

Ireland!

For Saint Patrick's Day we went to Ireland. When the kids woke up in the morning we found a trail of shamrocks leading them from their bedrooms to the breakfast table where they found their breakfast of Lucky Charms with green bowls, green spoons, and green milk. Afterwards, I gave them a message from their Leprachaun where their pot of gold at the end of their rainbow. For Ireland we drew a flag, a shamrock, wrote our names in the celtic language, colored our own Leprachaun and gave him a silly name. We also talked about the Blanery Stone, and each of the kids made their own Blanery Stone. After our trip we enjoyed green oreos cookies with green milk.












































Our green lunch, alfredo noodles with green applesauce. YUM!!!

Africa!

Spring Break is this week and with Madeline's health and upcoming surgery we can't go anywhere, so I decided to do a week long stay cation at home. I have planned trips to an Africa Safari, Ireland to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, South America to visit the Amazon, Greece to experience old fashion olympics, and then on Friday we will rest and plant our garden. The kids are enjoying their trips. I made each kid a book that has activities to do with each of our stops. After our trip there is a snack that fits our destination. Our African Safari we enjoyed animal crackers, Ireland we had green oreo cookies, for our trip to the Rainforest we are having foot loops (Toucan Sam), Greece I am making gold medals out of vanilla waffers and pull apart twizzlers, and for our garden on friday we are having dirt pudding. We also have an afternoon activity to enjoy as well. We had bubble day, we made blanery stones, and I plan on having a day where we can finger paint on some butcher paper covering the kitchen table, and then a day outside enjoying a good game of croquet. The kids seem to be enjoying their break and hopefully they will have lots of exciting things to tell their friends when they get back.



















Our African Safari decor



















This is a fact sheet that I made for Africa; I made the same for each of our other stops as well.



















This is the fact sheet that I made for each of the animals on our African Safari and I made fact sheets as well for each of our rainforest animals.



















These are binoculars that I made for the kids to use on our African Safari to help find our animals.

Texas Day!

The first week of March was Texas Day at Anthony's school. For one of the projects they needed to make the Texas Flag that was at least 12x18 and the only rule was that you could not use crayon. So Anthony decided he wanted to make a cake. We got three cake mixes, added red food coloring to one and blue food coloring to the other and left the last cake mix white. We then assembled the flag and frosted the flag according to the color of each cake. Then used a cookie cutter for the star and filled it in with frosting. Then Anthony wanted to add marshmallows for the white part of the flag and red and blue M&M's for their respective colors. At school he did his presentation of the flag to his classmates and everyone was able to dive in and enjoy the cake, and the best part was that there was not any cake leftover to bring home!

Lost tooth

Anthony lost his first tooth after eating dinner. He didn't realize what he had in his hand. While eating dinner, his tooth fell out and he asked his dad what it was. His adult tooth had already grew in behind his baby tooth. The tooth fairy left his money under his pillow, but did not take the tooth that was sitting on the desk, so in the morning when asked if he found something special, Anthony just replied "No my tooth is still on my desk." Needless to say after dropping kids off at school the toothfairy fixed the mix up and retrieved the tooth. Anthony then found his prize after school and was excited to be able to buy lunch at school with his money.

President Wilford Woodruff's Birthday

One of my goals this year is to create memories and new traditions with my family. With this goal in mind I thought it would be fun to celebrate the birthdays of the prophet's. Not only would this create memories as a family, but our family will be able to learn more about the Latter-Day prophets. To help my family learn about the prophets I created a timeline for each prophet using clipart as well as a flannel board story about an event in their life.

This is a timeline that I have made for each of the prohets that covers their life. I used clipart to match up with pictures to help Madeline understand what is being said.

Our party set up.

President Woodruff's favorite food: Cherry Nut cake, Whole Wheat Bread, cheese, green onions and milk. The green onions are for look, they were not a big hit at the Cooper household.

Next parties are President Kimball and President Lee!

Random Pics

Madeline loves to play dress up and then have me take a picture of her.

One day I found Madeline taking a nap where I would not think would be too comfortable, but she did.

Spencer loves to take baths, but it becomes tricky with him and the bathtub while Anthony and Madeline are taking their baths.  On evening this is how we found him.

100th Day

The 100th day at school was Feb. 3 and this year Anthony needed to wear a shirt with 100 things on it.  Anthony decided to put buttons on his shirt in the shape of several smiley faces.  The 100th day was at the same time Madeline was in the hospital due to a virus that triggered her asthma. With me sitting in the hospital I thought it would be a good time to sew the buttons on his shirt.  However, after four smiley faces I realized that this was going to take a long time and reverted to crayons instead.  Anthony liked his shirt and was excited to wear it to school.  Lucky for him I was thinking ahead and suggested that he take along another shirt to wear when he was tired of wearing a 100 crayons on his shirt.

It has been awhile since I have last updated our blog.  At first our computer crashed and after looking into it and realizing that it would cost the same amount to fix our computer as to get a new one, we decided to get a new one.  We decided this time that we would go mac.  Grant and I did not want to have windows vista and we both had heard good things about mac.  Uncle Sam came to the rescue with the money that we would need to get ourselves hook

ed up with a new computer.  I love our computer!  I have been enjoying all the features as well as the big screen that we were able to get because 

of uncle sam.  Now that we have a computer, I can get caught up with the blogging world.

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal to celebrate all the holidays with the kids as well as the prophet's birthdays.  So far we have celebrated Chinese New Year, Valentines Day, and Marti Gras.  We were going to celebrate Groundhog Day, but Madeline was in the hospital due to a virus that triggered her asthma.  The kids are enjoying all the fun and I am having fun putting everything together.

For Chinese New Year we got so

me chopsticks from the local Chinese fast food restraunt and we ate spaghetti with our chopsticks.  I knew my kids wouldn't eat Chinese noodles, so I thought of spaghetti.  It was a lot of fun and the kids did a really good job!  Spencer even managed to get some spaghetti in his mouth.  For decorations we made Chinese latterns out of construction paper and drapped them across the kitchen table.  While dinner was cooking the kids color the year of the ox paper.  

For Marti Gras I bought some beaded necklases and hid them around the living room and each child went on a beaded necklase hunt similar to an Easter Egg hunt.  After our hunt each child wore their beads, and we got out our instruments and Grant put on some jazz music and we paraded around the house play

ing our instruments.  The kids really enjoyed it, but for some reason Spencer was not in a mood to enjoy the festivities.

Blast Off

This is one of my latest projects. Anthony and Spencer's closet doors stood out too much in their room, and I was having a hard time liking their room. Grant gave the suggestion that we paint a mural on the wall. I am no artist, but figured with his help and a few circles we could come up with something decent. Anthony was gone for a sleep over and while he was away his dad and I got to work. Grant drew it and together we painted. I have never painted so many coats of blue nor have I done some many touch ups. It was great to be able to surprise Anthony, and now their closet doors fit in with the room and not stand out.

Sleepy Head

Sometimes sleeping in the toy closet is more comfortable then sleeping in your own bed.

Apple Juice

Why is when your cute daughter comes home from school

bringing home leftover


her little brother

has to find it and begin to spill it all over the living room floor and then after that decides that one little puddle of apple juice is not enough and the whole living room floor and hallway needs to be blessed by his goodness. And what is his mother doing during all this you ask? Working on an outline of our Primary Quarterly Activity that is coming up in a couple of weeks and she needs to finalize the plans so she can e-mail it to the President and Bishopric for approval. Can mommy clean it up right away, no I need I to run and get daddy from work. On the way out the door, Spencer sees another golden opportunity to spread what the little puddles of apple juice around some more; however this time his mommy is faster than him and sweeps him off to the front door. Now an hour later we are home from getting daddy, Mommy who needs to make dinner so she can run off to pack meeting in an hour is on her hands and knees cleaning up Spencer's blessing while Daddy is putting in headlights so I don't kill myself while driving to and from my meeting. Where is Spencer you ask? Fast asleep in the car. I see a golden opportunity, leave him out in the car where he cannot get in trouble and the I proceed to clean up the apple juice blessing with:

Round one took me 30 minutes of being on my hands and knees and with round two I can use my handy wonderfulHopefully it will only take two rounds of cleaning up the apple juice and all its sticky residue, because I have yet been able to completely tackle his last adventure with food in my kitchen. Spencer has a very helpful sister who likes to make sure he has plenty to eat and gives him what he wants or leaves her pancakes covered in syrup for him to get and enjoy on the floor while her innocent mother is attending to other morning chores. I have now realized that there is no way I can keep up and I am now going to surrender to Spencer and his will. I am sure he watches and waits for me to be busy with other motherly duties and then goes for the attack. I wonder what blessing he will find next to spread all over our house.

Oh you ask about dinner, well you guessed it

Note to self: Tell Madeline's teachers to not allow her to bring home her apple juice or just to simplify everything give her water, at least water is not sticky.

2009

When thinking of 2009, these are the words that came to my mind. For 2009 I want:

To create memories and traditions for my family
To grow closer to my Savior, my children, and Grant
To endure whatever Heavenly Father gives me with faith and a smile
To remember my blessing
To find joy in the moment
To feel the love of my Savior, of my children, and the love Grant has for me
To learn how to be free of stress
To use my imagination and see where it takes me

I want this to be the year where I learn to create all around me as well as in all aspects of my life. So for 2009 I am going to create.

The wordle on top can be found here.

What a Holiday

Our holiday was a quiet and simple one this year. For the past few months life has been really busy and stressful and so we were looking forward to a quiet break. Grant was going to be off from work the entire time the kids were out of school and so the prospects of having no schedule no deadlines to meet was really exciting. However, what we didn't expect that at least one member of our family being sick during the holiday. I was sick Christmas Eve and Christmas day with the body aches and an upset stomach. So needless to say we weren't able to do any of usual traditions on Christmas or Christmas Eve. I was able to get up long enough to see the children unwrap their presents (which took all of 10 minutes) and then back to bed I went. I felt better then next day, but then it was Grant's turn to get sick and poor Madeline hasn't stopped her cough for at least two weeks. Took her to the doctor and they did some tests because the doctors were afraid she had a form of pneumonia. It turned out to be a virus and her Pulmonologist put her back on steriods and that seems to be helping. Spencer keeps having a leaky faucet out his nose and Anthony has been the only one that has not been sick in any form. It was still a nice quiet holiday and it was nice to do whatever we wanted whenever. I was able to get my creative juices flowing in finding ways to decorate the house without spending really any money and that has been fun. With me not feeling well and with having a kid and a husband not feeling well it has been a slow process, but I do see light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully now everyone will start to feel better and we can get rid of this bug once and for all. Because we were all sick I have no pictures to show you, because well we were too sick for pictures.

On Christmas morning, Spencer was more interested in finding food to eat (he never misses a meal or passes up an opportunity to eat), and when he wasn't looking for food he was busy playing in his room with his old toys. So the kids opened his couple of presents for him and every once in a while he would pop his head in the living room to see what we were doing and then quickly go back to his room to play. I was able to find a 4 foot dollhouse for Madeline within my budget and she is in heaven. She a little one that she would play with for hours everyday and now she has one that is taller than her. She got a couple of Dora toys which brought her excitement and a couple of Dora movies that I was able to find on e-bay. Anthony got excited when he saw a big lego star wars ship and an Indiana Jones lego set. I was also able secure him some star wars music cds on e-bay for a really good price so those have added to his imaginary star wars battles. Santa brought Anthony and Madeline digital cameras, nothing expensive but the kids enjoy taking pictures and the beauty of it is I don't have to pay to develop pictures.

Now we are embarking on a new year and we are looking forward to all that 2009 and will bring us!

Taking a Break

Taking a break from blogging; Need to get caught up on life, take care of sick kids, and other self improving matters. Will post when back.

Running Bear

Anthony recently learned about Indians and Pilgrims at school. As part of learning about Indians they did a dance for all the parents to see.

Anthony's Character

For a school project Anthony had to create a character that represented what he wanted to be when he grows up. It was an easy decision for Anthony, he wants to be an engineer just like his dad and design helicopter parts. He could use any medium that he wanted and so he choose fabric so he could use my sewing machine. He helped cut the fabric out, sewed on buttons, stuff his character as well as paint the hair and shoes on. He asked me to use my embroidery machine to write Bell Helicopter on his character's shirt. Grant also shrunk a drawing of his from work and we included it with his character. Anthony sure had a lot of fun.