Happy 8th Birthday Riley!!

This picture is definitely how I see Riley; fun, silly, & laughing.

He is also loving, huggable, loud, empathetic to others, teasing, smart, and cute. :0)

Happy Birthday to a boy who is all that and so much more! We love you Riley!!  

Two Little Faries

The other day, Lily got a box of dress-up clothes from Halo Heaven. She loves tutus, wings, and dresses. She dressed herself up, and then asked if I would dress Emma up in some of her new stuff. So here are the two fairies that were playing at our house:

Baking Bread

Zach has been really interested in cooking lately. He has mastered eggs, so he wanted to move on to bread. I found an easy recipe online, and showed him the recipe. He got all of the ingredients out, measured them, and stirred them all together.

Then he kneaded the dough, and put it in the bread pan to rise.

When the bread was ready to bake, he scored the top, and placed it in the oven.

Here is his yummy bread:

He called it a success! He did think the crust was a little too crusty for him, so he wants to find a different recipe to try again. :0) Maybe soon, he'll be cooking dinner instead of me! ;0)

2nd Grade Field Trip

Last Thursday, I went with Riley's 2nd grade class to Exploration Place! They were all very excited to go!

This thing in the lobby was very interesting apparently.....

The first thing we got to do was go to the dome theatre and watch a movie about planets and their moons. It was pretty cool. we had lunch after that, then headed to a classroom where they learned about bugs and their parts. They are singing and doing actions to a bug song here:

They also got pieces of paper with a caterpillar & had to use shape blocks to make the bug.



Riley's favorite part was getting to make his own bug with the shapes:

As fun as all of that was, what the kids were really looking forward to was the exhibits! I headed off with my group of kids to the medieval castle first. 

The next exhibit they wanted to see was the animation station. This was really cool, it showed you the different ways to animate. Riley liked this one where he had his picture taken while he moved around......

then he could watch himself being animated on the TV screen.

This was a cool wall that made light spread when you touched it.

We moved onto the building section (no pictures from there) and then onto the Great Plains section. Here is Riley inside a wind tube that shows you how hard a tornado blows.

This cool machine makes a tornado!

After that, we headed to the aerodynamics exhibit (no pictures again) where they have flight simulators, and other cool airplane things. Since we had some time left & we had seen all of the exhibits, our group unanimously decided to go back to the castle. I found King Riley there, so I decided to take a picture of him. ;0)

It was a lot of fun! The kids learned a lot & got to play. A successful field trip!

Easter!

This Easter Bunny was very good to the kids this year. They got 2 new movies for all three of them & then they all got a new Skylander character & lots of candy!

There was a mad race to find the eggs this year. Usually they just walk around, but they were actually running & jumping over/on furniture this year!

(Like Lily's Halloween socks?) ;0)

After that, we got ready for Easter mass.

Later in the afternoon, all of the cousins, aunts, & uncles came over for lunch, playing, and an egg hunt!

It was so much fun! It's nice to have so much family nearby to celebrate these holidays with!

Easter Egg Dying, Hunts, & Crafts!

We have been busy with Easter stuff this week! Earlier in the week, we made these cool crosses with oil pastels.

First, you cut out the shape of a cross, and color the outline with whatever colors you want:

Then you tape the cross to a piece of paper and smudge the color off onto the paper:

After the entire cross has been smudged, take the taped cross off & you get this cool cross:

The next craft we made was an egg that was cut out of card stock that we put designs on using painters tape:

 After the design is on, the kids used paint to paint over the entire egg:

 Emma also took this opportunity to paint herself. ;0)

After the paint is dry, peel off the tape & you have the design!

This is Emma's egg. I took pictures of my kids' eggs, but I guess I didn't transfer them over to the computer. :0( They did a good job though!!

The other craft from this week, I only did with Emma. Here is her bunny with footprint ears & hand print whiskers:

This morning, we dyed Easter Eggs!

It is crazy how much more relaxing this is now that the kids are older. I actually enjoy this now. ;0)

Then this afternoon, we went over to Jeff's parents' house for an egg hunt! They started out with an egg race first though.

Then it was time for the hunt!!

They had SO much fun!!
The only thing we have left now, is Easter itself!