Landon's speech

Landon has been practicing and practicing this speech all week, and today was the big day! We went to watch his school assembly, and he did a super job! It was really great to watch all the kids give the speeches they had prepared and see their cute posters up "Vote for me!"  I don't love that they have an election for such young students, but I think Landon has learned a lot in the process, and it's been neat to see him working and practicing so hard.

Snap & Splash

Our good friends, Damaris and Steven Kjar, have been working on creating and marketing a cool outside water toy. It's a set of pvc pipes and connectors (like you've probably seen, only brighter and cuter), but the coolest part is the connectors are all super easy to put together and take apart so even little kids can make all sorts of different sprinkler type set ups with them. They've printed the parts on their 3D printer and have just launched a kickstarter campaign, hoping to raise enough  money to mass produce and market the sets.

We had a fun time last weekend at their launch party where Landon had a blast running through the (still freezing cold!) water with each of the configurations they tried out. (And Ellie and Owen enjoyed sitting close, munching on cotton candy, and watching all the kids running around :)

I think it is so super great that the Kjars had this fun idea and are really working to see what they can do to make it grow - I'm so impressed!

Check out their kickstarter campaign to see more about the water constructor sets or to support their goal!

April meal plan/treat plan updates

Meal plan: Super, great, hooray for simple dinner time!

Treat plan:
I'm full of questions right now about how things should go for our families 'treat plan'. We did great in April. We stuck to our rules and had some fun dessert nights.  Those desserts were much simpler this month - chocolate/cream cheese frosting sandwich cookies and m&m cookies,  pistachio pudding and chocolate pudding and rice krispie treats...  The kids have gotten excited about being in charge of dessert nights, and that is super fun.

 When we started our January treat plan, it really was an experiment of 'can we actually do this for a month?' And we did, and it was great - so much so that we've just most mostly kept going!

Now I'm trying to work out  how things should look long term. What should be our family 'rules' and why? I'm leaning more and more to less and less when it comes to sugar. But still I do miss  things like surprising the kids with chocolate chip cookies after school. And I'd like to get to the point where there aren't any rules anymore, it's all just normal/natural/how we do things in our family. So we'll keep working at it and figuring out what will work best for us. In the meantime, hooray for healthier eating!

Shopping with little ones

I usually do what I can to run errands on my own.  Grocery shopping we can manage just fine, but anything beyond that, I try to do during Jordan's lunch breaks, nap times, or after work. This week though I had a few errands that I wanted to get done enough to even bring the kids along. Yesterday, the little boys and I picked up Ellie from school and went to make a couple of super quick stops. Our first stop was a run in to Old Navy to return something and pick up a few t-shirts for me and the kids. With Porter in my arms and Ellie and Owen searching for all the mirrors in the store (noisily enough that I always knew where they were, but not quite noisy enough that I was overly worried about bothering the other shoppers...) I felt like we still made it through the errand pretty well. Until I opened up our bag this morning and found not the t-shirts I'd picked out, but an entire bag full of little boy white t-shirts in various sizes. I can only imagine that I set down my own pile of t-shirts to chase after little Porter for a moment and then picked up the stores neatly folded display pile of white shirts by mistake. And with all three little ones around me/in my arms while checking out, I didn't even notice that all the cashier was ringing up (right in front of me!) were these white shirts -  what a funny mistake!

Some days are like that

A sweet note from my little Ellie (given to me a few days ago after the little boys, with a little encouragement by their should-have-known-better big brother emptied the Costco-size laundry detergent all over the laundry room) I'm so grateful for reminders like this little note, given with such love. 

We had quite an evening yesterday. I talked with my Uncle for a few minutes just after I'd put the kids to bed, and when he asked how the kids were doing, I was a bit alarmed to find myself telling him about our crazy evening with the toilet overflowing and Porter crying in distress, overdue for bedtime... and then I surprised myself even more, answering truthfully when he said "You must be exhausted!" I suppose I was too tired to even come up with a cheerful statement in response! (Like this wonderful story Heidi Swinton told at a recent Relief Society activity we had)

Certainly things are looking brighter today though, and yet again I'm recommitted to "not talk meanly".

Conference Thoughts

We've had an evening tonight where family life wasn't as glowing and picturesque as this. But  I read this weeks ago and loved it because I've often felt the truth of it. And today I'm noticing that it's not in having picture-perfect families that we have the opportunity to be 'a light on a hill', but more just in our eternal perspective on families. It's not that we never mess up (certainly. ask the Brough children today and they will let you know!)  but that we know it's worth it to try again tomorrow and again and again to strengthen and nurture our families the best we can. 

Read the full talk here - Why Marriage and Family Matter, Everywhere in the World

Also, my favorite talk on motherhood (especially for days like today!) by Elder Holland

Yours is the work of salvation, and therefore you will be magnified, compensated, made more than you are and better than you have ever been as you try to make honest effort, however feeble you may sometimes feel that to be. 

Repeating Patterns in Action

When Ellie and I were learning and practicing with repeating patterns, I knew I wanted to find more ways to use that new technique because it was just so fun. About the same time, I'd been on the lookout for some tiny animal print fabric that I could use to make some things for the zoo. When I couldn't find just what I was looking for, I decided to try out some (very) basic fabric design!

I made a repeating pattern with some cute little dear , using basically the same technique as we did with paper and crayons, but on the computer. It's not perfect, but it was just what I was looking for.

 A little section taken from a bigger section of several squares pieced together

Once I had my pattern finished, I just uploaded the image to spoonflower, placed my order, and a little while later, I got my little fat quarter sample in the mail! 

all those cute momma and baby deer!

Yesterday evening, I listened to a favorite podcast and sewed up four darling little deer bow ties (And I still have enough fabric left for some other cute thing...) And today I dropped them off with a few other things at the Zoo gift shop after storytime!

(But not before a few silly face pictures with Owen!)

I'm so excited about this project. It was so fun to make these cute bowties with my own little design - so fun to be involved with creating each step of the process!