Some Time Off

The big kids had their reward day at school and got their faces painted.
Then we had spring break March 11-16.
We headed to Tyler, Texas the first weekend. We did a timeshare preview and got to stay in a hotel for 2 nights (with an indoor pool and breakfast), went to an indoor waterpark, and got a gift card giving us a yummy dinner out! We had a good time and even the tour/sales pitch wasn't bad.
We went to Tyler's childrens museum (thanks to our other museum membership we got in FREE)! It was a very cool museum -- probably one of my favorites.
They had a little "city" with a grocery store, bank, courthouse, restaurant, coffee shop, vet, hospital, etc sponsored by those businesses from around town. It was VERY cool.They also had a mock tv station...a news desk, a cooking show, tv camera, control room. The kids had fun pretending to do a show.We recuperated on Monday and went to a park.Tuesday we met friends, who were in town briefly, at a mall to play.

Don't the girls look like they could be related?

Wednesday we went to the zoo. We love our annual pass!Thursday we did sleepovers with friends, and then Friday we had another park play day and made homemade ice cream!The ice cream was pretty easy (no machine required). Put one cup half and half, 2 tablespoons sugar, and and vanilla in a small ziploc. Place that inside a larger ziploc filled with ice and rock salt. Shake it vigorously for about 5 minutes (have your kids jump around the kitchen while holding it with oven mitts). You get soft serve vanilla ice cream that's yummy! We got our recipe at Family Fun's website.

We hope you have had a fun spring break...whatever week it ended up being!

The Making of Fun

In case anyone is interested in the behind-the-scenes prep of our Princess and Knight party, here it is.The princess cake was made using the Pampered Chef large batter bowl and one Pillsbury strawberry cake mix. You have to bake it for a very long time (about 40-45 minutes) to make sure the inside is completely done. The outside gets dark, but you end up cutting it off to shape the cake anyway.
You can purchase a doll "top" for this purpose or just pull a dolls legs off, like I did. I found the doll in a craft store (apparently it's meant for you to crochet some clothes for it...ha!) and I used a 40% off coupon, making it a mere $1.80 topper.
I did a crumb coat and then frosted it with homemade white buttercream frosting. I was planning to just accent with sprinkles, but couldn't figure out how to do it easily. So, the whole thing got coated in blue crystals. The bodice of her dress is just icing and sprinkles, like the cake.
The castle cake is 2 8-inch square cakes stacked. The corners are ice cream cones--one upside down and the other on top. I should have baked four with cake mix inside, but I didn't. So, I put a giant marshmallow inside, another 1/2 on top of that and then filled the top with frosting. I notched the corners so the cones would set in. Then, we used mini mallows on top and sugar wafer cookies for doors and windows.

(Asa was being silly and, at the prodding of a friend, stuck a horse in the castle.)

The wands are star shaped foam hot glued to a dowel. The girls put foam stickers to decorate, then we tied curling ribbon on the bottom. We had glitter glue but realized it was crazy messy and ditched it. It also takes too long to dry for using at a face-paced party.

The crowns are sparkly wire with curling ribbons attached at the back.

The swords are from Target's $1 bins. (Yay for dollar bins!)
The shields are cut cardboard wrapped in gold wrapping paper with handles made from duct tape. They were done completely by Joel. I cut out some shapes (including a fleur de lis I got online) from foam and the kids glued those on. They also used masking tape to make stripes.

The pinata came from WalMart and is really labeled as a T-Rex. Some construction paper wings and flames from his mouth (made by Joel) transformed him into a more fierce beast.
Lunch (never pictured) included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tuna sandwiches--cut small, turkey tortilla wraps, chips, chex mix, and grapes. We served fruit punch and water.

Along with cake, we had some "magic wands" on the table -- large pretzel rods dipped in white chocolate and covered in blue sprinkles.

Joel made the invitations (he uses Publisher), and we had them printed as 4x6 pictures.
To decorate and make our home more festive, I hung blue streamers, made some flags from construction paper, and hung lots of balloons from the ceiling. Balloons and streamers are a very inexpensive way to pack some punch. You do NOT have to use helium. Everyone commented on the balloons and it was 4 $1 packs attached to the ceiling using $1 of curling ribbon. Easy and fun.

November in Pictures

I was determined not to spend the week of Thanksgiving on the computer while the kids were off school. Then, we went out of town. So, now, you're going to get a huge recap.
The kids had chocolate milk and wanted me to take a picture of their milk mustaches. Can you see them?Hey, hey, it's an old lady doing a backbend!And, a sorta hand/head stand thing.And, just to prove that kids want to imitate EVERYTHING you do, here's proof.
Just a normal evening of hanging out before bedtime....way back on November 11th. Ha!

I'm so slow about posting pictures on here. I wish there was a faster way to do it. Any tips from other bloggers are welcome!

November flew by. Last night I sat here and realized that trick or treating with our friends happened a whole month ago. Whoa! That's crazy. Where in the world did November go?

Now, it's December. I had lofty plans of having an Advent plan in place and books wrapped to count down the days. Guess I should get off here and go wrap 'em.

The kids have their school Christmas program tonight. Great way to kick off the month, in my opinion! Also gets it done early in the month. Like, like!

But, back to November. The kids had their school Thanksgiving program on Tuesday, the 15th. I was lame and didn't take a camera. (Hey, I made it there with Jett...on time. I can't handle everything!) My friend Tiffany snapped this shot of Jenna with her buddy Zoe.That Friday they had "Business Day" -- their reward day for good behavior/choices for the grading period. The older kids make and sell goods/services and each kid in the school earns "Scholar Dollars" that they can "spend". Jenna and Asa (and our friend Eva) were purchasing some of Rylee's Christmas magnets.We stayed in jammies for a very long time the first day of Thanksgiving Break. During the week we went to the library, had some friends over to play, and played lots of checkers. For Thanksgiving Day, we celebrated with our great friends, the Helms.
I attempted to make little 'placecard' cookies. haha!We love spending time with the Helms. They are part of our Texas family.The kids enjoyed playing in the backyard, making some crafts (at least that's what they called it), watching movies, and eating. They had so much fun that we then brought Grace (their oldest) home with us to spend the night. The partying kept going until late the next afternoon.
Joel spent a lot of his free time working on our new pergola. It started early in the month and got wrapped up over Thanksgiving break. A post on that is coming soon...stay tuned.

Then, we finished off November with a quick trip to San Antonio.

A friend gave us use of their timeshare at a Hyatt Resort. It was lots of fun. It had an indoor/outdoor heated pool with a big water slide. It also had a game room and the first night we were there they had a fire and makings for Smores!
The kids LOVED the huge whirlpool tub in our bathroom.
The whirlpool button wouldn't shut off and before long, this is what happened. Maintenance had to come shut off the breaker. Ooops! Not like we broke it, but it created a little excitement for our first night.

Unfortunately, more "excitement" was in store. Jenna got sick at 3am. She and I spent Sunday laying around feeling miserable. I managed to not get sick, but felt awful all day.

By Monday we were well enough to go swimming, visit the River Walk, and tour the Alamo.We drove back home and as we entered Dallas, Asa got sick. Walking into the house, Rylee got sick. Ugh. After getting the settled, I started feeling bad again. We spent Tuesday of this week recovering.

We were all well by Wednesday. Hopefully December won't fly by so quickly or find us battling any sickies.