Celebrating Jordan

On Jordan's birthday this year, the kids wanted to make a cake to celebrate.  He would have been 42 years old.  It's been 2-1/2 years since he unexpectedly passed away.  He still crosses my mind often and there are so many things I wish I could tell him about.  He would love to hear all about Westley being in band and all about playing stake sports and running into people at the stake center.  He would have loved to hear about my J.J. Pearce reunion that I went to this last October.  He was always fun to talk to.  RIP Jordan.  Happy birthday in Heaven!

Galleria Dallas

Today was yet another overcast and rainy Saturday here in Dallas.  I could tell the kids were getting antsy and bored at home and we haven't really taken much time to explore.  We've just had such a tight budget and everything around here seems to not only cost money, but almost always twice as much or more than we'd spend in Utah doing the same thing, so we've been homebound when we've had crummy weather.  But today I decided to change that.  I took the kids (Corey was working) to the Galleria Dallas, a huge mall that has been there forever.  I remember going to it when my dad worked in the office building across the tollway.  We walked around the mall, watched the ice skaters (what they are doling here while eating), had some cookies, ate some lunch at Subway, and checked out the Texas gift shop they have there.  It doesn't sound like much when telling about it, but at least it broke up the monotony and got us out of the house.

S'mores

I only recently realized that one of my favorite treats is s'mores, since I was pregnant with Nathan, that is.  I love most things s'mores: cereal, s'mores bars, s'mores ice cream, etc.  Well,  my brother and his wife got us a s'mores maker for Christmas.  It's a little heater that you can melt marshmallows over without having to have a fire.  Corey doesn't really like s'mores, but that just means more for me!

Preschool Art

I got a new student in my preschool class so now I have three students instead of two.  This is an art project I did that was a snow globe painting.  This month our focus is Antarctica, so we have been talking about how it is cold and snowy there all the time.  The first art project we did on the first day back was another snowman made with torn pieces of paper glued to a blue paper.  For this project, I cut circles out of blue paper, a snowglobe stand out of brown paper and then they finger painted the snowman with white paint and dabbed white paint all around.  After the paint dried, we added glue and white glitter.  Then we painted on a scarf, stick arms, and a carrot nose.  We were supposed to then add eyes and a mouth with black sharpee, but the white paint wasn't completely dry, so we didn't.  But they still turned out cute, although I think the concept of a snowman shape was lost on the kids a little.  But they tried and had fun doing it!

Cute L'il Nathan

This boy is so incredibly cute.  When he's tired, he gets super silly.  And he has started to reject pureed baby food.  He'd rather eat what we are eating.  He'll cry until we give him some.  I've been trying lately to make meals that include at least one thing that will be easy for him to eat.  He loves pizza too, just like Annmarie did at the same age.  And the last picture is one that I was trying to take of him in just a diaper to show how chubby he is, but every time I would sit him up to take the photo, as soon as I snapped it, before it actually took, he would turn around and then roll on the floor.  It was bedtime and he was being silly-tired.

Name Writing

One of the skills I focus on in my preschool is having the kids learn to write their names.  I focus on having them use an uppercase letter for the first letter and lowercase for the rest.  Three-year-olds tend to have a harder time with this than four-year-olds because they often don't have the fine motor skills for it.  Annmarie became obsessed with writing her name during the first week of preschool after the break.  She is always asking me to write her name in dots so she can trace it and then she writes it on her own.  She has done this at least once a day for a good thirty minutes for the last week.

Post-Christmas Life

Eliza got a cook book and an apron for Christmas and shortly afterward, she got up early and cooked me these sunny scrambled eggs.  We had leftover sausage in the fridge that she used to make the sun's rays along with slices of toast.  The eggs were quite delicious, perfectly cooked.  I'd say that a cook book was a wonderful gift for her.  She also made cupcakes for the family from scratch, along with from scratch buttercream frosting.

And, I had to get a picture of my family ignoring me when I asked for help cooking dinner one night.  Typical.  They were all sitting there on their devices while I was slaving away in the kitchen.