New posts!

I have finally caught up again so to find out everything we have done this past month you have quite a few posts to scroll through!

Book of Mormon treasures

I really wanted to have Abi read the Book of Mormon herself this year leading up to her baptism so when I found this idea on Jen Lund's blog I was so excited!

They used a treasure hunt theme to make the reading more fun. I used her map to go off of to make mine and then used her printables for the poem to give your child at the beginning and the clues along the way as well as the end letter. She linked to Sugardoodle for the progress charts.

Here is the Treasure chest I made for Abi. When she finishes 1 Nephi she will earn the chest and her first clue. The clues have activities and a task to mark off before moving on. After that, each time she finishes a book she gets a gem and clue and collects them in her chest. At the end the gems will spell out the greatest gift from the Book of Mormon.

I used a black paint marker from walmart to write on the box and the gems. I got the sticky back gems from walmart as well...

The poem and her first marking sheet. When she is done she can color the whole sheet...

This is super blurry but you can see the map, the clues, and everything...

A close up of the map. There are little velcro dots at each section and she has a gem with an A on it that moves to each velcro section as we move along. So basically each night I have her read it out loud to me. Last night we started and she wanted to read two chapters instead of just one. Then later she asked Doug if she could read one to him as well! So she read three chapters her first night.

March Madness

This has been a crazy month. I am still trying to catch up, get projects done, feel settled..

So these are the random moments of March....

Give a bored kid a walmart plastic bag and they will come up with all sorts of fun things to do with it... this one became a vest!

My sister watched Maddy one day so that I could join Abi in her classroom for 1st grade donut day. They provide donuts and you get to hang out with your child for about an hour reading together. It was a lot of fun!

My absolute favorite thing about our house is the backyard. it is big and fenced in. I have never let the girls play outside without me before. In Kenosha we were right on the corner and the road stayed busy and people drove fast. Because of the fact that I always had to go out with them, they didn't get to go out as often as they wanted. 

Here they can go outside and play in the backyard whenever they want and they have been loving that!

We had a couple of weeks of perfect spring weather so Maddy and I walked up to school to pick up Abi a few times. We played at the park across the street one of the days...

I promised Abi when I took apart all of her Lego Girl creations to move that I would help her to organize them when we got here. We finally took a Saturday to do it. It took all day! First I organized the blocks by color so it was easier to find each individual block and then we went through each sets book finding the pieces and putting them into bags so she could easily reassemble them all. Why I didn't take them apart into separate bags I do not know. Lesson learned.

Last Saturday I took the girls to a Lego Friends event at Toys R Us. They each got to put together a free wishing well.

AND we got a new car! We got the minivan paid off so we were back to no car payments when the Lancer decided it needed an expensive repair. We went back and forth on forking out the cash on an old car with lots of miles not knowing if we might have to do that again soon or just getting a new car and having a payment again.

I really pushed for Doug to get his dream car. He has wanted a Mini since they came out and never thought he would get one.

He found one in the colors he wanted and got the price down to where the payments would be the same as they were for our van.

We all love it!

The girls wanted to ride home with him the day we got it!

Doug is SO happy!

St. Patrick's Day

This year we had some green milk with our special Lucky Charms for breakfast and the little leprechaun left some green bags of goodies..

We made some mint chocolate chip cookies the day before and Abi left out a note for the little green fellow allowing him to have one..

this is what was inside the bag...

A Night for Beyonders!

On the 15th my mom and I went up to Cottonwood High School for the huge launch of Brandon Mull's Beyonders 3 book. It was the first time either of us has gone to one of these big launch parties so we weren't quite sure what to expect. I emailed Brandon Mull on his facebook page beforehand to ask if there would be signings and he wrote back (!) that there would be. The authors present for signings and the show would be Brandon Mull, Christopher Paolini, Richard Paul Evans, Tyler Whitesides, and Chad Morris.

 We were so excited to meet Brandon and Christopher because they are some of our favorite authors. My mom and I both love the Inheritence Cycle (Eragon books) by Christopher and the Fablehaven and Beyonders series by Brandon.

We got there a little over an hour early and were so glad we did as the line got CRAZY behind us. The event was put on by Deseret Book and they really know what they are doing. They came around while we were in line and gave us numbered tickets that they used later for the signings. If they hadn't done this it would have been a madhouse for the signings.

My mom and I hanging out in line...

There were a bunch of people that were dressed up as characters from the books that were part of the show. They wandered around the whole time...

The man dressed up as Galloran the Blind King from Beyonders is actually Brandon Mull's dad...

They let us into the auditorium about half an hour before the show started...

It was a comedy show. Some of it was funny... some was dumb.... but it was all fun!

Tyler W., Chad M., and Richard P.E

Brandon's wife, Brandon Sanderson, Christopher P., Brandon Mull, and Richard again...

all the characters did the Harlem Shake...

It was such a thrill to meet our favorite authors!

Brandon Mull

Christopher Paolini

my mom... just hanging out in front of Christopher

I decided not to wait in line for Tyler Whitesides or Richard Paul Evans because their lines were separate from our ticketed line and while I enjoy most of RPE's books his line was really long. As far as Tyler - I read Janitors and it was okay but I didn't love it.

BUT I loved Cragbridge Hall. I was so glad I picked up Chad's book before the event. It had barely come out the week before and it was his first book so he was very excited to find out I had read and enjoyed it. He was really nice.

It was a really late night but we had so much fun!

Madeline's New Room

In our new home we decided to move Maddy onto a big girl bed.

I took her to Target to pick out her new bedding and she picked the owl bedding! I was pretty happy since it was my favorite of the choices as well. 

Our rooms here are much smaller than in our old home (especially the closets) but since we have the playroom we don't need as many toys to fit into their rooms and it worked okay in Maddy's room. She now gets to have Abi's old dresser....

loving her new bed...

You can see she still loves her Minnie and Mickey!

House Tour: Family Room

The pictures are pretty dark so it is kind of hard to see it...but this is our family room.

It is actually really cozy. These pictures are looking at it from the dining/ kitchen area. It looks out on the back yard. It is the family gathering place with both computers (mine is in the black cabinet) and the television as well as the big game closet right around the corner.

House Tour: the Playroom

I am taking forever to put our house together but the end is in sight. I now only have to figure out the spare/storage/treadmill room and the garage so things are definitely looking up!

I thought it might be fun to post pictures of our new place room by room.

This room is in the finished basement. It is a movie theater room but we are using it for a playroom.

Looking from the stairs you can see the dress up/food area, the Lalaloopsy area beyond that and the reading nook in one corner...

I took the pictures before I unpacked the children's books so this is the reading nook sans books...

looking downstairs toward the playroom. The puppet theater hangs at the bottom of the stairs..

Lalaloopsy/ Strawberry Shortcake area...

There is this kind of strange built in "stadium seating" but it really feels like a table covered with thin carpet so we use it for My Little Pony and Pet shop toys..

The baby stuff is with the food/dress ups and the polly pocket toys are on the table next to the area..

random toys and dollhouse toys are by the stairs and the door to the spare/storage room.