Random January

Abi was able to start Miss Manners back up with her grandmother. (Doug's mom) 

There were a few weeks that they couldn't do it so she was really excited to be going back.

Last Friday Abi came home and told me that a karate place had come to her school and done a first lesson for gym. That night they were invited to come to the studio and do the second class for free.

Obviously they are trying to get people to sign up but she really wanted to go so I took her and Maddy over.

She really enjoyed it.

By the end of the class she broke the board and earned a white belt.

The kids got free pizza, water bottles, and cookies too.

Last Saturday Brent (my brother) and Karen came over to play games and have pizza with us.

They brought a yummy dessert and this Boom Boom Balloon game.

It was pretty fun.

We also played Wits and Wagers.

Monday I had an appointment with my first doctor and the girls were super excited to go to my sister Steph's house while I was gone. 

Tuesday, Maddy fell down the stairs and landed on the kitchen floor flat on her face. 

Her face and especially lip were swollen and there were cuts on the inside and outside of her mouth.

I called my sister to see if she had any popsicles and she did so we rushed over to her house (up the street) and she gave us an entire box of Otter Pops. 

That's pretty much all she ate that day because it hurt to eat food.

This first picture is crazy because it doesn't even look like her.

I have somehow given the girls the idea that if they get hurt, they need to sleep because it will make them feel better so it wasn't long before I found Maddy asleep in the front room.

Yesterday my mom came over to have a Doctor Who marathon with me. 

I have slowly been getting her over to watch the whole show because she has only seen a few episodes over the last few months.... but she is now on season 3.

I have had a crazy busy week with all of my doctor appts. so it was really nice to have a day where I could just hang out with her and watch a fun show.

Frozen

Every year my parents take all the grandkids out to a movie. The parents can come too if they want to.

This year was the first time either of our kids have been able to go.

We were so excited to go see Frozen!

We really enjoyed the movie. Maddy especially. She talks about it everyday.

Afterward they took us all to lunch at Red Robin.

My nephew Austin won those balls for the girls out of one of those claw machines.

Doctor Who 50th

In November I went with my Mom, my brother Brent, sister in law Karen,nephew Matthew, and Karen's friend to see the premiere of the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who.

Many of the people were dressed up as different incarnations of The Doctor. 

A lot of us were wearing t-shirts (including me).

It was SO much fun!

Wizard of oz drawing

Ever since reading The Wizard of Oz and then watching the movie, Maddy has been obsessed with it.

She was sitting at her desk singing a song about it that she made up while she was coloring. 

Afterward she brought it to me. All the characters on the yellow brick road....

Care Bear Play Mat

Maddy has been collecting the little mini Care Bears in the blind bags at stores for a few months.

After a few she would be getting for her birthday, she would have all 12 of the bears available right now.

I wanted to make her something to hold them in and play with.

There really wasn't anything out there like that so I invented my own.

Here it is.

I covered the outside with leftover Care Bear fabric from making her nightgown. 

So when it is closed it looks like this...

I made a pocket for each bear with their belly badge on it.

The finished product...

Ponies and Sales

A week ago Friday we went to Target after our normal grocery shopping. 

I had promised Abi that on shopping day we would go to Target and get the My Little Pony Equestria Girls movie. 

The girls were beyond excited. 

We got to Target and they were all sold out. 

So we went to Walmart. 

We found one there. It was a couple dollars more than Target but we got it and took it home. 

We got some popcorn. 

We opened the movie and it was broken. In half.

I ended up calling a Target that is a little farther away to ask if they had it. They had one left so he held it for me. 

Walmart gave me a hard time about replacing it but finally let me return it.

Alls well that ends well. The girls have watched it SO many times since then.

That Saturday we did a garage sale and Abi hosted her first lemonade stand. She was so excited to sell lemonade and candy and made pretty good money doing so.

Van Wagenen Family Reunion: part three

After baths the girls played for awhile and then we left to meet up with the family at the movie theater to see Despicable Me 2. I am so not used to reserved movie seating and I have a habit of showing up to things really early so the girls and I entertained ourselves for about twenty five minutes waiting for everyone else to show up. They really liked the little arcade and the funny thing was that I didn't even give them money. They just pretended.

Once everyone else showed up their cousins played for a minute too.

At the end of the movie Maddy, Abi, and Kassandra did some dancing...

Then they asked that she be able to ride back to Grammy's house with us. They are so cute together.

4th of July part two

We were planning a movie that afternoon so instead of having my parents drive all the way back to their house and then back north again, we invited them over for lunch. My mom wanted to get a shower and change so she did that at our house.

Our lunch set up.
I made firework sugar cookies, had plenty of treats around, hot dog buns, and drinks. My mom made corn on the cob, hot dogs, and brought chips. 

I also made this flag out of fruit. I tried to make a really cool layered drink with sprite zero, blue gatorade, and hawaiian punch that I saw on Pinterest but it didn't work. 

After lunch and resting up a bit we met my brother Brent's family at The District to see Despicable Me 2. We all loved it!

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

 I found out a week ago that there was a My Little Pony movie coming out to theaters. I immediately looked it up and found out that it was having a VERY limited release here in Utah and was only playing at three theaters and only one time. So, I picked us up some tickets for the one and only showing at noon at a theater in Provo. 

Doug stayed home with Maddy so that just Abi and I could go.

She was SO excited!!

I thought the movie was really cute and enjoyable. She loved it!

On the way into the movie we had noticed a carousel in a building next door so we went over to check it out. Turns out it is this big building called Provo Beach Resort that has games, bowling, laser tag, surfing, and all sorts of things. I had never heard of it before. 

We got a $5 card so she could play a few games and ride the carousel.

Then I found out that in this little area (Riverwoods) the Freedom Festival was putting on a circus party that night. So we went home to get Maddy and come back!

Movies and doughnuts

Wednesday will normally be our hike day but this week we switched it to Friday. 

So on Wednesday we didn't have any plans. We decided to go to the Scera theater in Orem to watch Hotel Transylvania.

They do the older movies cheap and then you can buy treats for 50 cents. It was really fun.

Ever since I took Maddy to Krispy Kreme for a date, Abi has been asking to go as well. We drove right past it on the way to the movie so Abi asked if we could go there on the way home.

The perks of blogging

Last month I got four tickets to the advanced screening of Rise of the Guardians in 3D. 

We took the girls up to a mall in the outskirts of Milwaukee that I wish we had discovered earlier. We had such a great time, visited Santa, and loved the great theater. 

The movie was fun and even Maddy sat through the whole thing. She only started getting restless when there was about ten minutes left.

Harry Potter week

When my mom and I were planning her trip out here this time we thought it would be fun to spend the first week having a Harry Potter marathon. But of course I couldn't leave it at just watching the movies... First, I decided that Abi could handle the first movie so I asked her if she wanted to be a part of that one. She did. So, we had to read the book. We spent a couple of weeks reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerers stone out loud and she really enjoyed it. I then spent the rest of the remaining time between finishing that book and my mom getting here re-reading the rest of the books myself. It was so fun planning the fun for the week but I must admit I had Harry Potter on the brain so much that I was even dreaming about it... I had a few duels with Voldemort!

The first thing I needed to do was send the invitations. My mom got here last Monday afternoon, so that night as she was unpacking in Abi's room I made a Hoot sound and sent this balloon flying into her room carrying the invitation.

I also set one outside of Maddy's room for Abi to find in the morning.

Tuesday morning as they came downstairs I handed them their supply list and their class schedules...

Then we paid a visit to Diagon Alley. 

Our first stop was Gringotts bank where we all picked up our gold from our vaults.

The next stop was Madam Malkin's Robes for all Occasions where we bought our robes... made of garbage bags.

Then we went to the Magical Menagerie and bought our owls.

Then we visited Ollivanders Wand shop to make our wands.

We also visited Flourish and Blotts book store and got our charms books.

To do our wands: First we used the hot glue gun to make shapes on the wooden dowel to give the wand texture and a handle. Then we each picked from the paint colors I had to make it personal. 

Abi painting her wand...

drying wands...

It took a few hours for them to really dry but they were looking fabulous. As soon as Abi's was dry I used puffy pink and purple paint to add polka dots to it. She asked me to since she would be at school all day and that way it would be dry and ready when she got home.

Maddy playing with gold coins and her owl.

As it got closer to Abi getting home I started setting up the 'class' area. I got some play dough and made some mice for transfiguration class. I also added our wands to our spots.

I set up the 'trolley' of food. We had a lot of treats to last the week. We had Elixer of Life (water), Cockroach Clusters, Rock Cakes,

one acid pop (because it didn't work the way I wanted it to), licorice wands, and Fizzing Whizbees.

We also had Chocolate frogs ( I made these with a frog mold and Wilton chocolate) and Snitch truffles.

the set up with our empty Butter Beer mugs.

I set up a Hogwarts sign.

Then I put up the platform 9 3/4 wall. I bought a red vinyl tablecloth at the $1 store and then drew the bricks on with a sharpie. After I hung it up in the doorway I cut a slit up the middle.

As soon as Abi got home we started the party. First we all had to gather our supplies and then go through the wall to catch the Hogwarts Express! 

Abi peeking back through to let us know she got through okay.

my mom going through!

We boarded the Hogwarts Express, put on our robes, and picked some treats from the trolley for the ride.

As soon as we arrived at Hogwarts we were sorted. My sad little Sorting Hat was made from a paper bag and some brown ink with a sponge. I put little pieces of paper in a bowl with each house on them and we had to pick them out to get sorted. 

Abi was Gryffindor! My mom was Gryffindor!

I was Hufflepuff. Maddy was Slytherin!

We then attended our first class- Transfiguration. We had to turn our mice into teacups. I forgot to take pictures of all of them but got one of Abi's.

Abi's teacup.

Next we had Defense against the Dark Arts. First we had a lesson in boggarts.

Then I used the black balloon as a Dementor and here they are casting their Patronus charms at it. It promptly popped!

By the time we were done with the evening classes it was time for the great feast. We had roast with vegetables and began watching the first movie. 

Of course we enjoyed some yummy butter beer too!

Since Abi wasn't going to be watching the rest of the movies with us, we planned classes to be before and after school and we watched the movies during the day and at night after she went to bed. 

Wednesday morning we started the day with Charms class. 

Here they are practicing some of the spells from their books...

We learned the charm for making invisible ink appear and then they were able find hidden messages...

Abi's says, "You lost a tooth!" because she had another tooth fall out that morning!

Next we attended Ancient Runes class. I wrote each of them a message. Then they had to decode them.

When Abi got home from school we played Harry Potter Bingo.

Then we had potions class. Here are our ingredients all set up.

First we made flavor changing drinks to enjoy while we had classes. (7 up with ice cubes made out of kool aid)

Then we made polyjuice potion. It was kool aid. Abi is mixing in some pop rocks.

We put in some sour patch kids and then drank it! We all pretended to turn into Maddy.

Next we brewed up some Felix Felicis (the luck drink) 

Mom putting in some purple edible glitter...

We all had a drink to give us some good luck. Notice the pinkies on both of them!

And then we made snow using freezing powder and elixer of life.

this was Abi's favorite and she did it a few times.

Next up was Divination class. I printed out the house crests and then made a cootie catcher that I attached them to. I used some glasses I picked up at the party store to be Prof. Trelawney. It was really fun being goofy.

Abi choosing her fate. I am pretty sure she won the house cup.

After we were done everyone had to take a turn as Professor Trelawney.

Our last class was Herbology. We had to de-gnome the gardens.  I printed out pictures of gnomes and stuck them in the dirt and flowers and sent them out to get them.

Maddy soon woke from her nap and took a turn as Trelawney as well...

Our last event of the week we played Harry Potter Scene it game and had Treacle Tarts. 

It was such a fun week!