Movie night

For the past 3 or 4 years one of the primary activities has been a movie night. The kids love this night. This is the first year I have been involved with the movie night. I don't know why I didn't go last year because I was a primary teacher last year. The primary presidency (along with the help of some men who can set up projection TVs, DVD players, and screens) had 2 rooms set up with projection TVs, one for the senior primary and one for the junior primary. I think the hardest part for the primary presidency (my sister Christa is the president now) was picking out a G rated movie. Did you know that almost all of the animated movies or family movies for that matter that have been released within the last 5 years are almost all PG (that includes the Disney animated ones as well). What is up with that. I think they feel like they have to put in some bad words and some suggestive things so that the adults will like it. They wanted to pick 2 movies that most of the kids probably haven't seen before, but at the same time have them be fairly new releases. The movies were for the senior primary Everyone's Hero (the animated baseball movie very cute) and for the junior primary Horton Hears a Who.

A month before the movie night, each primary kid can earn 8 reverence bucks. You can earn up to 2 bucks per Sunday for four weeks, one if your reverent for class time the other if your reverent during singing and sharing time. If you are absent one week or if you weren't very reverent and didn't get a total of 8 bucks, you have the opportunity to earn the rest of your bucks the night of the movie. So the Sunday before the movie night, each kid was given a movie ticket to bring that Friday night.

The night of the movie we had 3 rooms set up, two for the movies and one for the concession. Once they signed in, they went to the concession room and picked up their bucks. If they didn't earn all 8, then the senior primary age had to say an article of faith and the junior primary had to either answer a simple question, say an article of faith if they knew one, or sing a primary song. If you earned all 8 being reverent and weren't absent at church, you got a little piece of candy as a bonus. Then after getting all 8 bucks, it was spending time. Each item cost 2 bucks so you could get a total of 4 things. The choices were hot dogs, popcorn, lemonade, and candy (not the movie size candy rather the size you see at grocery store check outs so not to small). After you bought a candy, you got your hand stamped because the rule was you could only buy one candy. Most kids got one of each thing. I was in charge of the popcorn. My parents have a big popcorn popper like they have at the theatre so we borrowed that. They have had this machine for years, but this is the first time I have ever used it. It was fun. I even had a couple senior primary helpers so they could pass it off on their Faith in God booklet. After the mad rush of kids buying all their goodies, it was movie time. The kids got to bring pillows, blankets, stuffed animals, and some even came in their PJ's. A while later I went into the movie rooms to see how things were and all the kids and I mean all were glued to the screen. We had the concession room vacuumed and cleaned up before the movies got over. So the only thing really needing to be done was vacuuming the 2 movie rooms and one hallway so not too bad. My kids love movie night. Some of them didn't want to spend all of their money and save it for the next movie night, but I talked them into spending it all after all next year will have the same choices.

Chicken!!

O.K. So I thought I had this brilliant fun and free idea for Hayden to do while the other kids were in school. A small toy store invited a petting zoo to come to their store and you could pet these farm animals outside their store and inside they had baby chicks and rabbits to pet. So we get there and there are lots of preschool and toddler age kids. Hayden enjoyed looking at the animals from a distance, but wouldn't go near let alone pet them so I could take a picture of him. This is what Hayden did every time I wanted to get a picture of him.

There were 3 miniature ponies, a pig, chicken, a couple lambs, and goats outside (your typical petting zoo animals). Hayden was way more interested in going into the toy store than the animals. We quickly walked through the toy store and I didn't even take him in the room where the chicks and rabbits were because he didn't really care about them. Oh well, at least we got out of the house for a little while and it was free.

It's spring in full bloom

Finally, spring has finally sprung. About a month ago we started seeing these trees all over the place

You know it is spring when you see the dogwood trees in full bloom. We call them popcorn trees because from a distance that is exactly what they look like. But, once you get up close they look like this Hayden was a little disappointed to see this instead of popcorn. And let me tell you the smell is definitely not popcorn. Dogwoods don't smell to good which is a shame because our state has them all over the place after all it is the state tree. I think spring is my favorite season mainly because everything comes back to life. The trees get their leaves, the grass is green, the spring plants get their flowers, the tulips and daffadils, you don't have to use your heat but only a couple hours in the morning and it is still cool enough to not have to turn on the AC opened windows for a couple hours in the evening will cool the house down just perfectly, kids playing outside most of the day so the house stays cleaner for longer, it stays lighter longer, and the weather is warm but not too hot. But to every positive side there are always not so good things about spring. You have to mow your lawn (which I have done twice now), plant your veggies for summer picking, plant flowers, trim bushes, spray or pull the weeds that are shooting up like crazy, spray the house inside and out for bugs, carpenter bees trying to eat your house, basically wear 2 sets of clothes everyday because the morning is in the 40s and the afternoon in the upper 60s, and the allergies (if your are allergic to pollen stay away it is terrible) (luckily none of us have allergies). This past week, I have been devoting some time everyday to do a little yard work and I am almost done. Then its just maintaining it all summer which doesn't take very much time.

Going Green

And no I don't me recycling and organic and all that stuff. I am talking about Saint Patrick's Day!! I never make a big deal about this day. I do make sure I am wearing green as well as my kids. No pinching going on here. I had the hardest time finding clothes in my kids closet that had green in it. Some of their outfits you had to look pretty good before finding green. This year I decided to do something fun. I made green food for dinner. We had a breakfast dinner. My kids love it when I make breakfast for dinner. We had green pancakes, and I added some blue food coloring to the eggs and we had green eggs and ham and cheese in the scrambled eggs. If I could of figured out a way to turn the bacon green, we would of had green bacon too. The kids weren't sure about the whole color change, but they did try it and found out it tastes just the same. I would of made this for breakfast but I already get up at 6:25 am to get them on the bus at 7:00 am so there was no way I was waking up any earlier.

Isn't it too early??

Wow, I can't believe I have posted something 4 days in a row. I am trying to catch up on the last month and a half. I am determined to get caught up. Of course, I tell myself that all the time and when I am a little less than a month behind I ease up again and find myself over a month behind. We'll see what happens. On with the post.

Is it me or is Day Light Savings Time much earlier than in the past. I always thought it was in April, but the beginning of March is a little crazy. But, I am loving it. The kids actually sleep in a bit longer on the weekend because the time they normally get up for school (6:30 am) is still dark. So they sleep in an extra hour. The only bad thing I have to say about it is that the week following daylight savings time I kept waking up at 5:30 am and by the time I would fall back asleep the alarm would go off. So I was a little more tired than usual that whole week. But I will take it if it makes my kids sleep in a hour longer on the weekend. Now if only the birds would be a little quieter in the morning.

A visit from an old friend

A few months back my good friend Bethany from my high school days (she was in my ward in Muskegon, MI) told me her and her friend were coming down south and were wondering if they could stop by. So late March 6th actually by the time they arrived it was the 7th. Bethany and her friend Marta drove all day and some of the night from Michigan for a 4 day vacation (too bad 2 of the days are driving days). They arrived at 1 am. Instead of going to bed, I decided to fall asleep on the couch because I knew if I was in my warm toasty bed I wouldn't want to get up a few hours later to let them in. I quick said hi showed them where they would be sleeping and the bathroom and went to bed. The next morning I went to the Krispy Kreme donut shop and picked up some donuts for breakfast. You can't come and visit our area without having a hot fresh now glaze donut that just melts in your mouth mmmmmmmmmm yummy. Only too bad for them that they weren't going to be awake for another few hours so they would have cold fresh donuts (almost just as good heated up a little in the microwave). Krispy Kreme also came out with mini donuts. They no longer had donut holes at their store. They look just like regular donuts but smaller perfect for little hands and I have lots of those around. So I got a variety of a dozen of the regular size and I think the mini came in 16 or 18 to a box (to equal the size of a dozen regular). These minis are way better than the donut holes because they come in a better variety that my kids will actually eat. They had the regular glaze, chocolate frosted, and chocolate frosted with sprinkles. My sister Cheri and her 3 girls came over around 11 am about 30 minutes after Bethany and Marta woke up. Cheri and Bethany started out being friends because they were in the same grade in school and in the same class at church and as she hung around our house I became her good friend too. We basically sat around and talked all afternoon and talked about everything from when we were younger to what's going on now. Then they left at 4 pm so they could make it to the World of Coke Museum before it closed. Then they were off to Alabama to visit a friend they know there. It was a fun few hours and nice to see her. The last time I saw her was when Hayden was a baby and now he just turned 3 so just barely under 3 years ago, and that visit was just like this visit she came down for the weekend with her same friend. Hopefully it wont be another 3 years before we see each other again.

SNOW DAY Are you kidding me?????

Well, the day after Jon and I got back from our Disney vacation the kids had a snow day. Not Talmage though. He goes to Pre-K in a different county and their county didn't have a snow day. This is what it looked like outside our window

Not really enough to build a snowman especially since it is really wet snow.

From what I heard south of us the city of Atlanta got hit with a lot more snow and ice patches than we did their snow didn't change to mostly rain like ours did. Usually our city gets hit hardest in our county because we are the northern most city in our county, but not this time. When I took Talmage to school in the morning, there was one ice patch that I drove over and it was probably a foot long by three feet wide. By the afternoon all of the snow was gone except for the snow that was in the shade.

The weird thing is 2 days later we were out in shorts and t shirts because it was in the lower 70s and the following day almost hit 80 . We went from Winter, Spring, and Summer all within 5 days.

A trip without the kids

Since November, Jon and I have been discussing a trip for just the two of us in the winter sometime after the New Year. We knew we wanted to go somewhere warm. We we leaning toward a cruise, but to different ports other than the Bahamas we had been to previously, but we only wanted to be gone for a long weekend so our cruise choices to somewhere else were pretty slim. We would have to go on a 5 day cruise to Cozumel, Mexico and Grand Cayman Islands. We also checked into going to Disney land and California Adventure. We already asked Morgan if she would be interested in watching our kids (with pay of course I wouldn't have anyone (besides grandparents) watch all 6 kids while Jon and I are living it up on vacation for free). She is on the Summer/Fall schedule so that is a big reason why we wanted to go in winter and I hate winter cold so tropical sounded great to me. Since she didn't have a full time job, She subbed for a daycare and watched a boy and their 2 dogs and cat while his parents were on vacation for 10 days she agreed to watch them. So where did we end up going?? Jon's parents, when they were over for Brenton's birthday in January, asked if we were interested in going to Disney World with them again and they wanted to go soon. They didn't have enough Disney vacation club points left (I think they borrowed some for their trip the previous year). Jon and I both love Disney World, but we were just there less than a month before. After talking with his dad some more, and figuring out all the details, we decided we would go with them. So on February 26 we left for Disney World. Jon and I took turns driving down. We drove Jon's parents car since his mom wanted the option of laying down and our back seat doesn't recline. The deal was we would drive and pay for the gas and they would pay for the hotel room. We left after all the kids were in school and I dropped Hayden off at my mom's house so Morgan could watch him. We didn't have any delays driving down. After we checked into our room at the All Star Music Resort (now we have stayed at all the All Star Resorts) we all headed down to Down Town Disney (all except Jon's mom she wanted to take a bath and rest). First stop of course had to be Ghiradelli for some sundaes. I love their sundaes. Then we looked at a few shops mainly ones our kids don't like to go to or ones we don't feel comfortable in taking our kids into. I did want to stop off and take a peak at the new dinosaur restaurant. It was packed with people waiting for a table and it was almost 8 pm. It is like the Rainforest Cafe except with Dinosaurs. Very cool my kids would love to eat there. Maybe, when the newness dies down and it isn't jam packed with people. When we got back to the resort, Jon and I wanted to check things out around the resort while his parents went to bed. We checked out the 2 pools they have one is shaped like a piano and the other one like a guitar. They had a big blow up screen with people playing Mario Cart on the Wii. We checked out the gift shop and had a little something to eat since lunch we had only our sundaes. Jon and I split a couple things. The thing I like about the All Star Resorts is they have cafeteria style restaurants. It is divided into 4 different places one had desserts, one had salads and sandwiches and roasted chicken, one had burgers and hot dogs, and the final one had pizza and pasta. Something to please anyone. After we ate it wasn't quite 9:00 pm and we didn't know what else to do we had toured the whole place and it was too chilly for me to sit and watch the movie they had playing on the big blow up screen. So we headed back to the hotel room and went to bed. I don't remember the last time I went to bed before 9:30 pm. I am not a night owl I usually go to bed at 10:30 pm since I have to get up at 6:30 am.

The next morning we all headed to Magic Kingdom. Since we were only going to be at Disney for 2 whole days we had to go to Magic Kingdom and Epcot our 2 favorites. Since we knew Jon's parents (by this I mean his mom his dad could last the whole time) wouldn't be at Magic Kingdom much past lunchtime we decided to do the things they would like and leave the thrill rides for Jon and I later. The only fast pass we got for all of us to use was to the Jungle Cruise. This is where the cool part came into plan. Jon and I would get fast passes for us to use on Splash mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, and Buzz lightyear using both sets of tickets for Jon and I to use later when his parents have left the park. Jon's parents left a few hours after lunch. So Jon and I headed over to Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Buzz light year, Space Mountain, and a couple more. We checked out a few stores and were ready to leave just before dinner time.

When we got back to the resort, we went down to the cafeteria for some dinner and took it back to our room and ate. I don't remember what we did after we ate. I think we just hung around the room and watched some Tv. We ended up going to bed at 9:30 pm again. This time I didn't mind since I was on my feet all day and I didn't get a good night sleep the night before (I never sleep good the first night in a different bed).

Saturday we went to Epcot. Epcot was open a hour early for resort guests so of course we took advantage of that since we usually rent a house and can never take advantage. Jon's parents didn't want to do the thrill rides again so we got some fast passes to test track and mission space. They almost didn't go on Soarin but we talked them into it and they loved it. We also did Space Ship Earth, Nemo and Turtle Talk with Crush, and Living with the land with them. We skipped Journey to Imagination (not one of my favorites, but fun to take the kids on because there is never a long line) because it was 11:00 am and time for the countries to open. We watched the O' Canada movie and the American movie (not one of my favorites) how come all the other countries that have movies talk about their country and what there is to see and do and the American movie talks about all the bad choices America made in history for about 20 minutes and the last 5 minutes were happy. There are awesome things to do and see here why not show that. It left me feeling mad. Oh well. We also did the rides in Norway and Mexico as well as look at all the shops. By then is was way past lunch and we were starving. We headed back to our resort and dropped Jon's mom off and the three of us headed to Fort Wilderness for some dinner. I love Fort Wilderness. I want to stay in one of those cabins (not a tent) one of these days. Then Jon and I took a boat to Magic Kingdom, hopped on the Monorail and headed back to Epcot. Jon's dad took a bus back to the resort. We did Test Track and a few more rides. We ran into some members in line at Test Track that used to be in our ward until they split off and added their own Spanish branch. It was fun talking with them. We left Epcot just before the night show.

Sunday morning we headed out. We stopped and ate breakfast at IHOP. We didn't get stuck in any traffic. Although we did get phone calls from all of our family saying that while they were in church it started snowing. The biggest snowflakes we had ever seen in Atlanta. We were all ready to turn the car right around and go back to Florida. But instead about 1 1/2 hours till home we hit this

These were taken while driving so you don't get the full effect. It was snowing basically the rest of the way home, but by the time we got to our town the snow was really wet and was almost just rain. This didn't make the kids too happy because the snow was to wet to do anything with. All and all it was a great trip and it was plenty warm in Orlando while we were there.