Hawiaian Haystacks

2 T butter
1/2 cup onion diced
1 26 ounce can of chicken soup
2 cups sour cream
8 cups of cooked rice
1 can chow mein
pineapple
oranges (manderian)
green inion
celery
red pepper
frozen peas
coconut
almonds

saute butter onions for 3 min.  stir in chicken sour cream and soup

stir and place crockpot on table
sppon onto rice
choose toppings and enjoy

One of "Those" Days

Yep, I would say today was one of those days.  You know the kind I'm talking about right?  If not check out these pictures....don't let the smile deceive you.

Throw up all over baby and car seat... check.
Baby nice and clean and no longer smelling like throw up... check.
Wait a minute.....not for long, poop in the tub... check...REALLY? Check.
No longer smelling so clean... check.
Baby washed and nice and clean AGAIN... check.
Car seat washed for the first time ever... check (Now if I can just figure out how to put it all back together! ; )

After all of this I still wouldn't trade being a mother for ANYTHING!  Sure some days are crazy, today was one of those for sure but at night when I close my eyes to go to bed, I know that I am doing the GREATEST work even if at times its not glamorous.  I love my boys, and my time with them is truly PRICELESS!

Sometimes we get so caught up in comparing ourselves with others.  It helps me to see other moms going through some of the exact same struggles as me.  Does anyone else have days like this?

Halloween Pom Poms!

Last month my friend Lauren shared a tutorial on how to make these cute pom poms.  I headed out to buy tissue paper, and since it's October we choose Halloween colors.  Aren't they fun?  To view the full tutorial click here.

Letter G (Giraffe & Gorilla)

Books & Movies

Giraffes Can't Dance by Andreae Giles
Giraffe: The Worlds Tallest Mammal by Meish Goldfish
The Giraffe Who Was Afraid of Heights by David A. Ufer

The Wild -Giraffes
Tarzan -Gorillas

Craft/Art

Giraffe hand print craft from Once Upon a Time

Letter G Craft from Play and Learn with Dana

Fun Facts

Giraffes are the tallest land animals. A grown giraffe can measure anywhere from 14-18 feet tall and weigh about 2,000 pounds.

Giraffes live in the Savannas of Africa.

Giraffes not only have a long neck but a long tongue, their black tongue is about 18" long. They also have a very long tail measuring about 8 feet long.

Game/Activity

Printables

Giraffe Coloring Page 8x10

 Giraffe Flash Card 4x6

 Giraffe Tracing Page 8x10

Snack

Cute Giraffe treat from Eighteen 25

Theme of the Week

We reviewed Shapes this week. One of our favorite activities was looking at all the different shapes on the giraffe. We found shapes in the giraffes spots, and on his face.  

Halloween Drink

 We loved the whole layering idea with drinks that we did for 4th of July and decided to give it a try for Halloween too.  We wanted something that layered well but also tasted good.  This is what we came up with.  It really did layer well and it tasted great too.  Once the ice started to melt the drink colors start to mix a bit looking like slim...your kids will love this!

We filled a glass with ice and then poured about 1/3 cup of each drink in the following order:

1-Kiwi Strawberry Punch (Green on Bottom)

2- Orange Gatorade/Powerade (Orange in Middle)

3- Zero Sprite (Clear on Top)

This picture was taken almost 10 minutes after we pored it...it stayed in it's layers really well.

You could do this with other drinks too. The drink with the highest sugar content will sink and the drink with the least will float.  You do have to have the ice for it to work because it keeps the different drinks from mixing...you also need to pour the drink with the highest sugar content in first and then pour the others straight onto the ice to keep the different drinks from mixing. 

Hot Dog Mummies

We made these fun hot dog mummies for dinner and they were a huge hit!

We used 1 package of hot dogs and one package of crescent dough then we cut the dough in long strips and wrapped them around each hot dog and baked them in the oven on 375 degrees for 12 min.  So easy and so fun!!

Letter F (Flamingo)

We didn't have a ton of flamingo ideas so this was a pretty laid back week with some fishing thrown in.

Craft/Art

Flamingo Handprint from Red Ted's Art

Fun Facts

Flamingos can fly as fast as 35 miles an hour.

Falmingo chicks are born gray or white, it takes 3 years for them to reach their mature color.

Flamingos eat lots of shrimp and plankton. The pink or orange color of a flamingo comes from the food they eat.

Flamingo's make a honking sound like a goose. You can hear them here.

Game/Activity

Sock Fishing and other Ocean ideas

Stand on one foot like a flamingo and try to get around (get dressed, eat snack, sing a song)

Printables

Coloring Page (8 x 10)

 Flash Card (4 x 6)

 Tracing Pages (8 x 10)

Snack
Eat Goldfish while tipping head upside down...kinda like you would drink water to get ride of the hickups, this is how flamingos eat their food.

Songs
The Flamingo Song found here

Animals at the Zoo to the tune of  "The Wheels on the Bus" 

The snake at the zoo goes Hiss Hiss Hiss Hiss Hiss Hiss 

The Snake at the zoo goes Hiss Hiss Hiss 

All day long 

The lion at the zoo goes Roar Roar Roar Roar Roar Roar 

The lion at the zoon goes Roar Roar Roar 

All day long (Add other animals)

Zoo Animals

100 Animals I went to the zoo And what did I see? 100 animals Looking at me. There were, 10 tall giraffes, eating from the trees. 10 silly monkeys, scratching on their knees. 10 sleeping snakes, lying in the sun. 10 munching elephants, eating peanuts one by one. 10 leaping tigers, performing in the shows, 10 pink flamingos, standing on their toes. 10 grouchy bears, trying to get some sleep.

A Year Ago

A year ago today we wrote our first post for this blog. It was a very simple and short post but this post was the beginning of what I like to call a journey...the start of this blog.

This year has been a year of learning. I have learned a lot about the blogging world, social networking, html coding, link parties, advertising, and even some silly things like how to properly spell etc.  I have also learned a lot about myself. Holly and I recently had a conversation about this blog.  We talked a lot about how we have been doing things and both felt like something was missing.  We eventually came to the conclusion that our focus has changed over the last year. We have become so focused on growing our blog and keeping up with blogging trends that we have forgotten the real reason we started blogging.

We originally started this blog for a couple reasons:

1-We wanted this blog to be a collection of things we could refer back to for future use. (Example: preschool lessons)

2-We wanted a way to share things with each other. (We live 12,000 miles from each other and wanted away to stay in touch and share ideas)

3-We wanted others to benefit from the things we put together.  We plan a lot of different activities for our children/family and create some fun printables and wanted more people to benefit from these things.

4-We feel like motherhood is a special blessing we and many others enjoy but it can also be hard.  Our hope was to inspire and motivate other moms through blogging.

We have realized that in order to continue blogging we need to remember the reason we started blogging. We need to blog for us and remember our purpose.  You have probably noticed a couple changes around here.

1-We have changed our blog design.  We hope this design and the addition of the tabs will make it  easier for readers to navigate while also making it easier for us to keep things updated.

2-We are no longer sharing posts on a schedule.  Schedules mean deadlines and create unnecessary stress, we are blogging for us, not as a business and so we will share posts when we want to.  We hope to each share at least one post a week but our families come first.  Our family is our life, this blog is our hobby.

3-We won't be focusing on building our blog.  We feel that we have some wonderful followers-thanks everyone! We currently have about 5,000 pageviews/day, 303 followers and 111 subscribers.  We are very happy with our following and want to spend our time sharing the things we love, not worrying about numbers!

4-We will blog with purpose! We plan to start a year long series starting in January 2013. We are excited to start this series and share it with you here on our blog.

Thanks everyone for a wonderful year, we hope to make this upcoming one even better!
 

Homemade Suckers!

2 C. sugar
1/2 C. white karo syrup
1/2 C water
dash of salt
4 drops of flavoring (if using extract instead of oil, use 2 T)
coloring
Combine sugar, syrup, water, and salt.  Bring to a boil-cook to hard ball stage 290.  Turn off heat.  When temp is down to 260 gently stir in coloring and flavoring.  Pour immediately into molds.

Family Picture Collage!

Heather and I have been busy, reorganizing this blog.  Has anyone noticed?  If you have logged in and noticed things everywhere....that's why! ; )  

I love the FALL time.... especially days like today!  It was crisp, sunny and just plain beautiful.  The trees are changing so quickly and I feel like each time I walk by the window or step outside I need to capture the moment and colors before its gone.

Another thing that I love is my FAMILY!  So, when you put those two loves together this is what you get!

 FALL+ FAMILY=FALL FAMILY PICTURES!

My friend Nicole took these for us!  I love the colors and i'm so happy to have captured these!  I made the collage to fit a big 20x24 inch frame in my living room so we can have fall all winter long!  Okay, so maybe not really, but it's the best we can get.  Go grab some pictures with your loved ones before the colors are gone.

Fun with Jell-o!

We did a lot of learning and color fun this week with jell-o. We bought 6 packages of jell-o. Strawberry, Orange, Lemon, Lime, Blue raspberry, and Grape. We poured aside one serving of each flavor so that we could enjoy the jell-o as a snack or with lunch for the color that we were focusing on for the day. Obviously a package of jell-o is more than just one serving….we used the rest to make rainbow jell-o, which is just the different flavored jell-o layered in a glass pan.


This is a picture of our lunch during the day we focused on “BLUE”. My son also wore a blue shirt and since he was potty training this week, he even got to wear BLUE big boy pants! ; )

We also used the different colored boxes to help teach the colors. My son also liked stacking them on top of each other as he said the colors out loud.
Here is what the rainbow jell-o looks like…it does take a while to make because you have to let each layer set up before pouring the next, but my son loved it!


We mixed up a package of pudding and spread it in a pizza pan and drew some pictures/letters. ; ) All of the steps involved in this activity were very entertaining for my 2 year old.
He LOVED:
STIRRING/HELPING

PLAYING

LEARNING

and EATING too!

Letter E (Elephant)

Books & Movies
Books

Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss
I am an Elephant by Aaron Carr
I Love my Mama by Peter Kavanagh
I've Got an Elephant by Anne Ginkel

Movies
Dumbo
Jungle Book

Craft/Art

Handprint elephant

Make an elephant mask, you can print the one below and find instructions at Ziggity Zoom

Make a paper plate elephant, for instructions visit Click A Craft

Fun Facts

Elephants are the biggest animals that live on land.

Elephants live in Africa and Asia.

Elephants use their nose/trunk as an arm.

Elephants skin can be up to 1 inch thick.

Baby elephants are called calf's and weigh about 260 pounds when they are born.

Elephants eat about 300 pounds of food everyday. (That would feed a person for more than 2 months.)

Elephants drink a bathtub full (35 gallons) of water everyday.  They can hold 3 gallons of water in their  trunk.

Game/Activity

Do finger play with songs.

Printables

Coloring Page (8 x 10)

Flash Card (4 x 6)

Tracing Pages (8 x 10)

Snack
Peanuts (just like elephants)

Songs
Circus Elephant (finger play)
A Circus elephant I went to see (Hold hand over eyes like binoculars)
He had four legs and was bigger than me. (Hold up four fingers and then point to self)
He had two ears big and round (Show two fingers and make a circle with hands)
And one long nose that made a sound errrrr (Make elephant trunk with arm)

The Elephant (with actions)
The elephant goes like this and that, this and that, this and that.
(Walk heavily and stomp feet loudly) 
The elephant goes like this and that, cause he's so big and fat! 
(Puff up cheeks and stretch out arms) 

He has no fingers and has no toes, He has no fingers and has no toes. 
(Wiggle fingers; wiggle toes) 
He has no fingers and has no toes, But goodness, gracious, what a nose! 
(Stick arms out like a long trunk.) 

Tips for Teaching Letter E
Letter E makes 2 sounds Eh for elephant and E just like is't name.

Theme of the Week

This week we talked about opposites. We out a whole bunch of printouts of different animals from this packet on the floor and asked my preschooler questions.

I asked:
 Which animal is the smallest/biggest?
Which animal is the shortest/tallest?

I also had my preschooler move the animals around.

inside/outside the cage
above/below a tree

General Conference Activities for the Kids!

Many of our readers belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and are Mormons.  If you are one of those readers then this post is for you! ; )  For those of you that aren't this post might not be as helpful, but if you want to know more feel free to find out more here or leave a comment!

General Conference is coming up!  I can't wait to hear words from our living prophet!  Sometimes it can be hard to REALLY listen and pay attention with my two young boys and such short attention spans.  If you feel the same way then check out some of these ideas to keep the kids happy and attentive!  Hopefully it works! ; )

Lds.org has some really awesome Activities for Children.  They have done all the work for us!  Check out the link for coloring pages, pages to take notes, and conference squares.  I LOVE it when all I have to do is print and go!

Last year Heather posted about an activity basket she prepared.  You can view the full post here.  This is what it looks like! ; )

My game plan this year if very similar!  I have just regular brown paper bags (I know not fancy or pretty, but it gets the job done) that I will fill with a single item.  Some of the items I plan to put in the bags are:

Stickers

Silly Putty

Coloring Pages (thanks lds.org)

Magnets

Pom poms

Toy car

candy necklace

lacing cards (and other busy bag activities

Suckers

Candy (lots of it)

Healthy Snacks like string cheese, crackers, yogurt, fresh raspberries (these are my 3 year olds absolute favorite!  Since some of these will need to be kept in the fridge or freezer I will just place a note in the bag instead of the item.   

On each bag I will place ONE picture (see below).  Each bag will be placed across my entertainment center, and when a new person gets up to talk my boys can search for the right face (find a match) and get a treat or activity to keep them busy while listening to the talks.

I realize that their will be speakers that I do not have pictured below.  We usually get to hear from members of the 70 and General Presidencies.  So during those talks my boys can use some of the other resources I've shared with you!

I have created this sheet if you want a fast and easy way to print everything on only one page!

Click here to download in a PDF format.

Once you print the page above just cut out and staple to brown paper bags.  Simple enough right?  Here is what mine look like.

I would love to hear any other ideas you may have! ; )