Why we have Easter

Whitney has really been looking forward to Easter.  She has been telling me how excited she is to color eggs and look for candy.  We wanted to teach her and Rachel about why we really celebrate Easter.  Family Home Evening was the perfect time to do it.

We started off doing a puzzle I made.  Whitney loves ripping off the pieces to see what is underneath.

She has recognized the picture of Jesus forever.  I explained that Jesus is the real reason we have Easter.

Then we made resurrection rolls.  I learned about this recipe from primary, then I looked online and found it. The rolls are really yummy and show the concept behind the resurrection really well.

I explained to Whitney that the marshmallow was Jesus' body, then we dipped it into melted butter for the oils and cinnamon sugar for the spices that were used during the time of Jesus to help preserve the body.

Whitney was very good at dipping and then rolling the marshmallow into the crescent roll (which represents the linen blanket placed around the body).

We let Rachel take a turn doing a marshmallow too.  She was not too keen on the idea of putting her hands into the bowl of butter and bowl of cinnamon sugar.  Whitney was a great helper though and was sad when we were out of crescent rolls.

Whitney practiced saying sepulchre - or oven, where Jesus' body rested.

While we waited for the rolls to cook, we read some scriptures and watched a short movie about the resurrection.  

You could see when I cut into the roll that it was empty.  The marshmallow all melts into the bread - making it a yummy treat and a good example of the resurrection.  Then we all ate the rolls.  I am not sure how much Whitney really understood.  The resurrection is a pretty intense subject for a three year old.  But at least she knows that Jesus is the real reason for why we have Easter.

And a picture of Rachel just for fun.  She loves being naked.

The Exciting V

I was a little apprehensive about coming up with projects for the letter V, but the day turned out pretty well.  I think the kids even had fun and learned a little about the letter.

We started off watching a video about the letter V.  You can pretty much find any video about any letter from Sesame Street on Youtube.  Whitney thought the video was pretty funny.

I cut out a big and little letter V and then we took turns hiding them.  Each girl got to find one letter and then hide the letter they found.  Whitney needs to keep working on hiding something and then not telling me where she hid them because it was quite easy to find the letters with a little girl pointing the way.

We made a V collage.  When I started cutting pictures out of magazines, I thought it would just be a vegetable collage, but there weren't enough pictures.  So the kids got to glue on all kinds of V things - vacuum and vase and vest, etc.

Coloring the big letter V hiding in all the vegetables.

Then the girls got to stick stickers all over their vases.  Whitney wanted to be done after only two stickers, but I convinced her to put on a couple more.

I found some fake flowers at the dollar store; I wasn't sure what violets really looked like, so we went for violet colored flowers.  

Then we made a Valentines wreath by gluing hearts all over the rim of a paper plate.  The girls really like doing anything that involves glue lately.

So I am afraid I didn't get a good picture of our volcano.  I used the clay that Whitney got for her birthday, but I had never used clay before and didn't know quite how hard it was.  With a little water, the girls managed to use their fingers to dig a big hole in the middle.  And I decided that looked close enough to a volcano.  Then we did the whole baking soda/red-dyed vinegar trick to make the volcano erupt.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of all the fizzing, but it only lasted like five seconds and just didn't work.  Oh well.

For snack, we had a vegetable man.  Thanks to my mom for the idea.  We used a cucumber body, carrot arms, red pepper legs, a tomato head, and some lettuce shreds for hair.  The kids thought their little vegetable men were cool and enjoyed dipping everything into ranch dressing.  They also got to dip vanilla wafers into vanilla pudding.  So V was fun.  We are going to double up on letters for the next two weeks so we can finish the alphabet before we move.

Exciting News!!!

       So there are no pictures on this post, but we did want to write about our exciting news.  First, as most people have guessed, we are expecting our third baby.  I am fifteen weeks along now, which makes me due September 2nd.  Which happens to be labor day, pretty ironic.  I was a little sick during the first trimester, but everything has kind of calmed down.  We got an ultrasound already that put our due date right on the second, so we are feeling pretty confident about the date.  And excited about our growing family.
       Our second big news is that Will got a new job.  We will be moving to Hermiston, Oregon in about two and a half weeks.  This will be a really good job for Will that pays more and will help him get his social work license.  So we are excited for that.  Now we just have a lot of packing to do.
    So it will be a crazy couple of weeks for us, but we look forward to some new adventures.  We will keep you posted on our new address, once we find out what that address is going to be.

A Birthday Celebration

I know Whitney doesn't officially turn three until Tuesday, but we celebrated yesterday with my family.  And I think Whitney had a good time.

The two girls hung out on the couch with some stuffed animals until my family came.

There was a free kids concert in Spokane Saturday morning that we went to for Whitney's birthday.  I heard about the guy coming from the library - I guess they like sponsored him or something to fly out all the way from Chicago.

Some of us watching the guy play some music.  He sang goofy kids songs and played the banjo.

Whitney gets into it and does a little dancing.  She has a very serious face here, but I think she really did like the concert.  She kept doing small little smiles when she thought no one was paying attention.

Rachel really loved the concert and was full of smiles for all the dancing and singing.

Then we went out to lunch afterwards.  The buffet that was close to the concert hall was closed, so we stopped at a Dennys.  Whitney, of course, didn't want the mac and cheese we ordered for her.  But Rachel ate it and Whitney ate some extra grandpa pancakes.  Thanks for sharing the food.

We got back to Cheney and Whitney was so excited to open presents.  She reminded me of how Erin used to open presents so nicely.  Finally, we told her to just rip them open.

Getting a Dora the Explorer purse, which had $3 inside, so it was an extra good purse.

And opening the gift bag from grandma Keeler which had some cute clothes and some paint set things.  I'm telling you, this girl scored for her birthday.  She got clothes and a Mr. Potato head and some painting things and candy and books and movies. I think Conner was only a little jealous that she got to open so many presents.

Whitney picked donuts, instead of cake, for her birthday.  We got a big three and put it on her special donut.   She picked the one from the store with chocolate and sprinkles.  We tried for like five minutes to get her to blow out her candle, but she wouldn't do it.

She thought the donut was yummy.

And Rachel thought her donut was delicious.  She promptly stuffed her face with it.

It is hard to see clearly, but this was Whitney's birthday shirt.  It says 'Happy 3rd Birthday'.  Whitney decorated the bottom, but that was after the picture.  Now she wants to use the fabric markers on all her clothes.

We gave Rachel a new shirt too.  Look closely and try to figure out our exciting news.  Anyway, it was a good birthday.  Thanks for coming my family to make the birthday extra special.

T...T...and more T

I did the letter T for alphabet days and I think it was quite successful.  The girls both seemed to have a great time.  Here are a couple of the things we did.

The girls got to be trains.  They danced around to the Little Red Caboose song and they held just empty diaper boxes so they could be more like a couple of boxcars.

It did not take long for the train to break apart and become two loose boxcars, but the kids didn't care.  In fact, we had to do the song again because the kids really liked being trains.

Then we talked a little about temples and the girls glued on cotton balls to their temples.  Whitney is doing a good job of pushing down the cotton balls so they would stick to the glue.  (Mom was not allowed to help with this project).

We played a matching game of matching the tails to the animals.  I printed off a bunch of animals that have distinctive tails (like the horse and the fish and the pig and the peacock) and then I just drew the tails myself.  Whitney was really good at matching.

We built towers out of blocks.  Emma managed to make hers really high before the kids knocked them over. 

Finally, we just gave Rachel and Levi their own blocks so they would stop bugging their sisters' towers.  Not that that really worked because they still tried to knock over the taller towers.  But, at least we tried.

One thing the kids really loved was the triangle treasure hunt.  I cut out a bunch of triangles and sent the kids off to find the treasure from the clues written on the triangles.  Here they find a triangle underneath the rocking chair.

And finally we painted trees.  Both girls wanted to dip their hands into red paint for the tree trunk, but then they agreed to use green for the rest of the painting.  Whitney's tree came together quite nicely.

We had two things for snack - tigers and turtles.  I cut orange pieces and the kids drizzled melted chocolate on top to make the tigers.  

Here is a turtle made with pretzels, a rolo candy, a marshmallow, and a little frosting for the eyes.  The kids both loved their tigers and their turtles, so it was a success.

I think the kids really liked T.  And Whitney has been pointing T's out to me ever since, so at least I know she is learning something.