Karate belt test

Now that Seth is 7 he gets to move up in karate from the "Little Dragons" to regular karate guy. That also means he gets to test at the big dojo with Max. He loved testing there. I told him it took about an hour and he said it seemed like 10 minutes to him. He did a great job and now he's an orange belt.

Max is moving right along. Now he has his red brown belt. I called it his brown red belt and he was quick to correct me. Apparently it matters what order you say it. Great job, Max!

Jon's graduation

Jon graduated yesterday...finally. :) He actually still has to defend in Aug. so he's not ALL finished but he got to walk since there's only a ceremony once a year. Lots of his family came up for the graduation, it was fun to all be together and congratulate Jon, YAY Jon!!

Jon's sisters Sara and Becca and brother Joseph, his mom, my mom and dad and Tanner all came to the graduation.

This is Tanner after about an hour. It only lasted an hour and a half and Tanner did like seeing Jon get hooded, after that he was done.I let the kids decorate his car to surprise him the morning of his graduation.
Seth and cousin Sam both lost the same tooth on the same day.
Eating pizza after the graduation. The kids loved seeing lots of cousins.

Seth loses his first tooth

Finally! He's 7 years and 3 days old! One of the happiest days of his life!

Sew pretty

Maddie loves to sew. She's so lucky because she has my mom and Jon's mom that will sew with her. I did take a semester in 10th grade of sewing but that was a long time ago. Both grandmas also quilt which I may start to learn very soon. My kids are in school all day now and I feel like I have some time on my hands for such an activity. Anyway, Jon's mom came down for a few days and she and Maddie made a skirt for Maddie. It's so cute and Maddie LOVES it.

The sewing machine station.

All done!

Sethisms

Seth turned 7 this week but I have to say he seems older to me sometimes. I think, well I know actually, it's because he has older siblings that he learns from, for better or for worse. The other day Seth was in the back of the suburban and I was in the driver's seat about to go somewhere when Jon rushed out to get some stuff out of the glove compartment. I said, "Are you going to return all that stuff back to the car later?" And Jon said, "Of coarse, it's not like I'm a 1st grader." Seth, who happens to be in 1st grade said, "Hey dad what do you mean by that?" Then the other day Seth was telling me how he's being a good example at school. He said sometimes kids will come up to him and say he looks like a 4-year-old. "Even though this is offensive to me, I try not to get mad at them." Offensive, pretty good word. He also says "Crap" which my older kids never said at his age.

Seth's main present from us was a little motor scooter. He loves it!
Grandmas got him legos, a kite, bubbles, and cards with money, ca-ching!

So, my dragon cake looks nothing like the picture. I even put it in the freezer thinking it would be easier to ice frozen but it wasn't. Maddie helped and we were both getting frustrated, then Seth and Max came in the kitchen and said it was AWESOME! Okay, good enough.
We went to Boondocks with the extended family to eat dinner and play laser tag. Unfortunately the line was really slow but everyone hung in there.

Eagles Concert

Last weekend Jon and I went to Las Vegas to see The Eagles in concert. I've only been to one other concert but I love going, rock stars are so talented. From our view we could see the percussion really well and it was amazing to watch how good they are. The concert lasted 3 1/2 hours but it went by really fast. By the time we got back to our hotel it was 2:00am our time which I can never stay up past 11:00 so that is amazing for me. We left on Friday morning and got back Sunday afternoon. It was nice having a get away with Jon. I did miss the kids but they were in good hands with my mom and Jon's mom. Thanks, Moms!

We stayed at the Excalibur. It's looks way more beautiful on the outside than the inside (dark, smokey casinos).
Here's the Eiffel Tower, so I don't have to go to Paris anymore. :)
The first night we went to the Tournament of Champions for dinner. They jousted and fought with swords on their horses, it was pretty good. The kids would've really liked it.
This is in Caesar's Palace. The sky changes colors and they had a Cheesecake Factory. Yum.
The Statue of Liberty made out of jellybeans, guess I don't have to go to NY now either. One of my favorite things is the fountain at the Ballagio, it's so beautiful.

Homemade bread

So, I'm 36 years old and have never made bread before. It's just so cheap at the store and so much work to make, it didn't appeal to me at all. Then, Jon's sister put a very simple recipe on her blog that I don't even have to knead by hand so I decided to try it. Hardly anything smells better than bread baking in the oven! I took it out a tiny bit too early so we toasted it and made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. It was so yummy. My kids kept saying, "Thank you mom for making this!" which doesn't happen enough around my house so that encouraged me to make it again. I made four loaves and we ate it in one weekend which is kind of a lot of bread to go through. The funny thing was I think I threw out my bread hook that came with my Bosch because I wasn't sure what it was and didn't think I'd ever use it. My mom bought me one which was so nice but then I realized I didn't have yeast or bread pans so I raided my mom's house and found some. Also, something I learned, bread has A LOT of flour in it, like 8 cups, WOW! I don't know if I'd call myself a homemade bread baker yet but we all did really enjoy it! Here's Becca's recipe.

2/3 cup honey or sugar

1/4 cup oil (rounded)

3 T. yeast

5 cups hot water

4 cups Flour

2 T. salt

Additional Flour (4-6 more Cups)

Put sugar, oil, and yeast in mixer (Bosch mixer you can do whole recipe, kitchen aide you can only fit 1/2 recipe). Add water and mix. Let sit 3 minutes to activate yeast. Add 4 cups flour and the salt (add salt last-it will kill yeast if you put it n first). Mix well to form a paste. Let raise 7 minutes. Add additional flour until dough pulls from sides of mixer pan (about 4-6 more cups). Mix it for about 4 minutes on high. Place bread in 4 greased loaf pans and set in warm oven (about 175-200 degrees) Let raise until dough is 1 inch over top of pan. This takes about 15-20 minutes. Without taking bread out, change temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.

A fun tip that I love is to spray your counter with Pam when you take dough out of mixer to divide. It makes the dough less sticky and easier to make it into really pretty bread shapes.

The Focacia bread is one of your dough loaves spread into a bottom of 9X13 pan. Dimple the dough, spread liberally with olive oil, sprinkle with dry Italian dressing (about 2/3 package), garlic salt, dill, Parmesan cheese, or whatever else you want or have on hand. Raise for about 10 minutes in warm oven and then bake for the 20 minutes.

Spring break is hoppin'

Last week we had Spring Break, YAY! We were ready for it, I guess everyone is ready to take a break from the norm and have fun! It started a little rocky. They all wanted the computer at the same time so some fights broke out so I thought of some chores to do and then they got along a little better. It reminded me of how summer goes. They need some structure...work hard and play hard.

By Wednesday I decided to take them to an Activity Center. It was bounce houses, skating, laser tag and rocket wars all for a good price. They hit the bounce houses first. Tanner brought two of his friends. I asked them to pose for a picture and they took it literally. As you can kind of see by the picture Tanner isn't feeling too well. Soon after this picture he threw up in the bathroom. He went out to the car and went to sleep, poor guy. He had gone swimming with these same boys earlier and maybe he drank too much water or something because none of us ever got sick, shew.

Seth spilled red Icee all down his neck and shirt. I washed it and it actually came out, yay! He had a great time on his scooter, he was doing all sorts of jumps and stunts.

The next day we went to "Jump On It" (Tanner stayed home) with our friends the Walton's who we haven't seen forever. My 3 youngest kids are the same ages as her 3 youngest kids so everyone gets along great. This is just a huge room with trampolines lined up together and even on the walls. It was a lot of fun. My camera is not on the right setting yet again but it still looks cool. After that we went to Sub Zero Ice Cream where they put Nitrous Oxide (or something) into the ice cream liquid to make is solid, it looks like dry ice. It was fun and I felt like we did something for Spring Break. The next day I was off to Denver to Scrapbook with my sister for the weekend. The kids got to eat out a lot with their dad and went to a movie. Fun times had by all.

Easter party

We did a fast weekend in Idaho for Easter. We had to get back because even though the kids have Spring Break this week, Jon doesn't. He only has a couple more weeks of BYU though so he's lucky. Before we left, Seth had an Easter (Spring) party at school I helped with.
We told the kids they couldn't lick the icing off their knife or fingers, this was torture for them.

This is Isaac on Easter morning. He kept disappearing then he'd look like this, sometimes with a pink face or a yellow face. He kept finding all the other kids Easter baskets, it was a really good morning for him.
Maddie, Calli, and Mac decorating sugar cookies. Beautiful!
Jon's mom always makes an Easter bunny cake. Isaac turned two so it was also his birthday cake.

Maddie's 12th birthday party

Maddie's got the greatest friends, they're all really nice girls. She decided she wanted to have a "Spa Party." I took them to a Nail Salon and they had a basic painting of their nails. There were some pretty crazy nail colors.

For her cake she chose an ice cream cake from Maggie Moos. The flavor is cotton candy (bright blue ice cream) with M&M mix-in. That did not sound good to me at ALL but the girls were excited to eat it, must be a kid thing.
She got a lot of great presents. This is a few of them, bandana, sunglasses, outfit, and beach towel. Lookin' good!
They also made flip flops. Well, they didn't make the flip flops, they just made them better. We went to Old Navy and got the "Two flip flops for $5" deal. Then my mom cut lots of fabric in 1 inch X 5 inch strips and they double knotted it on. I think they're really cute. Maddie had a really fun and memorable birthday.

Maddie made her own invitations.

cup stacking

Seth's friend brought over his cups also so they made a huge pyramid and of course knocked it down.

In school the kids did "cup stacking" for P.E. They loved it and kept talking about how fun it was. I looked at Target and couldn't find any so we ended up ordering some off the internet. The shipping was the most expensive part which drives me crazy, I know I could've found them somewhere if I'd looked harder but I'm not a shopper. The kids have had a great time with them and it's good for their coordination also.

Piano recital

The kids all start piano when they turn 8 and they are SO excited to start. After about a year, (or a few months,) that excitement lessens. Tanner quit right when he started playing the drums in 7th grade but I thought Maddie might stick with it. She hasn't complained too much. She's decided to play the Clarinet next year so I said she had the option to quit piano and she said, "okay!" a little too quickly. It kind of makes me sad, they are getting so good after 4 years of practicing. I guess they're sticking with it longer than I did.

Maddie and Max with their paino teacher after the recital.

Posing with the piano. They did a great job!

Whoo Hoo!!

That picture isn't very big at all. I've done 100 posts and still can't figure things out. Seth just walked in and looked at my computer and then asked if he could have a snack. Wonder where he got that idea? I wanted to do something very special for my "100th post" but it just put too much pressure on me and I have other things I want to post so I'm just going to type it out so I can get on to my next posts. I've really enjoyed blogging, it helps me realize what I'm thinking...if that makes sense. It's also nice to document my family and life events, it all goes by so fast.

Speaking of cupcakes, I just ate the last of the Costco white cake with raspberry (that's how you spell raspberry?? weird. I thought it was rasberry) filling. We had an Activity Days with the girls and their moms so I brought the cake. It was really good in its day but today it wasn't all that great because it's been in the fridge. I still ate it. Tomorrow I'm going to exercise really hard. My Curves closed down last week so I've been thinking of how I'm going to start exercising without it. Luckily it's getting warm outside so I can take lots of walks. I think I'm going to do Dance, Dance, Revolution or Wii Fit tomorrow. My neighbor said she has a DVD called "Insanity" I could borrow. That doesn't sound like a good idea to me...

Well, here's to 100 more blogs!!!

What's Product and why is it singular?

I've never really known how to do my hair. Some people are "hair smart" I think and I am not one of those people. Now that I'm in my 30's I'm learning the importance of "product." I don't like to put anything in my hair and I guess that's part of the problem. The other day my old college roommate and I got together and went to the hair school for a scalp massage for $6. It was great. After, I asked the girl doing my hair if she would teach me how to do it curly. I have had natural curl since puberty but always have burned it our with my straightener. She took the time to show me how to use product, I need mousse and gel mixed together and hairspray at the very end. She scrunched it in her hand as she blew it dry. I loved how it looked for once! So now, when I'm in the mood I can do my hair curly. I've actually done it a few times and it turned out. Finally, I can do my own hair.:)

More snow

There were a few days this week that I could feel spring in the air. It was warm and sunny and brighter when we got up in the morning and I started remembering what Spring felt like a long time ago. I actually said out loud, "I think Spring is here." Then thought, I shouldn't say that out loud. This is what we woke up to this morning. It is really beautiful I have to admit. The kids don't have school today so we can just stay home and play in the snow.

Mimzy hopping through the plows

Max and Seth have their work cut out for them.