Breakfast In Bed

For mother's day, the kids made me breakfast in bed (which due to time restraints for making it to our 8:00 am choir practice before church at 8:30 meant we all ate quickly on the table downstairs. The kids have been getting a lot of breakfast in bed practice.

All three of these pictures were from different breakfasts brought to me in bed. I must say that I live a spoiled life. I often hear them up and making things and yet fall back to sleep until I hear the clanking of plates against the cookie sheet they use for a tray. So sweet.

Cinco De Mayo

Although this was taken a couple months ago, I thought it fit the spirit of the day!!

Loves of March

Tiago lost his two front teeth during a mad race between him and his brother. Joaquin (although unaware) tied with Tiago in teeth events. Joaquin grew two and Tiago lost two in the same week.

Tiago also got a violent throwing up bug which was kind of scary since he has really nothing on him to lose. He and I for that matter were kind of out of commission dealing with the bought of sickness. Mia, like usual, thought that the best thing to do was make a sweet card and breakfast in bed to help heal her brother. My heart melted at the sweet tenderness she showed him.

Joaquin has been ever the explorer. He loves chatting in the mirror with his identical friend (aka his own reflection). It is so funny to watch him and his reflection interact. It kind of reminds me of the fish in Nemo just not as psychotic.

Finally, our friends invited us to Pi day. We celebrated with them last year, but didn't memorize any of pi and brought really gross pie. This year, in attempts to at least make up for my bad pie, I tried cute little pie tartlets. The kids were totally grossed out about the crust that called for vinegar. I guess that the No Fail Pie Crust didn't make the cut.

Conference Weekend

WALKING ON THE BEACH BEFORE SUNDAY SESSION:

For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, four days each year (two in April and two in October) are dedicated to a marathon of spiritual/insightful words and music. General Conference has always been a priority in our family, even when I was a little girl (and even more so with Fernando and his family who drove to their stake building and camped out all day to watch in church clothes).

Now as a mother of 4 kids, I have tried each year to make Conference a meaningful experience for everyone. When I woke up to the reality that 8 hours of tv time, no matter how spiritually uplifting, is just really long for kids. I tried packets and coloring pages to no avail. The best attendance we got was when we did Word Treats. We allowed the kids to pick several gospel terms and then affixed those terms on different treats and foods. We tried to limit the types of treats to healthy fruits and veggies and a few semi sugary wonders but in the end it felt like we were just constantly eating which felt gross after sitting and watching the tv for hours on end.

Then, last year while scouring the internet for ideas, I stumbled onto the best solution ever (at least for my kids) on sugardoodle.net by Janna Barnes. She had little presents for each member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and members of the First Presidency. I also loved her idea of having mini snickers for the kids to eat each time they heard someone laugh and little hugs candies for the times someone cried.

I have done this for two Conferences now with amazing results. For less then $15, we had kids excited for and ready to "listen" to General Conference. Now, I am not so naive to think that it was excitement solely for the messages that would be heard, but I hope that this same concept could be applied here

"6 months from now you will not remember how the cookie tasted, but you will see the result" Our translation, 6 years from now, you won't remember why you were excited for Conference but you will see the result of a habit of watching all sessions with fondness.

We have one session to go and the kids are still excited to listen!! By the time the kids figured out who was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve and match it with the gift, open the gift, and played with it for a few minutes it was time to move on to the next activity. No one got bored and I could listen while they hopefully listened and learned by osmosis.

Our tweaks that I found worked best for us:

The members of the Twelve got various dollar store wonders. Play dough, egg dying kit, water bottle drink mixes, those capsules that dissolve in water and become some animal, etc. The best find for us were 100 piece puzzles. They took about a talk and a half to finish and took everyone of the kids working together to do it.

Then for the General Authorities, we had bingo cards. Each time a kids got bingo, they could pick an easter egg out. Inside each easter egg was a treat and quantity. Some of the treats were raspberry lemonade, yogurt smoothy drinks, mandarin oranges, carrots with dip, graham crackers, mini nilla wafers, chocolate chips, etc

Kid History

Umm. . .I don't really know how to explain how our family has watched all of the kid history videos and quote them and laugh heartily at the retelling of family stories. Thanks Aunt Sulay for Guy on a Buffalo and now this:

Not Milk?

There are two possibly three things you should know in order to appreciate this post. First, my three year old is a typical inventive wonder who believes (as do I) that she can do anything she puts her mind to. Second, I have an abhorrence to wasting food. I feel strongly that those who have been blessed with abundance should share the wealth in whatever way possible and when you can't (in the case of food prepared at a given meal), be respectful of the blessing you've been given. Food should really only be thrown out when bad and even with that said, try to only make what you will consume. SOAPBOX Finally, I love whole milk. Adore it. I would love to drink it, but my genes and my doctor husband suggest else wise. I have slowly watered my milk taste down to 1% and feel pretty good about doing so.

With that understood or at least stated, I happened upon Talia a week ago busy at the kitchen sink. She was filling up measuring cups with water. I then glanced down at her cereal bowl to see what appeared to be a combination of milk, cereal, and water. I bit upset at the wasted food, I reprimanded Talia for playing with perfectly good food. She protested as I dumped the watery cereal and poured her another bowl. Almost as soon as I finished my lecture and poured milk into her bowl again I understood Talia's confused face. The wasted watery cereal was merely cereal drenched in Skim "Milk". I still feel like the cereal was a watery waste, but that's because as aforementioned I adore the pure cream of whole milk.

Zoo Day

Thank heavens people can help pull us out of ruts. I have been so concentrated on getting our home ready to sell that we have been homebound for weeks. Luckily my friend Wendy was good enough to invite us along. The weather this time of year is beautiful but can get warm. By hour number 3 the kids were whining for the beach area. Though they were ok when I agreed to let them feed the birds.

Then off to the beach. Joaquin was loving the rocks.

Or may be not!