Dyeing Eggs

There is a super funny comedian named Demetri Martin. He has a quote on glitter that goes, "I like to do crafts. I work with glitter quite a bit. Don't worry, I make tough stuff like daggers and skulls. The thing about glitter is, if you get it on you, be prepared to have it on you forever 'cause glitter is the herpes of craft supplies." 
That is so true! We dyed Easter eggs tonight and used glitter, yikes what a mess! It was all over the table, counter, couch, and both kids. I haven't check yet but I'll bet somehow there will be glitter on their beds in the morning. 
Despite the mess dyeing eggs was a lot fun. Here is the results. I think they look great. What do you think?

Notice the onion skin dyed egg in the back? I posted the directions to do that in a previous post. Actually to make that one darker I blew the egg out first so I could boil it for longer. To remove the egg just follow the directions on this website. With the egg out of the shell I boiled it for 45 minutes, I love how it turned out, such a pretty design!
Here are some pictures of us dyeing the eggs. Even though we had nine different colors Cailey just wanted to stick to blue and green. Funny girl.

Here we are decorating the eggs in glitter. 

Cailey is watching me put dots on my egg with a candle.

Ben ran out of ideas so he decided to eat his last egg. :)

Here is the results of dyeing eggs on Easter with my Brother and sister-in-law. The dye we used was dye I had bought on clearance from the previous year. Apparently egg dye expires because this dye rubbed off the eggs! When we started Cailey dyed 5 eggs a solid color then ran off to play with the dog. So we touched up her solid eggs a bit while she was gone. Since the dye rubs off, we rubbed off some of the dye and dyed it second color. it turned out really cool. It was the favorite way to decorate this set of eggs. Which one is your favorite? I think there are a lot of beautiful eggs in this batch.

Playing in the Snow

It snowed this weekend. So we had another chance to get out and play in the snow. Since we are new to Utah playing in the snow is still a novelty. Sorry no pictures of Jason playing in the snow this time, since he isn't walking yet he stayed inside with Ben while I took Cailey out to play in the snow.

Here's a picture of Cailey trying to catch the snow in her mouth. It started coming down while we were at the store

Making her first snow angel.

And you guessed it...she had to try the snow, no worries it was not yellow :)

Having hot chocolate to warm up. Unfortunately the snow melted the next day, Cailey was so bummed that we didn't get to play in the snow again.

Jason hanging out with Ben while Cailey played in the snow.

Cute picture of the kids together.

Birthday Freebies

The long awaited day is finally here. That's right it is my birthday. Happy Jenny's birthday one and all :)  one the best things about birthdays is the birthday freebies! Many places offer birthday freebies so you only want to hit up the awesome places since the coupons for your birthday freebies are only valid for so long. All of these places require you to join their email club and then they email you the coupon(except for firehouse subs). Rather than get tons of emails in your inbox I recommend that you create a new email just for freebies.

1. Firehouse Subs- free medium sub, this is by far my favorite, you don't have to sign up in advance just go to your local firehouse subs and show them your ID and you get a free medium sub. *the catch this only works on the day of your birthday not the day before or after, sorry folks.
2. Red Robin-free burger and fries, this was my favorite, but they have made getting the birthday freebie a lot more work so they moved down on my list. In order to get this freebie you need to get a card from the store then sign up online and enter in the card into your online account.
3. Tucanos-free meal, this makes the list because it is a lot of amazing food! You sign up online and the card is mailed to you. It is valid for the entire month of your birthday.
4. Moe's-free entree plus the free chips and salsa! Awesome! What can I say more?
5. Sonic-medium drink, tator tots, or cream slush, another great freebie, the reason I like this one is my daughter has a birthday the same week so I get my cream slush and she gets her free kids meal, awesome! I particularly like the birthday freebies that are drive-thru related that way I can get my freebie without having to unload the kids from the car.
6. IHOP-free Rooty Tooty fresh 'N Fruity breakfast.  Eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes. They give you one when you sign up too. So be sure to sign up a few weeks before your birthday.
7. Zaxby's-free meal deal for adults, also free kids meal for the kids on their birthday. The sign up for the kids is on the bag, they snail mail the coupons to you.
8. Fuddruckers-free burger and fries. 
9. Steak n' shake-free burger and fries.
10. Waffle House-free waffle. This made the list because they send emails for free food pretty regularly.

There are plenty of other places out there that have birthday freebies. If you are interested in looking into more check out this blog.  Most are for free dessert or bogo entrees.  I just wanted to narrow the search down for you. Most places email the coupon to you the week before your birthday and then the coupon is good until a week after your birthday. So there is only a small window for birthday freebies. But feel free to signup for all of them, just make sure to have a separate email for for freebies. 

You may have noticed cold stone creamery is not on the list. At one time they had by far the best freebie with the free like it size creation.  A few years ago they switched to a bogo birthday freebie, and then this year they did away with birthday freebies entirely. Come on coldstone you're breaking my heart. :(

Prayers for Chalyce

I think everyone has songs that remind them of certain events in their lives. I have a song that will always remind me of Chalyce's passing. Chalyce, my cousin, passed away last Saturday. She had been suffering from cancer. It started out has melanoma and spread throughout the body. When I visited with my grandparents last month they said that she only had 14 weeks to live. My grandparents said that Jayna, her younger sister, wrote the first presidency of our church (the LDS church) and told them Chalyce's story. So in their weekly meeting she was mentioned and one of the seventy (leader in our church) was asked to come visit her and her family. So he traveled up to Idaho to visit with her and give her a blessing of comfort. I think that is really cool that he took the time to come visit with her and help make her last few weeks more comfortable.

She was really young (35) and had two young kids, her daughter is Cailey's age, in fact i think it was her daughter's birthday yesterday. It was hard to believe that it was her time already. I can't imagine how hard of a time her family is having. It is good to know that she is no longer in pain.

The song that will remind me of this time. Is the song, " I will wait," by Mumford and sons. The song reminds me Chalyce's passing for two reasons, one because it was playing on the radio after I heard she only had 14 weeks  left to live. The second reason is that I think the guy singing sounds like her younger brother Derek so I imagine that he is singing to her.

Here is the link to view the video. It is a wonderful song, it makes me tear up a bit now.  Sometimes it is difficult to understand why people die so young or why bad things happen in general, but I do know that this not all and that she is no longer in pain and that she can be with her family again.

Birthday Celebrations

This is how Cailey choose to watch Dora today. She had to have on her backpack from the party.  Super cute!

One of the coolest things about my birthday is that falls in the same week as Cailey's birthday. So we get to do birthday freebies together! Yum I love my free Red Robin birthday burger! Here we are at the restaurant aren't the kiddos so cute?

Eating our yummy birthday dessert!

Loving her ice cream

Jason had some too

One more picture from the day I had to post this because Jason's chubby legs were too cute to resist!

Weight Bearing and Weight Shifting

I am writing this for two reasons; one everyone has been asking how Jason's physical therepy is going and two when I was searching the Internet trying to understand why he wasn't moving around much I didn't find anything that helped. So here's hoping this post turns up in the google search of someone in need.
Jason is sensitive to weight bearing and weight shifting. This a common cause of gross motor delays in healthy babies. Our physical therepist said "often parents report those babies have always hated tummy time and that they get carried frequently throughout the day. Generally they have very pleasant, easy-going personalities." That is Jason to a tee!
I told her tummy time just isn't working. I have been putting a towel under his shoulders for months but as soon as the towel is gone he won't make any attempt to lift himself up. So she said he probably doesn't like feeling of pressure being put on his joints. You have sensors in your joints that give feedback with pressure (standing, kneeling, and pushing through hands), and touch receptors that give feedback to touch. Some kids do not like these sensations and will cry to avoid those positions. But with simple desensitizing exercises you can work through this and get your baby ready for crawling!
We are desensitizing his knees by having him kneel at a couch cushin and I kneel behind him so his legs don't spread out.
We have been desensitizing his hands by working with lots of textures by playing with sand, shaving cream, and pudding and whatever else I can think of.
We are working on weight shifting too. Jason didn't know how to get out of sitting safely so we did an exercise to help with that. I would sit on the floor with him in between my legs. Then hold his arms and steer them down to the ground and then adjust his legs if needed.
We have been working on those exercises for the past week and a half and Jason has mastered getting out of sitting, he rolls onto his belly and his happy to stay there once he is on his belly, and he lifts up onto his hands when he is on his belly, he has even scooted a little bit. I am seeing such a big difference since we have been working on desensitizing him to weight bearing and weight shifting.
I am so excited about the progress he is making and shocked at how quickly it is all happening.
So, Jason is doing great. :)

Cailey's Dora Birthday Party

Yesterday was Cailey's birthday party. We had a Dora themed party and it was a blast! We had the kids go on an adventure. As you saw in a previous post I made packs for each of the kids I put a telescope and flashlight in each of the packs for them to use for the adventure.
We started out the adventure by showing the kids the map. Ben found all the Dora songs so we played map song and then had the kids repeat the directions to the rainbow.

We handed out the kids packs while we played the backpack song.

We started out our adventure with the red stepping stones. The kids were crossing a river with several of the stones missing. The kids had the missing stones in their backpacks so they had to put in the missing stepping stones in order to cross the river.

The kids ended up at the picnic blanket. They snacked on cheese sticks (looks like a map) and juice boxes to reenergize for their adventure.

Then we went to star valley where the kids used their telescopes to looked for stars. Once we found all the stars we counted them up together. I just count out 20 stars from construction paper.

Then the kids went through the red tunnel, but since it was dark the kids used a flashlight from their backpack to get through the tunnel.  The tunnel was a piece of fabric that is sold at JoAnnes it is made as a tube. You just buy it and it is ready to go. It so much fun to play with this tunnel, I highly recommend it!

Here is the youtube link to view a video of the kids crawling through the red tunnel.

We then went through the spooky spiderweb. Which was just some yarn I strung between the crib and the door.

Then the kids arrived at the rainbow! The rainbow was our cake. The kids loved it.

Rainy Day Activities

It is so nice to see the weather warm up. Even with with the weather getting warmer it is always nice to have a couple of fun rainy day activities that will wear your kids out. Here are some of my favorite rainy day activities.

1. Break out the costume box and threw on some sunglasses, capes, and dresses. Then put your favorite dance station on pandora and have a dance party!
2. Hold races around the house mix it up with some crab walks, bear walks, and log rolls.
3. The lava game-pull the cushions off the couch and pretend the floor has turned into lava. We like to have a couple of stranded stuffed animals that need rescuing. Then we jump from cushion to cushion to avoid the lava. It also nice to have a few fabric scraps in case those stuffed animals need medical attention following their rescue :)
4. Marble races-fabric stores usually have a bunch of tubes around the store or you can use the tubes from wrapping paper. Then race marbles down the tubes and aim the marbles for toys in an attempt to knock them over or you could aim for empty containers whatever you can think of! 
5. Indoor bowling close all the doors to the hallway and step into an indoor bowling alley just set up some empty bottles and you are good to go!
6. Stair ball-set up some empty bins at the bottom of the stairs. Then take turns throwing the balls down the stairs and try to get them in the bins.-thanks heather for the great idea, we love that game! 

FHE Fun David and Goliath

Come Monday night a bit panic spreads over me as I try frantically to try and come up with family home evening activities that are both spiritually uplifting and fun for a toddler. I imagine most people feel this way so whenever I come across a fun and uplifting activity I am happy to pass it along.
A little bit ago we did a family home evening on the topic of David and Goliath. We told the story then had Cailey threw paper rocks at Ben (he was pretending to be Goliath). We then ate cheese balls for our snack. It was really simple and easy to do and Cailey loved it. In fact we have played David and Goliath nearly everyday since because she thinks it is so much fun.

Here is Cailey ready to throw rocks

Action shot!

Another fun FHE that we did recently was the Iron rod. Was strung yarn all over the apartment then dimmed the lights and followed the yarn from room to room. Then when we got to the end we had strawberry Popsicles.  This activity was also a lot of fun. Since we dimmed the lights I didn't get any good pictures of that activity. I'll keep you posted on any other fun activities I come across :)

Dora Birthday Invite Instructions

Here is the invitation I made for Cailey's Dora birthday.  Once again I did get the idea from pinterest.  I am adding it because I think that with Ben's help (he is the computer savy one in the family) we improved the one we found online.  We made a template that you can use to make your own.  I highly recommend using the template.  Ben found the font used on the show, Flora Dora.  It turned out really cute.  Yes he really is that awesome :)
Here are the directions

1. Click here to get to the Dora backpack template
2. Click on the "highlight existing fields" button in the upper righthand corner in adobe reader.
3. Type in your own information
4. Print it off on pretty purple paper.  (I just took it to kinkos it only took a few minutes)
5. Cut out the face and glue it to the front of the invite.
1. Red for mouth
2. White for eyes
3. Black for pupils
4. Yellow for Eyebrows
6. Outline the eyes and mouth in black
7. To make the white in the pupils a perfect circle use two holes from your hole punch
8. Fold the top first, I did just under an inch from the top
9. Then bring the bottom up and fold it so that it will not lay flat, giving the invite the look of a backpack.  For me it was around 5 inches from the top of the backpack.
10. Cut two 4 x 0.5 inch strips for the backpack straps.
11. Glue them to the back of the pack 

This is what the back of the invite looks like

Here is the inside of the invite

Cute pictures of the kids

At the end of the week I always have a bunch of cute picture I would like to show everyone, so here are a bunch of cute pictures of my kids.

This is from last Sunday when I was getting Cailey ready for church. She noticed that her cute new dress from her cousin Kenedee has a belt on it. So she put a pedometer on it and asked me to put the shampoo bottle in her belt too. I had to take a picture because I thought it was so funny that she had a utility belt! Look out batman there's a new superhero in town...and she is rocking shampoo and a pedometer. Bad guys beware!

This is a picture of my little man Jason, he is a such a cutie. I love that I got his hand up there. He was actually trying to take his glasses off  but since I took the picture right then he looks like he being a little flirt.

It is starting to feel a lot more like spring here :) We played at the park the other day and introduced Jason to playing with sand at the park. 

Cute Videos for Everyone!

I had gotten some feedback that the videos I had posted weren't working on mobile devices. So to fix the problem I uploaded the videos to youtube and posted the links to the videos below each of the them. Thanks Ben for coming up with a solution.  Now there shouldn't be any problems. Sorry for the mixup everyone.

Dora and Diego Packs

I am so excited I finished these packs! They are for Cailey's 3rd birthday. It is going to be a Dora party. I made a pack for each kid and we are going to use them for our adventure. I got the idea from Pinterest. I was a bit resistant to Pinterest at first because I am not super crafty, but I have found a lot of awesome ideas on there.
Since the website was a bit vague on the directions I will put the pattern I used in case anyone would like to give it a try. I took the measuments from a toddler backpack so if your making it for an older kid you will have to make it bigger.
Here are the directions

1. Cut two rectangle pieces of fabric measuring 10 x13 inches-this will make the body of the pack
2. Cut two pieces for the flap 10 x 4.5 inches ( I made the curve start at 4 cm up and across. To help me make the curve pretty I just traced a mug) 
3. Cut 4 pieces for the straps 2 x 18 inches.
4. Hem the two rectangle pieces half an inch from the top.
5. Sew the rectangles with right sides facing each other
6. Trim the edge be careful not to cut the seam, then turn it inside out.
7. sew the flap pieces together with the right sides facing each other, then turn it inside out
8. Sew the straps with right sides facing each other then turn them inside out.
9. Iron the straps
10. Sew the flap on to the bag, fold under the edge to make a pretty seam.
11. Sew the straps on to the bag s

I made the faces from felt. Each bag didn't take that long alone, but six bags did add up to a bit time. I made them all while Cailey was sleeping so we will get to surprise her with it at her party. I am dying to show them to her!
Her party is next week so I will have to post pictures of all it all turned out.

Dyeing Eggs with Onion Skins

I am so excited for Easter. Easter is one of my favorite holidays. I have always loved dyeing eggs. We had an egg dyeing competition every year growing up and now that I have my own family we carry own the tradition by having an Accinelli egg dyeing contest. My favorite way to dye eggs lately is with onion skins. I learned how from people I met on my church mission to the Baltics. Russians are amazing at dyeing eggs, the eggs I was given were remarkable! I thought would post this early in case anyone wanted to give it a try for Easter.
The only part of the onion you need for dyeing eggs is the flaky outer layer there is no need to buy a bunch of onions to do this. Red onions work best for this.  Anyone working in the produce section would be happy to give you the pieces that fall off, but they may give you a look when you ask for them :) remember this is a Russian way of decorating eggs and Russians know how to use money wisely. That's one of the reasons why I love them so much :)
Take those onion skins and apply them directly onto an uncooked egg. I think it is easier to do this if you get the onion skins wet and the egg wet.

To hold the onion skins on the egg wrap the egg in an piece of cloth and then rubber band the cloth onto the egg. Do not use a cloth you care about the cloth will become yellow from the dyeing process.

Then put the eggs in a pot add enough water to cover the eggs. Add a few tablespoons of vinegar to the water.
Bring the eggs to the boil then simmer them for 12 minutes. When the eggs are done pour off the water  and put the eggs in an ice bath. Don't skip the ice bath. The egg shell retains heat really well so if you don't use an ice bath you will over cook your eggs.

Let them sit in the ice bath for awhile and then remove the onion skins and voila! Your eggs are done.

Russians like to take it a step further by dripping wax in a pretty pattern on the eggs and then dyeing them in another color. Then after that they peel off the the wax, sorry no pictures of that because I don't know how to do that yet.
Since the eggs were boiled that way they will be super easy to peel. To peel the egg crack the egg all over then start peeling where the gap between the egg and the shell is and slowly work the shell off the egg. Ta da! You just peeled an egg in one piece :)

Happy early Easter all!  Иисус истинно воскрес

Who needs teddy bears when you have a purse?

My daughter is a crack up! Every night before she goes to sleep she absolutely must have a purse packed with a few toys laying beside her. She does not sleep with stuffed animals. Occasionally she will have her giraffe with her but that is it. When she wakes up in the middle of the night her request is usually for a another toy to be added to her purse. She is such a character.
I have a bunch of cute pictures of the kids that I have been meaning to add so this post will be a bit random.

We have a playground right by our apartment so we have been able to play on it a few times when the weather warmed up. Here the kids are enjoying the swings. 

It takes forever to get the kids bundled up to play outside. Doesn't she look cute all bundled up?

The other day Cailey climbed into a box and closed it the lid up around herself. My favorite part of this picture is that there are a bunch of toys in the background and instead she is playing with a box :)

I love this picture of Jason, he is such a cutie.

Like I said the pictures are random but they certainly are cute. I just wanted to show you all my cute kids. No worries the next post will be centered around one topic.