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.