Art

I found a book called I Love to Fingerpaint for $2.00 online at Barnes & Noble's after-Christmas sale. It finally arrived a couple of days ago so the kids and I had a painting adventure this morning. Now, I honestly can't remember the last time I fingerpainted - maybe when I was Kaia's age? And if left only to my own resources, I don't think it's something I would enjoy very much. I really like using patterns; for example, as a kid I loved playing with Legos but only if I had a pattern that I could use to build something step by step. That was extremely satisfying to me, whereas Peter has fond memories of building all sorts of things as a kid with his brother, just using his imagination and a tub of Legos. So if you're the type that also likes patterns, you may enjoy this book. It provides illustrations and basic instructions for fingerpainting all sorts of things.

We made flour paint - 1 cup water, 1 cup flour and a spoonful of salt mixed together; then add a few drops of tempera paint and mix. (We put ours in egg cartons and mixed with popsicle sticks.) I figured using this type of paint would be less expensive since it uses so little paint, and I hoped it would be easy to clean up (it was). The only problem is that when it dried, it looked a little faded.

Here's Kaia's work partway through (I helped with the trunk of the tree but she did everything else on her own, just looking at the book):

Asher at first told me he was painting Snow White, but by the end it had become "sharptooth abominable snow monster!"

And, I know you've all been waiting for this; here is my masterpiece:

"Look what we made, Mom!"

Spiders, apparently:

That's what I get for trying to catch up on blog reading when my kids are awake. :)

Homestyle Huoguo

When I asked Peter what he wanted to do yesterday on his day off, he said the only thing he wanted to do was go to the Asian grocery store and get ingredients to do a Chinese huoguo (fire pot), also known in English as hot pot.


I had never actually eaten huoguo before, so I was a little nervous but I told Peter I would go along with it if he really wanted to do it (the ingredient list he found on one website made me nervous - stomach innards and such - but we stuck to the more basic ingredients of sliced pork, rice noodles, and some cabbage and other vegetables). Much to our surprise, our kids LOVED it! They even attempted to use their chopsticks. Kaia has taken to saying recently, "Mom, lets pretend we're Chinese people." All through the grocery store she was calling me "ma ma" - the Chinese for mom. They're really getting into everything Chinese.


Kaia looked at the camera when I wanted to take her picture, so I told her to just eat normally. Instead, she totally hammed it up. :)

Mystery Gift

A friend of mine posted this on her blog, and I made one of the 5, so now it's my turn. It's always fun to give and receive! :)

The first 5 people to respond to this post will receive something made by me to you....my choice...made especially for you.

Of course there are some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It will be done sometime this year.
4. You have no clue what it will be... it may be a story; it may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something; I may bake something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure.
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on their blog (Only if you really want to. I will still make you something). The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did will win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!!

Thank you, February

64 degree weather agrees with us.

The playground was quite mushy and squishy, but my if-there-is-a-puddle-I-must-jump-in-it-especially-if-it's-muddy son didn't mind.

Blooper Reel

This blog post is a collection of pictures that are just goofy and didn't turn out quite right and movies that are a little goofy, too.

Kaia's *happy* duck face:


Is that a smile, Ash?


Why does Kaia's head appear to be twice the size of Asher's?


Here Kaia is trying to reproduce "my love face." Last week she and I were doing some baking when she spontaneously said, "I like you a lot, Mom!" Then she seemed embarrassed to have said that and made a goofy face. When I asked her what kind of look that was, she said, "That was my love face." We didn't quite capture it here.


This video shows how my kids laugh these days. I kept making Asher repeat it because he wasn't doing it the same for the video as when he laughs spontaneously like this.


A couple of things to note about this next video: 1. Asher literally fell asleep during the course of this video. 2. You may recognize Kaia's dress from her singing post last week and from almost every picture in this post - one of the Primary teachers gave it to her and she has literally worn it every day this week, including to church. 3. My awesome husband sang like this to the kids for at least half an hour after church yesterday.

Proud Mom Moments

As we were sitting in sacrament meeting today, Kaia kept leaning over and whispering in my ear, "The tree of knowledge is wonderful, Mom! It is so wonderful!" (I taught sharing time in Primary today on the story of Adam and Eve.) Kaia then decided she wanted to bear her testimony in church today for the first time. As soon as she told me, my heart started pounding and I was already nervous, but Kaia kept saying, "Let's go! I want to go tell them my testimony!" I was hoping she would just say things on her own when we made it to the microphone because I think children's original thoughts and beliefs are so much cuter than anything I tell her to say. However, she wanted me to help her so I whispered a couple of things that she then repeated - the typical, "I know the church is true," etc. Then I asked if she wanted to say anything else. She whispered something to me and I told her to say it, so she proudly declared, "Jesus is alive!" That really was the best line of the whole testimony!

Then over dinner Kaia decided to sing a song to us about Jesus. She told us it was a really long song with 5 verses.

Can you tell we've been studying the creation in Family Home Evening?