Happy 4th Birthday Logan

Yesterday was Logan's 4th birthday, but we put together a party with friends and my side of the family over at my Mom's house for tonight.  Lately we have been doing parties at the church, but there was a class in one of the rooms, so I chose to separate his birthday into two little parties.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with such a small space at my Mom's, so I used Pinterest to figure out some ideas.  

  I used some newsprint paper posted against the back side of the counters to the kitchen and encouraged the kid guest to write a message or draw a picture for Logan - kind of like a giant birthday card.  It was very well covered by all the kids and will probably be put on display in his room for a little while.

  Another station I picked was with water beads.  It was a big hit and I am glad we chose to keep it in the bathroom, however, there was a temporary lack of supervision and a huge mess had to be cleaned up.  No big deal, just swept up most of it, and closed that station for the night.

  

The highlight of the party, to me anyways, was the Robot Juice Boxes. It was set up as another station and the kids, with my help on the hot glue gun, were able to make their robot.

 In the end, they had more selection of what they 

wanted than put it together. 

I did have a cool sign about what steps

 and order to do things in on the table,

and hoped the parents would do the 

project with their kids,

but the obsessive, won't let anyone try for themselves

side came out and I ended up taking over the 

hot glue gunning for everyone.

Will will I ever learn...

All you need:

snack/mini raisin boxes

Juice Boxes

Apple Sauce Snacks

Smarties

Plastic Spoons

Hot Glue

Sharpie Marker

I put them together in this order:

Glue the legs together

Hot glue the legs to the body 

(best if glued around the base of the juice)

Then hot glue the arms to the sides of the body.

I used the wrapper ends to secure and it gave the 

robots floppy arms.

Like it says, using a Sharpie, draw a face for your robot.

I found that many of the kids went to draw the face on the 

bottom of the apple sauce container, rather than

on the side.  With a little re-direction, the task was back on track.

The best hold seemed to be if you hot glued the top rectangle

of the juice box and placed the apple sauce on top of that.

Be careful to "center" the head, otherwise they are top heavy

and won't stand on their own.

Next you pick an antenna.

Each kid chose which way they would 

have their antenna.  We had a creative bunch.

Gluing the spoon on was easy if you used the top/side

rim of the apple sauce container in the back.

Here were the results:

by  Wes, Tami (sample box),  Faith (hidden), Wyatt, and Lindsay

by Tami, Trevor, and Logan

I made the one with "bunny ears."  I was trying to tell some ladies that it would

be cute for Easter to give to their Sunday School kids. 

Logan was blessed with a lot of presents, so my hope tomorrow is to 

go thru his room and clear out old toys he doesn't play with anymore.

Thanks to everyone who came!

Chore Chart

The other weekend, Josh told Madison that if she wanted to go stay at people's houses all the time, she needed to start helping out around the house more.  It made me begin to wonder if it was time to start her on some chores and what kind of chore chart we would use - a standard one you buy in the store? A homemade one?

  After researching for a little bit, I decided to create my own, with a little help from Pinterest and Etsy.  First off, I had to think of different chores she could do.  I debated on making each chore worth some money (e.g. $0.50 for unloading the dishwasher), but then I went with another type of incentive program.  Madi gets to pick her reward that she is working for at the beginning of the week. She has options of: $10 cash allowance, a date night with a parent of choice, a family movie night, or a special sleepover.  She picks the "goal" at the beginning of the week and then has to earn 100 points sometime between Monday - Saturday of that week.

So, Madi and I sat down and planned out all the chores, gave them each individual points, and in the beginning she was frustrated to know she had to earn 100 points, but as the week progressed, she saw that is was very simple.  Then I had to make the chore chart and this is what I came up with...

It's a piece of sheet metal - I painted it with chalkboard paint.  Because the idea of sheet metal being able to slice fingers open on accident, I wanted to make a frame with paper to cover the edges. So, Madi and I ventured out to the craft stores and decided on what the chore options were written (stars) and the "theme" of the board.  She found the owl stickers first, and the trees just kind of came with the owl idea.

After framing the board, we painted the stars kind of based on location - the yellow are in the kitchen, blue in the living room, orange in the bathroom, and purple is personal whatever.

Madi added the owls around and we put on the magnets on the back of the stars, but something was missing - how were we going to keep track of when she did what, and then we decided to add the big trees to represent the days.

 Here are some of the various chores she can do through out the week to earn points

And this is how she would display them as they are getting done.

She is very excited about the chore chart and earning her choice rewards.
Wish us luck!

It's a Bird, It's a Plane...

No, it's just my Dad! He went skydiving (finally)

after receiving the gift for Christmas 2007/2008 birthday.

It took about 10 minutes to go up, and only 4 to come down.

He did fall for 40 seconds at 120 miles per hour!

And here is the landing...

 He's ready to go up again - and I want to join him!

 PLANKING!

I wish I was this strong to do this!

Oregon

I was invited to come be a counselor at Youth Yearly Meeting (YYM) again this year! 

 I was looking forward to attending once again, 

and I learned that OMSI had a special display for

 The Chronicles of Narnia.  

I scheduled myself some extra time to stop in and check it out.  

Natalie needed a ride over and I agreed for her to join me,

 and then Lyss joined us also.  

We were all excited to stop in at OMSI and play for awhile!

Lyss is trying to hold up this arch - one block was missing,
otherwise it would have stayed on it's own.
You're so strong Lyss!

YYM is always full of fun and getting to know people.
We had a bit of  time for recreation and we had to hunt for letters
that eventually spelled out Ephesians 4:13

Here's the letter P and pee.

Planking the E

Going to the beach is a reward for all the hard work we have done from the week: workshops, meetings, service projects, and discerning.  We went to Pacific City again, and it was better weather than the year before!  The sun was out and there was only a slight breeze all around!

This is THE dune that everyone likes to climb - but only once.  :)

These two were tormenting the birds...

I had a wonderful day at the beach with the youth and getting to know Judith - she was my co-counselor for our floor - and she is from Ireland!  She put up with all our silly questions on the last night and we all had a lot of good laughs.

Before we were about to head out of town, Ken Redford asked if Lyss could ride home with us and if we would stay a little bit longer in the Berg so she could hang with Jered for a bit.  We agreed, but had to find something to do in the meantime - so we went to Critter Cabana.  Kitties, puppies, and what?

Whoa! That's a frog - or a toad.

This guy gets to go around as he pleases - he's huge!

We later met back up with Lyss and continued on our way home... 

YYM does something to everyone - we are exhausted in some way or another - Nat and Lyss slept almost half of the trip! Shreela fell asleep for a little bit, but I had my audio book to keep me company, so I was okay.  Shreela and I thought it would be cool to do a picture with those huge wind power thingys - these are our unsuccessful tries... apparently she took them all upside-down.

  We averaged 28 miles to the gallon, so with a quarter of a tank, we decided to push on thru to Baker City for getting our gasoline... the fuel light came on and we barely made it into Baker.  There were funny noises and we turned of the A/C, just to make sure we made it... and we did!  Whoo hoo!  We were really unsure that we would about 3 miles out and laughed at the prospect of running out... oh, good times.

Day with Nieces

I was called in by my sister-in-law to help watch my nieces while some tests were run for my brother-in-law's upcoming kidney transplant. 

I decided to take the kids on a DU: Destination Unknown.  Originally I thought of taking them to Sandy Point beach, near Lucky Peak, but then chose to head up to Robie Creek.  There is a playground and sandy beach front there, and it's not well known (as far as I know).   Plus, they wouldn't have a clue where we were going to go, even if I told them where we were going.

It was killing them, more so Madison Steed.  They kept guessing, I kept laughing, it was perfect!

Here is what we did:

Abbie buried Squeaky in the sand

This is the deepest I think he went

Where there is sand, there is some kind of sand sculpting creations. 

Where there are Steeds and water, there is some kind of fish being caught.

Needed: a cool place for the caught fish to swim

Final product: never used - destroyed and abandoned once it was finished

Mermaid Time!

In progress

Final design

Pulling Madi out, rather than her standing up

I think that Abbie was trying to get in touch with her inner ostrich??

 Sometimes when you are the only adult, it can be to your disadvantage.  Especially when you wake up earlier than you want, stay up later than you intended to, and sit in the sun, you just want to fall asleep in a moving vehicle on the way home.  But instead all the kids fall asleep and you don't get to... jealous!

 All in all, it was a great afternoon!

Growth

We have a lovely tree next door that had a mass dropping

of "helicopter" seeds in our yard and in our gutters.

Josh cleaned out the gutters in the front, 

but some how missed the ones in the back...

Combine any dirt that may have been resting in the gutters, 

plus the helicopter seeds, and you have a perfect

little growth in the gutters!  

Baby trees  - hundreds of them!

They not only have infested our gutter, but also our grass,

flower beds, well, anywhere they were allowed to grow!

Some of the growth is bad - like these baby trees,
But there are a lot of pretty flowers for us to admire!

There is this BEAUTIFUL ivy plant that bloomed this season just 

outside of Madison's room!

And a pretty rose bush out front!

Pretty flowers make for fun editing. 

Enjoy!