Marching Into March

Much of March seemed to be leading up and preparing for my California trip (I'm writing a separate post about that), the trip itself and then not much after the trip. I still seemed to find quite a few pictures though to prove that I still had some things happen. 

We had a freak snow storm one morning (it kind of seems that's what all of our snow has been this winter or at least a big chunk of it). Visual on the freeway was terrible, everyone was only going 20-25 (compared to my normal 80 was crazy slow) and you couldn't see the lanes and barely the car in front of you. 

We did a really fun art project at work. You use a salad spinner, paint, and coffee filters. Really simple, just place the coffee filter in the salad spinner, put some drops of paint and then spin...tada! The kids loved it, especially seeing how placing the dots in different patterns/quantities/etc. created different results. 

Someone decided I needed to be a princess one day and help rescue others from the monsters that were coming to take over the world. 

All of the end results hanging up. 

Mandy, Charissa, Brea, and I hosted a baby shower for Leah in March (and the cute twins coming soon!). I was asked to make the desserts and of course I had to experiment and try new things :) Mom had bought me a mini whoopie pie pan for Christmas. I had originally was going to try to use them for push pops but they didn't fit the ones that I had so I made sandwiches instead. It was fun because I got to practice my pipping skills too, I think they turned out pretty cute.  

The desserts all together. 

I had leftover strawberries from the baby shower so Mom and I decided to take them up to Libbey and Erick's to share with them. 

 Alexia and Sophie were so excited to help Grandma slice the strawberries and get everything together. 

Getting our nails done before the cruise!

The Mathews' came over to help with our traditional hanging of eggs in the trees for Easter. Unfortunately we got them up late this year so the trees had already begun to bloom, it makes it a little harder to put them on the tree and we had to do it on the smaller one in the corner of the yard but they still looked good. 

For the General Woman's Broadcast Libbey, Mom, Sonia, Sarah, and Katrina came with me to my Singles Ward to watch it, afterwards they had sundaes afterwards plus candy sticks on the table. Sarah stacked all of the ones that were on our table, others started coming and donating theirs when they saw how tall she had made hers. 

Mom bought a new patio set with comfy rocking chairs that also swivel. It's been fun to go out and enjoy the warmth while reading or doing other stuff. 

School Project

Gratefully I have a Mom and Best Friend who are willing to support my craziness and the ideas that come with it or else there would have been no way that I would have got this project done in time for class (at least not form when I started it). 

A month or so ago we took a grammar quiz and there were several areas in which our class did not so well. My teacher divided up those areas and assigned each of us two that we had to prepare a little presentation on each area. We were supposed to have some sort of visual and I didn't want to just do a simple handout. One of my areas was apostrophes, I decided that I was going to have a couple of different sentences, some that needed apostrophes and some that did not.

I put each word on a piece of candy from the sentence and then got mike 'n' ikes to use for apostrophes.  

We made a set of four sentences for each person in my class (there was a sentence on each side of the candy). 

 I wrote on each piece of paper, Brea highlighted the words so we would know what sentence it belonged to and my Mom taped the papers on the candy. 

 Addie so much wanted to be part of the work but sadly this wasn't really a job that she could be involved with. 

My presentation was definitely different then everyone else's. Every time they would put together the sentence I would ask them if there needed to be an apostrophe and if there did where did it belong. After the first sentence when someone answered correctly he asked "because I got it right can I eat my apostrophe?" It made me laugh and I was glad that they liked it. Thanks to Brea and Mom (and Addie) for supporting my crazy ideas. 

Arrrggg Me Matey's

August 2nd is my nephew Jacob's birthday...he turned 5 (how did that happen??!!) I can't believe that is he getting so big! This year Jacob got to have a friend party and Libbey went all out with awesomeness for him! It was a pirate party and so much fun :)

When they first got there they got to make pirate hats and eye-patches (with special help from Uncle Nathan and Grandma).

Even little Lexie got to have her own pirate hat.

Lib made a cute ship cake, the cupcakes had things like sharks, treasure chests, and other cool stuff on them.

There was an awesome story they got to hear (written a couple of months ago by the birthday boy himself).

JACOB!!!

They had to walk across the plank to the pirate ship.

The ship had a hole and was quickly filling up with water, the pirates had to race to save their ships and other pirates.

There was even a treasure map!

Of course there had to be some front jumping (love the smile on Claire's face)

You couldn't have a post and not have a cute picture of Miss Lexie :)

Searching for the treasure (Libbey even had a treasure chest full of the candy bags buried in the sandbox---sorry the pictures are on my Mom's camera).

It was such a fun party and the kids had a blast...a sign of a good party :)

Cookie-Gram

I don't know about others but in high school the week before Valentines day you could send out candy-grams, for $.25 each someone would deliver a lollipop to the person of your choice in their class at the end of the day. As a Freshman we would always look forward to that time in class, to see who "loved (or liked as in our case as it was generally our friends that sent them)" us enough to send us a candy-gram and who would have the most.

If you haven't figured out yet I have some pretty awesome roommates (and apparently pretty awesome roommate's parents)! Saturday afternoon when I came home I found this on the counter in the kitchen. The note says, "Hey guys, My Mom made us each a cookie with our names on it. Feel free to look through and find yours and eat it! -Janet"

How cool is that? Not only was that super sweet (hehe) of her Mom, but it was delicious! So soft and yummy!

PES Films

One of my tutor students showed me this tonight, it's pretty cool!

of course after watching that I had to see what else they did, I liked these two...I think that the fireworks one is my favorite though!

Easter Surprises

Last week I was sitting on my bed reading something when Andrea walked into my room and said "Happy Easter" handing me this basket. She had surprised me and filled it with some of my favorite things...sprite, a cheese bagel from 7-Eleven, jelly beans, marshmallows...

...and these cute tiara/crown earrings, because my Mom always calls me Princess...

...and pink polka dot socks, because I LOVE pink, polka dots, and socks!

Andrea was so sweet to surprise me with this!

Easter Egg Hunt

Last week in honor of Easter we did an Easter egg hunt for the kids during one of our afternoon classes. While the kids watched Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo, Andrea and Yuling hid the eggs outside.

When it was time Yuling came and explained the rules, if they brought in one egg they got one sucker, if they brought in two eggs at one time they got one suckers (the objective was to make it last as long as possible so we wanted them to bring them in one at a time).

The 3 year olds got to go first, for 30 seconds and then the 4 year olds joined them for 30 seconds and finally the 5 year olds were released (they were anxious to go, with their shoes already on by the time it was their turn).

The kids had a blast rushing to try and find eggs and then running like there was no tomorrow to get their suckers. When class was over there was still 3 that had not been found, so Yuling offered a bigger prize for the 3 lucky people that found them. Later when I came back downstairs, Wendy (who had found one of the 3) was so excited to show me her big candy cane that she had won!