Pioneer Days!

Every year my home town, Manassa, CO, celebrates July 24th. Why is this a special day? July 24, 1847 is the day the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. It's a state holiday in Utah, and it's a big deal in a really tiny town in Colorado because half the town was settled by Mormons in the late 1800s.

So every year the town puts on a celebration. My kids were begging to go visit this year again after we'd missed two years in a row while my parents were in Mexico being missionaries.

Two days in a row the town has a parade. Here are a few pictures from the parade.

My grandpa was the Grand Marshall of the parade. That means he's the oldest man in town. He turned 94 in April. Adam and Mary got to go for a ride with them on Friday along with their cousins DJ and Julia. Alex got to ride on Saturday, but we didn't get a picture of him.

They borrowed the wagon from a very nice Amish family. Their children were so adorable. Doug and I got to meet them when we picked my Dad up from dropping off the wagon on Saturday.

The dragon flapped his wings. It was pretty impressive. Some of these float builders are EXTREMELY talented.

A person's a person no matter how small! Adorable. This was one of my favorite floats.

Me and my little sis, Dani, plus Adam. Alex told me the other day that Dani was his favorite person in the family. As an after thought he told me that I'm the same as Dani... She is one awesome Aunt though. All the nieces and nephews would agree.

That's my buddy Alex! I think he managed to rake in more candy than anyone this year, which is pretty impressive considering that his cousin Julia has traditionally been a candy MAGNET. She's so darn cute people just can't help but throw her candy. Of course she was in the grand marshall's wagon some of the time...

And last but not least, here's M mountain. They light it up on the Saturday night of the celebration and shoot fireworks off from there. Fortunately, the fire ban in the state was lifted just in time.

Cupcake Wars

This summer we've discovered a new love, cupcakes. 

Mary was somewhat interested in cupcakes when we found (actually given) a cute little mini cupcake kid set at a garage sale last summer. Her first attempt was a big fat failure (WAAAAAY too much baking soda), but the second time with a little parental supervision things turned out well.

Then her excitement waned.

Until...

We discovered Cupcake Wars on Food Network. We're a little slow to discover this. We didn't discover it until season 8 was well under way.

Tonight family time involved decorating cupcakes. A great time was had by all. I think we're actually getting better.

You can see for yourselves.

This turned out really fuzzy, but hopefully some of the cuteness comes through.

This one is my favorite. Love that guy!

Fortunately none of us had to take the walk of shame as we got eliminated from the "war," but feel free to vote for your favorite.

I Don't Have a Title

Well, it's true I don't.

Right now I am...

typing an entry on my blog

while I watch the snow fall.

While I wait for Mary to draw a picture for her history homework so I can help with her next assignment.

Yep, I'm the homework buddy for today. The last several months she hasn't needed too much help with her homework, not since we discovered she's got ADD. She's more in the inattentive spectrum, not the hyperactive spectrum. That's Alex. He's the hyperactive one. Who knows about Adam. Let's hope not.

Once we learned some tricks about how to help Mary deal with her ADD (yep medication, but also other homework strategies and parenting strategies) she has done SOOOOO much better with homework. She gets more done at school and has an easier time with homework, although her spelling is still a work in progress.

Today Mary's got a major case of the tireds. Yep, tireds is a word, at least for today. Her math took an hour.

So here I sit helping her with homework. Well except now I'm not. Because turns out that last assignment she needed help with really was just her incomplete reading log from last week that she was supposed to turn in today. What was incomplete about it you may ask? I forgot to sign it!! (Maybe I have ADD too, although it's much more likely that I'm just a mom who's busy...)

So what else have I been up to for the last several months. Well, that's a post for another day. I'm going to enjoy watching the snow fall for a bit longer and then eat some strawberry pie and read Harry Potter to the kids. (We're on book 6, and the pie is pretty darn tasty.)

Family History for Kids

This week we filled out pedigree charts with the kids. I tried to find some that had large print for the kids to be able to write on instead of trying to write really tiny to fit it on. I was thwarted in my attempts, and Google failed me.

So I had to come up with my own way.

I printed their individual pedigree charts out from the computer and cut them apart to glue on note cards. Then we helped them glue them to their own posterboard.

It was fun to share stories with them about their ancestors while we put them together. I even sang them the crossing the street song my Grandma McDowell used to sing...

Look this way and that way
Before you cross the street.
If you run out before you look
You'll be swept off your feet.

It was a lot of fun, and they paid attention quite well, which doesn't always happen during family home evening...

Spontaneity...

It's not something we see to often around here. I work a lot and Doug's in school so we don't have a lot of free time. I can't just drop everything and take a camping trip or go to the zoo. We have to plan those things out.

However, this week I found myself with a little more free time so we did a few spur of the moment things. It wasn't anything major, but the kids loved it.

We took a trip to a new park and had a picnic dinner Monday night. I decided about 5:00 or so that afternoon when I realized I was all caught up on my work and wouldn't get more until the next day. 

A spontaneous trip to the park doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a fabulous dinner, but the kids enjoyed the turkey sandwiches (peanut butter for Adam of course), Pringles, and dried fruit strips. We also threw in some homemade cookies I had in the freezer.

Today I had a few minutes too and decided I could make a special dessert to commemorate the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. I'm certainly not the kind of mom that has a jillion ideas already saved on pinterest, but a quick google search found some sugar cookies that looked sort of like this. I didn't have time for sugar cookies so we went with cupcakes, cool whip, and M&Ms. Alex could hardly wait to eat them.

They actually turned out quite tasty...

Alex's Birthday

A mere 4 1/2 months late I'm going to blog about Alex's birthday.

Alex had been planning for weeks to have a Star Wars cake. Unfortunately, we couldn't find much stuff at Party City. I suggested Spiderman, but he just couldn't give up on the Darth Vader candle. So, we ended up with Spiderman versus Darth Vader. The men in the store who overheard us planning this cake all thought it was so cool...

This is about the extent of the decorations he got, but he loved them.

We made Darth Vader masks. They looked cool in the package, but they were kind of a pain and the elastic string that should hold it onto your head was way too big. It didn't fit any of the kids at the party. To be honest, it was too big for me, and I have a large head... Oh well, it filled up party time, right?

We also let them play Pin the Bomb on the Starship game. (That's not exactly the title, but I don't remember what it was called. It was in March remember.)

Present opening time is always fun. He got some great stuff. 

Apparently we didn't get a picture of the coolest present he got. It was a Star Wars t-shirt with some Legos Storm Troopers relaxing and said "Chillin' Like a Villain." To say Alex LOVES it would be an understatement. I think he wore it every day after school and to bed for a week before I made him let me wash it. He's wearing it right now too.

3-D glasses for the pin the bomb game. Not that you could wear them during the game because you had to be blindfolded, but it is 3-D if you look at it.

Alex had a great birthday. I think he's on a countdown for his 8th birthday, however. He can't wait to get baptized and go to cub scouts. Here's hoping I'll blog about that birthday on time...