Pirates from Grammar Island

Kevin's class performed a play about grammar today. It was called Pirates from Grammar Island and he played an antonym. This is my first attempt at putting video on here so I hope it works. I missed his one line speaking part but here is a clip of a song he sang.

Cookie Story

Kevin has been into cooking lately. He wanted to make some cookies Sunday afternoon so I gave him the recipe and stood by while he made them. I've been trying to teach him abbreviations on recipes so this recipe only had c's, t's, or T's instead of the measurements being spelled out. He was doing pretty well until he carried the full flour canister back to the other side of the kitchen and dropped it. It shattered and, because it was full, flour was everywhere in the kitchen as well as small pieces of sharp canister. What a mess! I cleaned that up and let him keep making the cookies. But that also meant I wasn't watching what he was doing. When he was done I tasted the cookie dough and almost gagged. It was way, way salty. He had put 1/4 cup salt in instead of 1/4 teaspoon. And he had tasted it before me and said it was good. I guess the kid needs some help with his palate. I made him taste it again and he realized what I was talking about. So we started over and I watched him more carefully this time. The whole process of mixing up a batch of cookies took almost an hour when I could have done it in 5-10 minutes. It was a patience tester but kind of a funny story, too. I know my mom probably went through similar situations when she was teaching me to cook, even though I don't remember them. I appreciate her patience with me. His cookies did turn out fine in the end and I think he learned to read recipes more carefully. I should have taken pictures but it didn't cross my mind at the time.

A couple of weeks ago when we were in Utah, we went to IKEA to spend our gift certificates from Christmas and Darren's birthday. We really did only plan to spend the gift certificates but ended up buying two dressers as well. Kevin and Ethan have been using 3 drawer rubbermaid drawers for a long time as their dressers and I was really tired of those. IKEA has very reasonably priced dressers and I suggested we just go ahead and get them. So we did. However, once we got them home they had to be put together. So here are Kevin and Ethan putting together their dressers while Darren and Jon watch :-)



















(You can totally tell the above picture is posed by the magazine Jon is "reading")
Here's what really happened: (Darren also helped, even though it doesn't look like it in the picture)


















One of the finished dressers. Thanks to Jon for, once again, helping out with a home project. He had helped put some together for his Mom's house and had great experience. The pictures on the wall are all crooked because the boys keep taking out the tacks that hang them up and they are only hanging with one tack each.




















And below is a random picture from this weekend. Some of Darren's family was here for a family wedding and we did some fun things but this is the only picture I took for some reason. Darren and Carrie have some on their blogs. This picture is Darren and Jacob by the Snake River on the Idaho Falls greenbelt. The sun is in their eyes and that is why Jacob's are closed.

New Orleans!!

Here are some pictures of our fabulous trip to New Orleans, the big easy. Unfortunately, the battery died on our camera the first full day we were there and I didn't bring the charger. So most of the pictures we have are on Darren's camera. He will have to post those to his blog. I did get a lot of use out of the video camera so if I can figure out how to post some of those, I will. These are all pictures from our first day there.


















Part of the French Quarter - taken by Darren


















One of the delicious restaurants we ate at. It was also in the French Quarter. You can kind of see some of the surrounding buildings.



















We didn't have a car there so a lot of our transportation was on the cable cars. We spent some time waiting for the cars to come. This is how Darren made good use of his time on one of those waits.


















At the convention the students in our group went to, they had vendors like Crayola, Roseart, etc giving out freebies. We came home with a lot of art supplies and this is Ethan putting them to good use.

Jackson Square

Jackson Square is a park/square in New Orleans with a big statue of Andrew Jackson on a horse in the middle of the park. It is surrounded by a lot of benches, a fountain and beautiful flowers and trees. Right outside of the square is a beautiful old Catholic church. I don't remember the name of the church --- I'm thinking St Andrews??-- but maybe someone will help me out in the comments. Anyway, it is one of the oldest Catholic churches around. The outside doesn't look that old because they work hard to keep it up. But here are some pictures on the outside and inside. Darren took all of these pictures so I hope I don't get in trouble for posting them. But he usually doesn't post anything from my snapshot camera and these were on the snapshot camera. They deserve to be posted because he did a great job. I am giving him credit, though :-)



















Jackson Square with a beautiful Live Oak tree and some azaelas.

























The Catholic church
























A painting and one of many statues inside the church. These were at the very front behind the altar.




















Some of the candles burning. You could purchase a candle to burn in the gift shop.























Holy water
























One of many stained glass windows.























Me sitting on one of the pews.

Easter 2008

Happy late Easter! I forgot to post Easter pictures until I saw them on everyone else's blogs.




















The boys with their Easter baskets

















Kevin painting eggs.
























Ethan showing off his newly colored egg.
Jacob was thankfully asleep during egg coloring time.