Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Category: Family Fun (Page 7 of 25)

Chicken update

April 17, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Remember those chicks that we got back before Valentine’s day?

They looked like this when we got them.

Soon they were to that awkward teenage phase and looked all gawky, but in a cute kind of way.

When they were about a month old, we started to take them outside for outings. We had to move them from the basement to the garage, because they were oh-so-smelly. Even then we had to change the paper in their box every single day, or we couldn’t stand the smell. They seemed to be more and more chicken like every day.

Although this little girl looks very hawk like, doesn’t she?

Once they were about 6 weeks old, I started taking them outside and letting them stay in the outside coop during the day.
But then I had to put the bigger chickens in a different pen to keep them from picking on the mini chickens. So that involved me carrying all the little chickens outside to the coop, moving the big girls to the run, etc. Then if it got too cold, I had to move everyone back. Spoiled much? Yes. They are.

When we went on vacation, I spent a good deal of time worrying about the best way to house all of my chickens. If I move the big chickens out of their pink coop, then they could use the old crappy red coop with the attached run. The pink coop is a little bit more protected and should be warmer, so I could put the little chicks in there. But what if it snowed? Would the little chicks be warm enough? I realized this is the first time I would be leaving my chickens, since we got chickens! Our last family vacation was last year before we started our great chicken project. I really don’t think I’m supposed to spend this much time and energy worrying about my little feathered friends.

We did get everyone settled, although I didn’t know if my girls would lay in this other coop. They really like to lay their eggs in their OWN box in their OWN coop.

Even if I moved their lay box into the other run, they wouldn’t go in there, and if they did lay an egg, I would just find it on the ground. Ugh.

Well, we DID leave them, and they made it through. Well, most of them did. We came home to find one of the little Americaunas dead in the coop. Not sure what happened because we had a girl coming to feed and water them, and they were apparently all ok the afternoon before our return. We are sad to have lost one, but I am trying to teach the kids (and myself) that these things happen with chickens, and we should be happy that four of the mini chickens and all the big girls made it.

Now my job is to acclimate the two sets of chickens. They have two side by side runs that I can put them in during the day, but I still worry about putting them all together.

Look how big they are getting! Almost like real chickens! And they are starting to sound more chickenlike and less like cheeping chicks, too.

The kids love them, and so do I. Even my husband, who a year ago was anti-chicken, has said how much he likes having them.

Hopefully within the next few weeks we can get things settled, and no more separatism between chickens. And we’ll settle into a summer routine and get back into our egg laying.

Yes, we love our chickens.

(Ok, we’re not to this stage, but we do love them)
And I’m not dressing them up in chicken clothes. Not yet, at least.

Linking to Camera Critters and Fresh From the Farm Friday>

The Nauvoo Temple

April 16, 2012 / / 1 Comment

We had the opportunity to attend the temple while in Nauvoo. The temple, so long a symbol of pioneer sacrifice and heartache, is now rebuilt and beautiful. I don’t know how the placement of the rooms compares with the original temple, but it is breathtaking.

Because three of my kids were over twelve, they were able to go inside. The adults went upstairs to do a session. We rented our temple clothing there. It was a busy day, with a stake from Peoria there that day. But they did manage to get everyone in to the scheduled session (you have to call ahead and make an appointment. No walk ins here.) There was a little bit of a mix-up with my temple packet I had to ask for help..twice! But that’s enough about that. It really is best to bring your own temple clothes, I guess.

I’m glad that we were able to work temple service into our vacation. It was a really special experience to be there with my parents and my kids, all going to the temple together. The kids finished first, so they walked the four blocks back to our motel.

Special memories that I hope they will treasure.

St. Louis Arch

April 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I must admit that I haven’t really given the St. Louis Arch much thought. I have been to St. Louis before, but it was always a passing through. We would fly in, then drive to our house in Illinois. We had also gone to the LDS Temple in St. Louis, but since we had a babysitter with the little ones at home, we didn’t stay around to sight see. Until this week, when we stayed two nights in St. Louis.

arch

We followed the GPS downtown, although it sent us through the streets on a confusing goose chase. Come on, GPS.
But, since it happened to be the opening day of baseball season for the St. Louis Cardinals (did you realize they won the world series last year? They Did!), we got to see some of the celebratory parade and carnival, as well as the stadium.

We finally made it to the parking lot and walked over to the arch. It was just beginning to rain.

We should have taken more pictures there. Darn.

After purchasing our tickets, we had some time to explore the Museum of Westward expansion. It’s a pretty fun museum, but there are creepy automaton people talking and telling their stories.

The kids also did some fact finding to earn their junior ranger badges.

We watched a film about the making of the arch, and it was FASCINATING! Did you know….

* The Gateway Arch is the tallest national monument in the United States at 630 feet.
* Construction began February 12, 1963, and the last section of the Arch was put into place on October 28, 1965.
* The Arch weighs 17,246 tons. Nine hundred tons of stainless steel was used to build the Arch, more than any other project in history.
* The Arch was built at a cost of $13 million.
*And did you know that not one worker lost his life in the making of this grand monument?

It’s insane! Who even thinks of building a HUGE arch 630 feet high, and then who decides that they can build it? It blows my mind. The project manager of MacDonald Construction Co., Stan Wolf, said that a 62-story building was easier to build than the arch: “In a building, everything is straight up, one thing on top of another. In this arch, everything is curved.”

And even more amazing is that people can GO UP to the TOP!!

You travel up to the top in these little pods. Each pod can seat 5 people.

The pods are constantly readjusting, because the ride is not straight up. It’s kind of like a ferris wheel.

If you’d like to see a video of the trip up (not MY trip up, but some random guy on youtube, you can see that here.)

At the top you can actually walk around in the enclosure and take pictures or look out the little windows. If you lean WAY over, you can see the base of the arch. I did not lean way over. I could barely lean into the window. Yes, I’m squeemish.

For me, it was not a pleasant or wonderful experience, but it was truly and AMAZING experience. I don’t like being up that high, nor do I like leaning way out to see the magnificent view, but, oh what a view.

family pic in the arch

Here’s our whole group up there in the very top.

When we came out of the monument building, it was POURING rain. No more pictures, sadly, as we dashed to the parking garage.

There were so many more things to do in St. Louis, and at least one other really cool museums we had kind of planned on seeing, but the kids were MUSEUMED OUT. It was almost 3 pm, they were hungry and tired, and didn’t want to walk around and see any more STUFF. We decided to find a Steak n Shake. Yum. In fact, many would say it was the best meal of the trip. It turns out it was happy hour, so we got a few shakes (well, more than a few) to go with our yummy hamburgers. Heaven. Wish we had one of these in Utah.

So, instead of exploring all that St. Louis had to offer or seeing one more fabulous museum, we went back to the hotel and the kids swam in the pool. They were quite happy with that decision.

Differences

April 12, 2012 / / 1 Comment

While in Nauvoo, we wanted to go see some of the sites that aren’t owned and operated by the LDS church, rather by the Community of Christ Church (formerly known as the Reorganized LDS church). The tour began with a film about Joseph Smith and his time spent in Nauvoo. Quite different from the Mormon telling, they mention that at the age of 14 Joseph Smith went into a grove of trees and had a ‘religious experience’.

It was interesting to visit the homes of Joseph and Emma Smith, and hear more sides of their story.

What I missed, though, was the testimony bearing. At most of the other sites in Nauvoo (the ones run by the LDS missionaries), they sprinkle their testimony in with the history. At these sites, the guide ended with a hint for monetary donations. But even without any bearing of testimonies on the tour, our testimonies inside are still bright. We know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, not just a religious and community leader. They wouldn’t allow us to take any pictures inside the houses, but there were many period pieces, some owned by Joseph and Emma.

One fun surprise was finding this little tiny baby turtle right outside the house. It was wandering around, a visitor from the river. We were all fascinated by him, and hoped he got back to his mother safely. (We found a dead one in the road a few minutes later–sad)

Many thanks to Cole, who figured out how to upload pictures even without the camera cord (and since the card was full, it was vital!) More posts and pictures later!

Sixteen Candles

April 4, 2012 / / 5 Comments

I’m not sure how this all happened, but my little Megan is now 16!

She’s excited to get her driver’s license, but has no interest, really, in dating. When I told her that now that she was 16, she could go out with boys, she said, ‘I don’t really know any boys.’ Sure that she knows some boys, I asked about boys in her classes, but she says she doesn’t talk to them, as that would be weird. Her 13 year old sister went on about how she knows all kinds of boys, and there are many nice boys in her classes. Heaven help us when THAT one turns 16. But Megan, she’s more the kind that I will have to poke and prod into dating, kind of like I am her brother (which we will get into in a later post, but let’s just say he WILL be going to PROM, if I have to ask the girl myself). And that’s ok. Not all of us dated much in high school. In fact, I think that only a very small, but vocal population does all the dating in high school.

Megan really is talented. She has the attention to detail that makes her a really good artist.

She spent SO MANY HOURS on this owl assignment, but look how great it turned out.

Last weekend we hosted her birthday party, an “IRON CHEF Cupcake Challenge” party. With the provided cake mixes and a bunch of other add on ingredients, the girls made their cupcakes.

Oh, and they were wearing mustaches, since all the best chefs wear mustaches, right?

The girls had a lot of fun creating their cupcake masterpieces. I was surprised at how serious they took this challenge!

Some were mint, chocolate, peanut butter, toffee, with toppings like strawberry, blueberry, banana, and even lemon.

When they had their cupcakes all frosted and decorated (I bought 9 pounds of frosting from Costco, by the way. Yes, that ended up being a little excessive, but you don’t want to run out of frosting, and I didn’t want to have to make that all myself. Did you not know that Costco sells frosting? Well, there’s my little tip for you. Just go to the bakery and ask for frosting. They will sell it to you for $2 a pound. Of course, a pound of frosting doesn’t go very far, so I asked for 3 pounds of white frosting. And then thought, I should get chocolate frosting, too, if they have it. So, three pounds of that. And when the lady asked me if I’d like some cream cheese frosting, I said, what the heck? I’ll take some of that, too) they had to present their cupcakes on a platter or tray. Then each team chose their top two to be judged.

Yum. The rest of the family got to be the judges. The chocolate one with bits of toffee and peanut butter chips really was the best. Silly me, I forgot to give out the prize for the first place team. Oh, well. They had mucho fun, anyway.

We sent as many cupcakes as we could home with the girls.

It was a fun party for my fun girl.

Happy Birthday, Megan!

Speed! (Now we know how Lightning McQueen feels)

March 29, 2012 / / 10 Comments

This week was John’s pinewood derby in cub scouts. We had a month to prepare for it, and wouldn’t you know it, but 90% of the car was done on the next to last day.


Ryan even came home from work early on Tuesday to work on the car.

They sanded and painted. And sanded and taped and painted some more. I hear that John even did his own spray painting and did a great job of it!

(You can see the state of our basement in that picture, by the way. Still unfinished, but there is some progress.)

The best part of this project is the time spent with Dad.

Boys need this bonding time with dad, especially bonding time using tools.

This project involved using tools borrowed from two different friends, at least one trip to the hardware store together and two different kinds of paint.

This is my favorite picture. They were using this drill press thingy (yes, that IS the technical term for it, thank you very much) and I said, “Shouldn’t you be using eye protection?” John turned around, and after rifling through the drawer behind him, put on those cool shades. “Here’s my eye protection, Mom,” he said.

Here’s the finished car, ready for racing.
and here he is at the derby, showing off his car.

Now, it’s not easy to get good shots of that little car speeding down that track,
, but Ryan managed to get this cute little video.

I’m proud of my boys for completing this task. It’s not easy to design and make a car, and it can be disappointing when your car doesn’t win. I’m so thankful for Ryan’s willingness to help John build this car.

John’s car won 3rd place overall, and he was awarded “Best Engine Design”.


I’m linking up with Jenny Matlock for Alphebee Thursday, letter S

I have a family here on earth

February 26, 2012 / / 0 Comments

In December I may have mentioned that we had some family pictures taken. Yes, we did.

Don’t I have a cute family? I love how my two oldest are in short sleeves. In December. Outside. Oh, well, they were instructed to wear dark colors, aka ‘jewel tones’. and we did that part.

The harder thing was getting the WHOLE group together. But, with a lot of planning and a great photographer (link), we managed to get a few good shots.

I love this one of Ryan’s parents together. Aren’t they cute?

You can see more shots of individual families here.

So, even though it was kind of difficult to get everyone together and get ready, I’m glad we did the photo shoot. I used to be of the opinion that paying for a photographer wasn’t worth it, but I’m quickly changing that opinion. I mean, I take a lot of pictures, but without a good photographer, we could never get good group shots like this. And when I’m old and frail, I want to have a LOT of pictures to look back on.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2012 / / 2 Comments

It’s the day of pink hearts and frosted cookies!

To get ready for valentine’s day, we made some boxes, we decorated, we made cookies!

(This is Jenna’s owl box. I didn’t get a picture of it all finished, but it has cute wings now.)

(This is John’s cow that he painted, but then was sad when his teacher said they didn’t have to make valentine boxes, so he didn’t even get to take it to school.)

(This is how my kitchen table looks when the kids work on projects like this.)


For some of the teachers and friends, we made these love potions. Can you tell what the drink is?

I then made some that were caffeine free.

I even decided to decorate a little bit for the day of hearts.

I loved when I saw ornaments hanging from a chandelier for Christmas, so I thought, why not do that for another holiday? It looks better then it shows in the picture.

I put a little heart garland on the banister.
And put a few heart and love things on the table in the hall.

That is also where I decided to hang the painting that my sister did for me. I don’t love the framing job (since I kind of did it with stuff that was around the house), but I hope I can do a better job with it soon. I still love the painting, though, even if I’m not thrilled with how I framed it.

For the school party, I plan on playing Valentine Bingo, and Heart Lava. I’ll have to post pictures later.


Oh, and how about this sweet valentine card for my honey?

And tonight–Lady Antebellum Concert! Oh, yeah!

I hope you have a fun holiday with YOUR loved ones!

Can I help it if I prefer FREE?

February 9, 2012 / / 4 Comments

We are planning a trip for spring break. A trip to Nauvoo to see some LDS church history sights and play and have fun with the family. Thankfully, we were able to book the flights using miles from Ryan’s extensive traveling (Thanks, Ryan’s job!), and we’re getting some pretty decent deals on hotels.

As we were talking about the trip, hubby said to me, “Now don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but…..(long awkward pause) maybe you could relax a little bit on the trip, and….maybe let the kids order drinks once in a while.”

What? Are you calling me cheap?!

Well, yes, I AM cheap, or as we in the cheap community like to call it…”Frugal”. I do admit that I like to win my vacations instead of pay for them; if it’s possible to use a coupon at a restaurant, I will try it; and I have a frequent diners card for just about every place we go to eat. Is there anything wrong with that? We try to stay at hotels with free breakfast, and if not, then we end up keeping cereal and milk and granola bars and oatmeal at the hotel to avoid the cost of eating out for breakfast. And drinks! Don’t even get me started about the mark-up on drinks! If everyone in my family orders a soda at $1.99 to go with their meal, that’s an extra $14 added to the meal. I can’t change my personality just because I’m on vacation!

Once when in San Diego, we went to a yummy yogurt place, and with the 7 of us and my parents, we filled up an entire punch card. So, we let Cole get the free $5 worth of yogurt right then, since we were leaving in the morning and most likely never coming back to that place to use our rewards card. He piled on the toppings and enjoyed a yogurt overload. Hey, there are perks to being the only teenager on vacation, you get to be the designated glutton!

We all laugh about the time that we were at Disneyland, and I used the free birthday tortillas from the Mission tortilla factory to make pb & j roll ups, but the jelly all smooshed out of the rolled up tortillas and ended up in a huge sticky mess in the bag. Fun memories!

Of course, nothing can compare to the cheapness in college. Some friends and I went to Disneyland, and instead of buy ANY food in the park, we had brought Captain Crunch cereal, bread, and peanut butter. Halfway through the day, we trooped out to the car, and ate our cruchilicious-peanutbuttery feast. My aunt, who was Disneylanding with us that day, just laughed and laughed at our cheapness.

And sporting events? I can’t say we NEVER go unless they are free, but that’s pretty close of an assessment. Go, Jazz! Same thing with concerts. I’m ok sitting in the nosebleed section to see a concert (Lady A next week–so excited!), although I must admit that those 2nd row seats to see Michael Buble were pretty sweet. I do pay full ticket price for Broadway (or touring) musicals, if I have to. I guess I do have that weakness. I mean, I TRY to win tickets, but it doesn’t always work out for me.

But I did listen to him and agreed that I would try to not stress out about money while on vacation. If that means paying for some things in advance and setting aside a certain amount of cash to use for entertainment and eating out, then I can get on board. Or maybe I just let him pay for everything and not look at receipts (or menus) so that I’m blissfully unaware of how much we are spending. Nope, can’t do that.

I can’t be the only one who tries to save money even while on vacation. How do you do it? Do you just get into that “I’m on vacation” mentality and spend with reckless abandon? Or, like me, do you still try to keep it simple and not go all extravagant even though you are on vacation?

Happy Birthday, Jenna!

January 30, 2012 / / 4 Comments

Big party here over the weekend. It’s not every day your little girl turns 11, after all. She wanted a “late night” movie party, so we decided to go with a pajamas and popcorn themed party.

Aren’t those cupcakes SO cute? Love them.

All of her friends came in their pajamas (well, I guess only 10 of them came), and they played a game while I got dinner ready. I had suggested that we have pancakes instead of the traditional pizza, and I think it was a big hit (and cheap, by the way).

I just put out a bunch of toppings, syrups, whipped cream, and fruit, and then kept the pancakes coming. Man, can those girls eat. I couldn’t believe how many pancakes they were putting down. And loud! You get a bunch of normally mild mannered, sweet girls together in a room, and they are transformed into a gaggle of giggling girls.

When they were sufficiently stuffed and the table was similarly syrupy, they adjourned to the family room to pick a movie while Megan and I cleaned up.

We had to pop the popcorn, but didn’t want to be all loud with the air popper, so I just brought out a few microwave popcorn bags.

I kid you not, as soon as those girls smelled popcorn, they wanted some. Seriously? How can you even think about eating another morsel? Oh well, there’s always room for popcorn. They were eating it as fast as we got it popped, and we went through quite a bit of popcorn. Of course, a lot of it ended up on the floor, I’m sure.

They had decided to watch Soul Surfer, and after the girl lost her arm to the shark, all of the girls were going around with only one arm. I looked at them and thought, now that’s weird, why would she have her arm in her sleeve? And she’s doing it too.
Even John was one armed!

Jenna even opened her presents with one arm! They were taking this one armed thing pretty far!

What a hoot!

Thankfully, their arms did grow back for the eating of the cupcakes.

I had actually planned on ice cream with the cupcakes, but by then I couldn’t believe they were still eating anything at all, and the dishwasher was already full and I didn’t want to dirty more dishes (lame Mom excuse, I know, but it’s the truth). I don’t think anyone noticed the lack of ice cream.

Then they went back to watching their movie, and then playing with the new presents and anything else that looked like fun.

At about 9:30, I thought, Why, oh WHY did I let her put 6:00-10:00 on the invitations? But the time passed pretty quickly, and soon I was saying goodbye to girls and sweeping up popcorn and marshmallows and telling my kids to go to bed.

Not the most elaborate or fancy party, but quite a FUN party for one sweet little girl.
Happy Birthday, Jenna! I hope every birthday is as much fun as this one was, and I hope you always have this many fun friends.

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