the Twins turn TWO

The girls turned two a week ago on the 11th. I didn't know how to make their birthday special. It was a Sunday and we were up in Mesa. So I got them birthday muffins. We also had cake and ice cream after dinner with their cousins. They also got a few gifts- a magnetic drawing pad, a water drawing pad, big girl underpants, and a Little Einestine DVD (which my brothers have decided were missed named and should have been called "little mozart"

They were adorable for church in their new Sunday dresses. I hope they enjoyed their birthdays and that it felt more special than just any other Sunday.

Our time in Mesa

We spent the last two weeks in Mesa. The premise of being there was that I could be a help to my sister. And I believe we were a help. But we did take advantage of being up there to enjoy ourselves.

One day when we had my sister's daughter with us we went to Sonic and everyone got their own Strawberry or Cherry Limeade. The twins were suppose to share but Nellie didn't want to share so Rose ended up with my Route 44.

Tues we went to the Arizona Museum of Natural History. I remembered they have dinosaurs there and knew that would be a huge hit with our four year old. Of course it was. Wish I took more pictures. I didn't know that there were so many dinosaurs that have been found here in Arizona. I hadn't been to the museum since I was a in elementary school. I am so glad we went.

When we left the Museum on Tues, Al then announced that he wanted to go to the place with the live fish and sea animals. I knew he was talking about the aquarium but I wasn't going to take him 2 places in one day and going there in one trip would be expensive. When I mentioned his request to my brothers they suggested the Bass Pro shop in Mesa. They have fish there. So that is what we did for our outing on Wed. Well Al, although found the place interesting, was very keen to point out that it was no aquarium.

Al finally broke me down and on Thursday we went to the Sea Life Arizona Aquarium at Arizona Mills mall. It was a larger aquarium than we had visited previously but I didn't feel like it has as many interactive activities. Al was in heaven the girls really enjoyed it too. The first time through we didn't see the octopus, and after a lot of tears we went back in and asked if they had an octopus. Turns out they do and they told us where we'd find it. So we went all the way through again. I need to remember that on thing like this that my children will regain interest again and do it all over if we just take a break and come back again. Each time through it took us about an hour with my children's short attention span. 

Friday we hang around the house and then their cousins had a sleep over with them that night. First one of its type.ll

New Nibbling and time in Mesa

My sister had her baby on the 5th. His name is Theodore and we are calling him "Teddy".

We went up to Mesa to see our new cousin and to help my sister out in any way I could.

his cousin (on the other side of the family) Maggie was born the same day at the same hospital

NOT TWINS

As they were getting ready to be discharged from the hospital he has what we started calling "breathing attack episodes"

It  was scary. He would stop breathing and turn blue.

Many theories were given why this was happening

eventually they moved him to Cardon Children's Hospital.

He still hadn't been home yet. They monitored him for seven days and found nothing.

Finally after being 13 days old he was release to go home for the first time. They are going to have to keep a monitor on him for a month but at least they are home. I think my sister handled the whole thing very grown up. I am grateful that prayers have been answered and they are now home as a family.

Singing Fish Review

Singing Fish was one we did a few Sundays ago as a review.

The idea is to have "mama" fish and "baby" fish and have the children return the baby fish to their mama. Our children really enjoyed it, especially JR primary. When you match a baby to the mama you sing the verse that is written on the baby fish. Our JR primary were so upset when Singing Time was over and they were so worried about the babies that didn't get back to their mamas.

Here is the instructions and songs we used. I know that not everyone picked the same songs we did. But that means you only have 2 songs to pick lines from those verses. 

Here are some sihloettes of fish that you can use as a guide to cut them out. I just free handed mine out of construction paper (oval with a triangle tail) then I drew on eyes and mouths.

Here is a picture of what my fish looked like.

Have fun reviewing and playing with singing fish.

*It doesn't have to be fish. It could be any animal or even people. It is just really easy to cut out fish.

2013 Arizona Monsoon Season

The Monsoons are in full season here.

As a reminder here is a picture from about a week before Monsoon season started. 

See what my backyard looks like in the height of the heat of summer.

Now take a look at these photos from this year's monsoon season

see how lush and green it is

pic of the waterfall on the mountain behind our house

Where did our mountain go? Almost wouldn't know there was a mountain there.

And take a look at that rain fall and that uncut overgrowth. 

It is time to get that push wacker out.

Review activity "I HEAR with my little EAR"

I have a sub this Sunday. I have created a guessing game for her to practice the songs with the children.

Each song has a set of clues. Each clue was written to be given in the form "I hear with my little ear... a song that we........."
Here are the clues that I used. I know that many of you didn't pick the same two "you choose" songs as our ward did, but that means you only have two songs to make your own questions for. Use my questions as a guide. Ignore the (notes) those are for my sub.

Feel free to "Save Image As" my notes and use them for your Singing Times. Or make up your own specific to your primary. I hope this idea helps at least one Chorister out there.

I'm a serious designer

I know that my Singing time visuals are not up to store quality. Most of them a rush and put together in about fifteen minutes total and they look like 15 minutes of work.

Back in February I started my hand and creating digital scrapbooking kits.

I opened my first store in April. And a second store last month.

I had no plans of opening any other stores until two weeks ago I saw a Designer Call to one of the larger stores that also has a forum. It has been my goal to get into a store like this (I was thinking it would take me at least a year or maybe two). I couldn't let an opportunity pass like this and applied.

I then got word that they were accepting my application and sent me a contract. 

So the last two weeks has been CRAZY insane getting a store ready to open Aug 1st. There were times that I didn't think I could make it. I had already been working like CRAZY to get my daisies and dimples store open and days after that opening I am starting out preparing for a another store opening.

Opening at a new store is a lot of work and opening at Stuff to Scrap has been even more so. 

With all stores you have to package your product for their stores. Each store has their own outward packaging requirements and size restrictions that can be uploaded. In addition to that, STS requires that you have EVERY product that is put in their store to go through an intense Quality Control process. For the most part I like that I know it was looked over by someone not me. Sometimes they catch stupid things that I have been looking at for weeks and didn't catch because I was just burned out. But it also creates a ton of stress and extra work.  All the extra work is worth it- just very time intensive. And as my husband points and when we talked about the pros and cons for us- once you do all that work its not like you have to do all of it over again. Doing my responsibilities on the site will be more work too. But I have wanted to work at a site with an active forum. This is a big step for me. For the time being I am going to be managing three stores. A some point I will close one of the other two, but we'll see. I don't even know which one I am going to close yet. That is about six months down the road. I am loving designing. Selling your designs is not a "get rich quick" way of life. It will be a while before I'm in the black, as long as I can keep my own habit of buying things curtailed. I am excited to see where this is going to lead me.

Teaching "A Child's Prayer"

I created visuals, the song by itself is hard for the younger kids. About half of our Senior Primary already knew and remembered the song. I guess that tells you when the last time our ward did this song for the program was. I'm out of town this Sunday so I taught the song last Sunday. Our SR primary is learning both verses and we are only teaching (mostly due to time) the first verse to JR primary.
This is my favorite primary song and in all my years of primary I have never had the opportunity to teach this song. Maybe that has been for the better because this song was *really* hard for me to teach.
tips from my mistakes-
1. Have them hum the melody to each song first, then learn each verse with ONLY that melody. Our pianist kept playing everything while they were learning it and it was really making it hard on the younger children.
2. Start introducing the song by having another adult come and sing the two parts with you. I tried to sing it by myself and it didn't go so well and then I couldn't do two parts at once. (or have two of the older children sing it for the primary).
3. Focus and the melody and then the words. If I had to do it over again I would encourage the children to hum each note if they weren't sure of the word yet.

I love this song, I just feel that it is a hard song to have as the last of the year. We have only this month to focus on reviewing because our program is the 22nd and all the Sundays in September are going to be used to practice for the program. We need to have the song Program Ready by then.
Here is a link to download my visuals as a zip file or you can "Save image as" each of the following.

I had a request for a copy with "no words" for use in other languages.

link to download no words version

I hope my visuals help someone. I do them in black and white to make it easy on your printers. (I can only print in b&w) and you can color them yourself your have children in your primary color them for you. Note: most of my clip art are from the Church's webside coloring pages for Primary children. I do not have the copyrights to those pages. The rest of the image I found on the internet under public domain clip art or I made them myself. You may not use my visuals for any purpose other than personal or church use. Any uses that result in you making money is prohibited. 

Teaching "Families Can be Together Forever"

I made up some quick visuals using MOSTLY coloring pages from the church website.

You can download them by right click and saving as

OR

download as a zip file {here} at box.net