EASTER 2012

We decorated eggs on Saturday night - I had pinned a lot of really cool decorating ideas but my kids wanted to stick to the regular way. Mostly - my daughter did try the "wrap twine around the egg after the first color, then dye it a second color" way. It was pretty neat.

We cracked some of them a little (this of course was learned several years ago when we accidentally cracked them, then decide we liked the cool effect even after they are peeled - you still get coloring) - it's food-safe dye, you know.

Then we always have egg salad sandwiches for Easter lunch. (It's pretty-colored, too). It's a quick lunch before Easter Dinner. I wish I had pictures of our yummy ham and Famous Ham Gravy with Mashed Potatoes. We swoon over this gravy - next time I make it I will post...

Sunday afternoon, I took all the kids on a walk, and the Easter Bunny decide to visit us while we were gone. When we got back, the porch was filled with Easter Baskets and the house was littered with candy-filled eggs for the kiddos to find. My older kids know that it's really for the little kiddos to find the most - then they all just share anyway.

They streak all over in less than five minutes and hope they have found every egg. My favorite is when I secretly find more later - then the candy is MINE! We sometimes find eggs much later - like in the drawer under Christmas tablecloths or something. Or in the freezer. That Easter Bunny - so creative in the hiding of eggs.

The counting and sharing of the Easter Eggs is awesome: "12, 13, 15, 19, 62, 22, fwee"

THEN. Something I have never done before but WILL do again. I made homemade marshmallows. Holy cow, who knew? Not me, I guess. Until this year. I read a bunch of recipes and tutorials on how to do this and the BEST one I found was this one. It's from Our Best Bites, adapted from Alton Brown. I cut them into egg shapes, and dipped them in melted milk chocolate. They dried overnight and were perfect. (Not the prettiest aesthetically - but who cares?) My kids would not even let me pose them for a cute picture! They were SO YUMMY!



How do you celebrate Easter with your family?



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Family Journal At A Glance: FEBRUARY AND MARCH 2012

AT A GLANCE:

Here has been my life in pictures and summaries of the past few months. I plan to make this post at the end of every month to sum up my month for family and clients and friends. Sorry this one is so long, it's two months.

FEBRUARY 2012

I have joined a book club and I LOVE IT! We have a fun group and lively discussions. This was the first book we read (I confess I did not have time to finish it: I have like ten books on my nightstand at any given time that can compete with each other and I did not give it enough time to be finished but I still plan to finish it because I heard the END WAS WONDERFUL!)

My fifth-grader was honored at a Denver University Basketball game for being a good leader at school (the teachers chose one student from each class to receive this DU RISING STAR award. It was pretty cool for him.

I got to teach some Young Women in my church how to make fabric flowers. It was a fun time, but not nearly long enough.



Valentine's Day was great, too. (See my post here)

My sweet hubby and I saw a performance of the Lord of the Dance at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts- it was amazing - way cooler than I thought it would be. This may be my husband's calling in his next life - to dance like that...don't laugh - it was way cool!

Then, only a few days after we realized my husband the accountant-finance-guy "should have been a dancer" (said tongue-in-cheek), my sweet husband Tyler gets in a SKI ACCIDENT! There I was, teaching a sewing lesson, and he calls me, from the mountain, and says he wrecked his knee, and the ski patrol was taking him down to the medic center. Turns out he tore his ACL completely and MCL was partially torn.

These were LEGO cards from the kids.

He has been in physical therapy for a month now and is awaiting surgery on his ACL when his MCL heals enough to handle recovery.

Then my sister from Texas visits with her sweet family on their way to move to Washington State. Her kids had never seen or played in REAL SNOW before so they had a great time.

The day before they left, her little 5-year old had a scooter accident down the driveway and knocked out his top two front teeth, which was a not-so-fun emergency trip to a foreign dentist. I think he has since recovered but poor little guy in the pictures, eh? (Yes, I AM Canadian...)

On the day they were leaving, the snow fell some more and they had to travel in a blizzard that turned into a foot of snow within hours...gotta love Colorado!

My fifth grader had Colonial Days where they learn all about Colonial Times for several weeks and it all culminates on Colonial Day where they "get to dress up" (he was soooo not thrilled - mom, I am going to look soooo stupid. Everyone will, son.) They were ALL adorable.

We made homemade bread to share at the Colonial Feast.

The kids each give a presentation on something from Colonial Times to parents and classmates. He studied the Schoolmaster.



MARCH 2012

My daughter had a special program called "New Beginnings" in her Young Women's church group, where they talked about their Young Women's values and sang the song "Light On A Hill".

Next book in Book club was this one. I did read the whole thing! I really enjoyed it and got some good meaning from it - mostly about choosing your life's priorities carfeully and listening to and learning from those who have come before you.



My Friend's Baby Shower for her twins (see this post) This friend actually went into the hospital the following week, and had her babies at the end of the month. I had gone with another friend to just visit her and it turns out she had just gotten out of surgery right before we got there! Those babies were born at 3 lbs 4 oz and 4 lbs 7 oz. So tiny and so sweet in the NICU.

I had an opportunity to meet with a whole group of Denver bloggers. We meet for half the day and crafted and visited and talked blogging. The gals who hosted it were wonderful and I met so many new bloggers to keep in contact with. It was a fantastic time!

Tyler and I went to see Beauty & The Beast at the Denver Center for the Performing arts Buell Theatre.

Loved it!

Dentist: Oh what a month of pure dental hell! I love my dentist, don't get me wrong, he and his entire office staff! (and family too, I do all his wife's home decor - that's a future post...) But I was born with the weakest teeth - it's my curse - (which is so sad because I love candy and sweets...)

So, my kids had cleanings and fillings without much ado but ME! I discovered I needed a root canal - which I somehow thought I would recover quickly from. No - I was in pain for two whole weeks from it. My cheek stayed swollen for a week (picture). I had an infection I guess because they put me on antibiotics, and I was in so much pain. (I had already been on ibuprofen 'round the clock for the two weeks before my root canal because of my extreme tooth pain - it continued for several more weeks afterward). AND to top it all off - I had like six small and two very large canker sores on the other side of my mouth - supposed to be the good side that I can eat on - so it was just pain all around - I did not even want to cook because the thought of pain while eating was awful. I think I lost 5-10 pounds because of MOUTH PAIN! It was like I was being taught a lesson like Job - all in my mouth. I figure it has to do my psychological need to speak up better and communicate better...or something like that...

Then it was St. Patrick's Day.

We took the kids to see The Lorax movie.

And to Burger King.

Then faucet shopping because our kitchen one finally broke.

We had a "farewell" family gathering for my BIL who is moving away to CA. The cousins got to play together and jump on Grandma's awesome trampoline.

We visited and wished him the best of luck!

Spring came to us this month and I think my daffodils could not have been happier!



We went skiing on a Wednesday toward the end of the month. Spring skiing here in the Rockies. My husband had bought tickets in 4-paks for one of the resorts here in CO. This was way back in the Fall of 2011. But after his ski accident, we all thought we just would not go and what a waste of all that money - Tyler is the SKIIER of all of us! Who would teach us? (We had gone one day in December to TEACH four of our kids - and refresh me - and had not gone since. I had experience in high school but honestly was not that good - my memories are of myself sliding down on my butt down the hill...)

Well, my sweet husband decide he wanted us to still go. So his plan was to sell his tickets and let us go our three more days and he would sit at the bottom of the mountain and just hang out and watch for us and read and stuff.

Well, our first day of three was good! My boys were fantastic in their own ways and my daughter and I had improved by leaps and bounds by the end of the day. Our bad part of the day were THE SEVERE SUNBURNS we got. Oh. My. Goodness. Worst sunburns I had ever seen or had myself. (I will not even put pictures of this up - yes, I did take them) because it will scare you all. I did not allow my children to bring friends into the house for days. My oldest son and I got it the worst - we were swollen several inches out and blisters all over. Second degree burns over our whole faces. My other three kids were bad, but not even by half. We were just plain stupid and did not sunscreen or even think we needed to - I don't know why...but stupid is just stupid.

Then nine days later, we had just really gotten better (I was still a little red, everyone else was completely better - all blisters dried up, peeling done and skin better), and we went for the second time out of three. THIS TIME, we had bought several bottles of SPF 50 that we applied and reapplied pretty much every time we came down a lift. I put so much on that I looked like a geisha, but I did not care. Never again did I want myself or my kids to go through that kind of pain. (Keep in mind that this first ski trip was all happening during my teeth and mouth pain).

This time all was well in the sunburn department. And in the skiing department, we did very well, improvements and fun all around! There were even certain teenagers going off jumps! Tyler was very proud of us!

Any of you ski? Any of you ever been that badly sunburned? Any of you have weak teeth like me?

All of these makes me really look hard at the things in my life that are SO GOOD! And not want to take any of them for granted - like a mouth with no pain, a face that looks normal, etc. I am so blessed to have a family that enjoys an activity together, that supports one another in all of our activities, and that I can LEARN from mistakes and hard times.




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SEWING LESSONS: SUMMER CAMPS 2012

Are you thinking about signing up for a summer sewing class?

Studio Julie Snow is now offering 6 different intensive sewing CAMPS!

These intensive camps are each one week long:
two hours/day, for 4 days in a row! A total of 8 hours!

Do you know how much sewing you can accomplish in 8 hours? That's like 2 months of weekly hour-long lessons!

*Some of you may learn a skill better by not having big breaks in between lessons.
*Some may have a limited schedule during the summer and can only take one week for an activity.
*Or maybe you just really want to sew a lot and pack it all into one week! :)

Plus, the camps are Group-size! You will have fun learning with others doing the same thing! And it costs less... (see ad below)

Check out the ad below for more details and look through the CAMPS to see what you may be interested in.

SEWING LESSONS: SUMMER CAMPS 2012

SUMMER SCHEDULE 2012

Would you like to learn to sew?



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