A life less busy ...

Sigh ... we have had a week of much less busyness and much more fun. Monday was the usual of school, gymnastics and FHE. We have found the mother-load for FHE - a flannel board set that has all the parables in it. We've gone through all the parables, so now we need to invest in a few more Bible stories and several Book of Mormon ones. The girls do a great job of paying attention and participating when we use these flannel board stories. Highly recommend!

Tuesday was election day. After dropping the girls off I headed over to vote. I'm amazed that I was able to walk right in and vote. I thought for sure this year with so many people being disgruntled about politics that the line would weave itself out the door and up the hall ... maybe even out to the front door. But I was in and out in less than 10 minutes. Yay! I've been trying to keep up with all of the happenings in the election - but I have to admit that all of the negative campaigning was very ... well negative. While doing my daily news surfing I found an article about two men running for the same seat in Connecticut. They both decided that they were going to run a kind and compassionate campaign and instead of focusing on tearing each other down, focused on what they could offer their constituents and what they thought were the important issues. What a novel idea! The one man even said that if he didn't win he would still support the other politician 100%. Wow - an election where you weren't left questioning the winner's abilities or ethics. I wish more people were like that.

Later that day we had an election of our own for dinner. I made up a ballot and each of us got to choose what kind of pasta, sauce, veggie, and dessert we had. As per normal elections some were upset about the results of the vote, but still ate what was offered. :) No crying like election 2008.

Election 2010

Before and After Voting - Election 2008

Wednesday was a craft and science day. After Annika's piano lesson we started our Thanksgiving countdown craft list. Today was making cornucopias out of candy. Yum :) Each of the girls filled their little cornucopias with candy that "looked" like food and even made a few of their own foods out of starbursts and tootsie rolls.






Later after Dave came home we had a science night and made home-made catapults out of a block of wood, clothes pin, popsicle stick, and a bottle cap. Add a bit of hot glue to the mix and the girls were launching pennies all over the kitchen and family room. There are so many great ideas online of fun things to do with kids - almost a bit overwhelming there are so many!




Thursday - presentation at Annika's school on the Netherlands and Belgium. I was invited to come give a 20 minute presentation to all the kindergarten classes about what Belgium and the Netherlands are like. The first group wiggled and giggled through the first 10 minutes of the presentation and then talked with their mouths full of stroopwafels and nutella the second half. :) The afternoon group did better - probably because I zoomed through the presentation and talked mostly about the food and Sinterklaas - two things they like and can relate to. It was fun doing the presentation and getting all the food for them to try. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures myself. But the plates of food looked good :) Belgian chocolates, great dutch bread with chocolate sprinkles and nutella, and a stroopwafel. What is there not to like. :)

Later in the afternoon the girls headed over to Emma and Matthew's to have a fun tea party. Thanks!

Friday - school, cleaning, the usual. Dave came home early - super nice surprise! Yay! The girls made pine cone turkeys, hand print boats,and then lounged in the sun on the deck with Dave - with ipods in hand.






Later that evening we headed over to Pirate Island to celebrate Annika and Emma passing off their Pslams 100. Each of the kids in the kindergarten class had to recite all of Psalms 100 during class - it's LONG - look it up. For passing it off they got a free kid's meal at Pirate Island. They all had a super fun time.

The girls with their nifty balloon butterflies.

And Matthew with his awesome crocodile that chomped on all the butterflies ... and girls. :)

Saturday we were able to go to Logan's baptism down in Provo. For Utah County his baptism was unusual - he was the only one being baptized. Usually there are 5 to 8 kids being baptized during the same meeting. So it was nice that it was focused just on him.

The rest of the day was spent at home being crafty. We made a crayon roll for our church bag and started to make a pilgrim doll. We still need to add quite a bit to this little sock doll - and yes - she is a Hello Kitty Pilgrim girl. :)


That night while Annika was getting her teeth brushed the other front tooth came out. Kind of ironic because her piano teacher just gave her "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" to play at the Christmas recital. :) The tooth fairy was very generous and gave her $2 to celebrate losing both of her front teeth.


Sunday we had a special stake conference - Elder Cook came to visit our stake. It was a fantastic meeting and gave me renewed vigor to keep up with the daily necessities of prayer, scripture study, and more prayer.

After rest and relaxation Dave did Science Sunday with the girls. We are starting off this weekly tradition with Candy Experiments. They both had so much Halloween candy that we decided to use it to do a few experiments.

Testing dissolving skittles in hot and cold water

Testing candy for acid.

We also tried to do a density rainbow experiment with skittles, but it didn't work so well. Just ended up a big brownish purplish puddle of yuck. Oh well - at least we tried. :)

After we were finished with our science projects we started our Thanksgiving count down craft project - wax paper leaves. They turned out pretty well. :)

Over all a great week. And so much to be grateful for. I've noticed a few people on Facebook posting everyday what they are thankful for. I think that's a super great idea. Each night before we say family prayers everyone tells what they are thankful for. Our condensed list from this week (in no particular order and by no means all of them) 1. grateful for two wonderful girls that are happy, healthy, silly, and kind, 2. grateful for a daddy that works so hard, 3. grateful for the great prosperity that Heavenly Father has blessed us with, 4. grateful for a warm house to keep us safe, 5. fun activities to do it each day, and 6. family that loves us so much.

This is Halloween

This whole week hinged around Halloween and Halloween type events. It started off slowly though. Annika stayed home from school on Monday with a nasty cough. Fortunately it was mostly gone by noon. I probably should have sent her, but I didn't want the other parents to lynch me because I had sent a semi sick/coughing child. :) Sadly we also missed gymnastics and a group piano lesson. Happily Annika got to do a make up for her piano lesson on Wednesday and had lots of fun. :)

Tuesday night's sewing - much better! I actually sewed a super fandangeled pocket. Amazing - I know! And I learned how to put in a zipper. Not so fandangled - more mangled. But at least I know how to do if I ever need to. Which I probably wont. :)

Wednesday was a blur of running errands to pick up items for our Thursday and Friday activities. Needless to say Target and Walmart got A LOT of our money this week! We also got our first snow of the year. Mieka went out and ate some snow and then came back in and conked out on the couch.

Yum .. savoring the taste of melting snow. Mieka is quite the connoisseur of snow.

Sleeping with her natural hot water bottle.

Thursday was Annika's Harvest Party and Mieka's Halloween party at school. I bundled Mieka up her in super cute girly shark costume (notice the pink bow!). She was super excited to be able to take candy to class and have a party!

After dropping Mieka off I headed over to Annika's school to help with their harvest party. They don't celebrate Halloween at American Heritage, so we did more of a harvest theme. My portion of the pony show was the craft. We made little gourd/pumpkin people. I was so busy with my part that I didn't notice the other areas. But Annika told me that decorating caramel apples was her favorite part. And I heard lots of kids cheering and laughing while doing the pumpkin bowling game.

Here's our family gourds made from the left-over materials.

Later that evening we decorated our pumpkins. I thought we would try painting them this year. Unfortunately I didn't think about the paint being washable - Dave's pumpkin was washed clean by the rain. Bummer. :( The girls had a good time and because it was paint they were able to "decorate" the pumpkin and themselves many times over. :)

Friday we spent the morning racing to get things ready for our neighborhood kid party. We have A LOT of kids on our street around the same age of Annika and Mieka. We had 26 or 27 little ones show up for the party. It was chaos. Next year I think I will rethink having so many and doing so many different little crafts. Or maybe next year we'll just have more adults there to help and supervise.

We made spiders out of suckers, decorated pumpkins, decorated cookies, made little mummies out of toilet paper tubes and ate donuts off a string. It was a sugar fueled fest - but I think everyone had fun.



The next day was Halloween eve. It was a rainy afternoon and Annika fretted that we wouldn't be able to go to the ward Trunk or Treat or regular trick or treating. She asked me at least 10 times if we were going to go. Ack!

While we waited out the storm Dave put on his "Dave the Builder" hat and hung some shelves and put up some swings down in the play room. Slowly but surely we are getting things pulled together. Maybe some day we'll get everything up on the walls and organized. Probably just before we move. :)

Our new nifty little library in the playroom. Yay!

It really started to pour around 5:30 but we decided we would just wade through anyway. Annika dressed up as a beautiful butterfly, Mieka - a cute little shark, and me - a bee. Dave decided to forgo dressing up this year - and for once I didn't make him. :) On the way to the trunk of treat Mieka declared that she was the kind of shark that ate bugs - not fish. Apparently she had plans for me and Annika later that evening. :)

I think the prayers of many parents and the activity committee were heard that night. We got to the Trunk or Treat shortly after 6:10 and the rain stopped at around 6:20. Amazing! In less than 20 minutes the girls bags were 1/3 full and they were ready to go knock some doors.

We first headed over to Nancy's part of the neighborhood so that the girls could visit her. We got some great hot bread sticks to warm us all up while we were there. Thanks!

And then we went over to Dan and Emilee's part of town to go Trick or Treating.

Mieka was so tired by the end of the night she could only drag her bag of candy behind her. Poor tired shark!

By the time we got home the girls each had literally 2 lbs 14 ounces of candy. I weighed it! :)

We celebrated the actual Halloween on Sunday by having candy pumpkin pancakes - nothing like candy to start your morning off. The breakfast of champions!

After church Grandma and Grandpa Sucher stopped by for a visit. The girls chased Grandpa around the house and blocked the door so that he couldn't leave. I think they like him. :) Later we headed over to Nancy's for dinner. We were treated to some great Korean curry and very interesting chats about computer programming and iphone apps. :)

Over all a super great week! Tomorrow is Election day. Yay! I'm very interested to see how the elections work out.

Busy Bee's

Busy, busy week. Annika had Monday off from school, so both her and Mieka spent the morning playing with Nancy. She took them to school where they fed the animals in Nancy's science room. Afterward they had a picnic with one of Nancy's friends. And they made a stop by Animal Ark where they picked out a great costume for Asher. Thanks Nancy! I'm sure Asher will gladly bite you next time he sees you. :)

Later in the day, after gymnastics, we headed over to the Barn Yard Boo for family home evening. The girls got their faces painted. Seems that the little black cat was very popular that night. :)

Next we steered the girls over to the classroom where they decorated and ate a sugar cookie and made slime. The slime wasn't quite so slimy - it turned kind of hard after a few minutes. It actually would have made a great bouncy ball if I had thought to have squished into that shape.

We ended the night with a pony ride and a few more crafts.



Thanks to Jen for coming with us and helping with the different projects!

On Tuesday the girls got to go with Dave to pack meeting while I went to my sewing class. The girls thought playing games and eating pumpkin shaped doughnuts was the highlight of the day. I mean while was chasing bobbins under tables and sticking pins in my fingers. Good times.

Wednesday we were suppose to go a Chemistry Magic show down at BYU to celebrate National Chemistry Week. But the fates were against us - well actually it was UDOT but we'll call them the fates for this week. We left at 6:20 thinking 40 minutes was enough to get down to BYU. At 6:50 we were at 1600 South in Orem. We had barely gone 8 miles in 30 minutes. Bummer. Needless to say we missed the show. Double Bummer.

Thursday we went to a craft class at the Thanksgiving Point Dino Museum. I was hoping to get some more ideas for our neighborhood party we are having on Friday. They did do a few fun things, like making dirt out of oreos and putting cool whip and worms in them. But, I think I'll have to search through Family Fun to get a few more ideas.

Later we went to the dentist ... dum dum dum! Happily there were no screams or tears this trip. Yay! Both girls were cavity free and left happily with their new princess tooth brushes, tooth paste, and dental floss. Mieka had her whole box of floss out and wadded up in her lap by the time we got home. Nice!

Friday was the Fall Festival at American Heritage. Mieka and I spent the morning making cupcakes to take for the bake sale. We made these apple cupcakes from the Hello Cupcake book (thanks Marianne!)


I went to the school around 5:00 to help set up and serve food. I was amazed by how many families came through to get food. Kids that would actually eat a hot dog or sloppy joe! Amazing! A feat never seen before in our house. :)


Dave came around 6:30 and we went to the kids store and made a candy necklace. While Annika was eating one of the apple cupcakes we had made her front tooth fell out. Those mini doughnuts on top of the cupcake must have been pretty stale. :) All she could talk about for the rest of the night was the tooth fairy.

(Sorry - blurry iphone photo of a cupcake crusted mouth!
But we have to document the missing tooth yah know!)

When we arrived home she promptly put her tooth under her pillow and wrote a note to the tooth fairy so that she (the fairy) would know where the tooth was. You never know - you just might get a novice tooth fairy that doesn't know that the proper place for a tooth is under a pillow! Saturday morning - hooray! The tooth fairy came. Money! Happy Day! Annika immediately started to plan how she was going to spend her $1.

Saturday was also Annika's last soccer game of the season. It was a cold, rainy game and they called it shortly after the first half. Thank heavens! Mieka hid under our chairs for the majority of the time. I wish I could have fit down there with her. :(



Well - that's our week in compact form. I think this week will be just as busy with all of our Halloween activities. I foresee another Sunday nap that extends well into the evening next week. :)