Making Our House

In our family home evening last week we made our little log home from a kit Granma and Gramps gave us as a present from their holiday to America. We called it Bountiful. We liked doing it - it was really fun.

It is a bit like the log house we are going to build one day. We used it when our home teachers came.

Hannah took a picture of it for you to see but did it as a video.

FROM Rachel and Sarah

A few pictures from the Saturday afternoon

These photos just got taken off the camera, so I thought I'd post a few from the matinee we saw for Rachel's birthday treat (see previous post).

The first photo is a small taste of the scenery that Hannah enjoyed so much. As you can see from the last photo, Sarah was feeling thoroughly inspired afterwards! Actually, no, this is literally how she ALWAYS is at the moment. All around the house, every day, in any picture, and anywhere else too. I've started calling her Posy, as she so completely reminds both Michael and I of Posy in Noel Streatfield's "Ballet Shoes". If you know the book you'll get an idea of her character and a lot of how she acts right now! If not, we recommend the book!! :o)

Birthday season has begun

Rachel turned 9 two and a half weeks ago, which was the beginning of 'birthday season' for our family. From now on it's a mimimum of one birthday a month, so you'll probably see a bit of each person over the next little while (once I manage to get back here to post it that is!)

Her birthday this year was also the day of General Conference for us (which involves several meetings through the day where we get to hear from our prophet and others), so we mostly celebrated it on the Saturday. Rachel had a birthday lunch / party with all of us, Granma, Gramps, Nanny, and my brother David's family. We decorated the day before with some fun paper flowers and butterflies we'd made from folded paper, and instead of a cake she had our first try at a fruit bouquet - again plenty of flowers with some butterflies. The girls enjoyed helping me cut out the flowers and butterflies that morning from fresh pineapple and melon, and assembling the fruit. Not wanting to buy anything especially to help it stay together other than a pack of bamboo skewers, we had a ... hmm ... fun time getting it all to stay up! Rachel gave up in the end when her grandparents arrived, and Hannah stayed to finish it off, and she also made a little decoration to put the candles in as they were just going to be buried in the bowl of flowers.












We had a lovely meal together for lunch, and a few games - a treasure hunt around the house to find her presents from everyone, pass the parcel at Rachel's special request (she says she loves to play it :o) ), and a bit of a squished game of "vase of flowers", which is basically the game of "fruitbasket" but with flowers instead, and it was squished because our living room is just too small for that many people! She had what she'd wanted though and clearly loved everything about her day. Then we had popcorn, muffins and the fruit flowers and butterflies. We all really liked the fruit - my sugar-sensitive children a little too much, and they reacted to it a bit too much later, but not really until everyone else had left to go to the first session of general conference, which was fine. It was fun, and we have a better idea now of how to make a vase of flowers from fruit should we try it again! It makes a great table decoration too.



















Rachel enjoyed a bit of attention on her birthday too, as well as seeing Granma for General Conference. She opened a few things from her immediate family and enjoyed an e-card from Grandad and a message on the Mills blog from Gramps - both very much.

The following Saturday we travelled with the help of both of our Mums to Kidderminster, where Peter and Rebekah had a lovely afternoon / early evening of Granma and Nanny time at Granma's house. Meanwhile the rest of us had a lovely journey with Gramps as we all went to a small theatre in Ludlow for Rachel's main birthday present. It was such a beautiful drive, especially for those of us who live within a city and don't ever get to see 'real' countryside, that Hannah spent most of the journey looking backwards out of the rear window so that she could get a better view of the hills, fields and valleys. We were going to see the ballet of The Sleeping Beauty performed by the European Ballet. Gramps got to see his first ever ballet (Granma wasn't really into ballets), and although we didn't see too much of the dancer's feet from where we were sitting, we enjoyed the dancing, costume, miming and scenery immensely. It was a fun thing to do - a great experience to have for our little ballet dancer. Sarah was really taken by it, especially some of the dresses, and Hannah really enjoyed the main dancers. I just loved the group dancing most of all, but then I always loved dancing in groups too. We had a picnic tea in the car and a little wander in Ludlow where they saw one of the female dancers in the grocer's next door (all very exciting!), before going home to find two very happy younger siblings and an equally exhausted Granma.

We spent Sunday and Monday in Kidderminster too before travelling home via bus and train on Tuesday afternoon. Ironically we finished the journey home in Granma and Gramps' cars as all trains to Coventry were cancelled due to a broken down freight train, and after going from one train to another for some time only to have each one cancelled, we finally were able to catch a very cramped rush hour train as far as Birmingham International and were picked up from there not long after Mum and Dad finished work not far away. Very handy grandparents indeed! So many thanks to our parents for our journeys all round, and a lovely weekend.

I asked Rachel this evening what she liked best about her birthday, and she thought for a moment and then with a huge smile she said "turning nine". :o)
She's enjoying growing up.

Easter Weekend

Our weekend was more focused on what happened to the Saviour all that time ago. We obviously didn't have chocolate eggs anyway even though coming up to easter Rebekah apparently though the special day was called Easter Egg Day. As it was our first easter with no sugar or chocolate at all in our diet, I explained that one to her. She soon figured out we could have fun without the chocolate though. It was a bit like Hannah before Christmas not thinking there would be stockings because we weren't eating those things anymore, which is funny because there never was much of that in their stockings anyway, but I guess what was there stood out as the highlight to her! Anyway, we figured that we'd prefer to have all of our easter fun on the Monday, and leave Easter Sunday to be a focus on the Saviour, which was fine with the children too. The girls did all wear matching purple dresses that we found greatly reduced last week. They were excited to all match. I didn't think to take a picture, but they all chose white tights, long white top. and black shoes to go with their dresses. Only their hair, height I suppose, and length of dresses (it only went up to age 7-8 for Rachel and Hannah instead of 8-9 or 9-10, so their dresses were shorter in comparison - still way worth it for them though!) could give them away. Several people at church get them mixed up anyway, so that probably didn't help! I know some people think it's fun to have siblings matching, others avoid it totally, but our girls are always wanting to (even with the oldest nearly 9 and the youngest not quite 4) so this was their chance.

On Monday, we had our Family Home Evening in the afternoon as we tend to do, and that consisted of the following:

Song and prayer
Lesson: reading what happened in the Saviour's life up until his ascension into heaven
Learning part of a new song
Refreshments: pancakes, and a fruit flower
Activities: 1 - Decorating the bags the girls received from Will, Trisha, Naomi and Lydia for Christmas (finally)!

Here's a picture of their bags once decorated - they finally shared the flowers all out in arrangements that everyone was happy with. Peter has one of Rachel's bags that he has become especially attached to(!) and Daddy has the easter bunny who is about to start their egg hunt:



2 - Using their newly-decorated bags to collect with, an Easter treasure hunt (clues on paper eggs, and some plastic ones to find along the way filled with grapes, a plum and some money, and a surprise gift at the end. They each had their own trail to follow around the house (a different colour to find for each person), so people were running here there and everwhere for a while, especially once they got the hang of only picking up their own colour!
3 - Each planting their own herb to care for (a part of their gift at the end)
More singing and a prayer.

We lasted most of the afternoon and had a lot of fun. It's really what we'd have done out of a family home "evening" anyway, but gathering it all together was more fun in a way.


I thought you might enjoy these clips too. When they decorated their paper eggs on Saturday, Hannah helped Peter do a few. Those two always have a lot of fun together. Hannah is fantasic with Peter - she loves to get him doing things, has great fun playing with him, and always knows just how to get him involved. At tea on Saturday because they had spent so much time together (and she'd dished up his food to cool on his plate while we got everyone to the table) Peter wouldn't accept his plate of food when I gave it to him. He frowned and pushed it away, and then took it happily and started eating when Hannah then handed it to him! Cheeky boy. He was obviously enjoying his Hannah time immensely. :o) Anyway, this happened while Rachel and I were in the dining room sticking the last bits of paper onto eggs. The paper cuttings started off in a little pile! ... Oh, and you get to see the lovely gaps where Hannah's teeth are growing too!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

We wanted to wish you all happy easter. I started cutting up some paper on Friday afternoon and the girls started decorating easter egg shapes to decorate the house with and to put on cards. Of course only those we'll actually see this weekend will get a card because getting organised to post things around bank holidays just really isn't possible! Sorry! We hope you'll enjoy some of our favourites here though, and have a most lovely Easter Sunday, as we also hope to be doing.

Mother's Day fun

It was Mother's Day for those of us in England last Sunday. All of the women received a couple of daffodils and a little bookmark from the children at church. It's lovely having a few fresh flowers around - something we haven't had in ages. Some of the girls made me some cards the day before too - I had to keep out of the way while that was going on (that was meant to be a relaxing hour on my own reading, but ending up being me making tea/dinner in the kitchen instead.:o))

Granma came to our church today, invited by my brother, and went to their house for lunch after where she was joined by Gramps. They were coming to see us for tea, and did eat a bit but in the end had only just eaten with David and Rachael, so they nibbled a bit and Dad entertained us a little. He doesn't mean to be funny, he just often is! We hardly ever see him, and we miss him a great deal - it's fun to have him around. We also hadn't seen my Mum for a couple of months as she has been working for a while now. Rebekah has been pleading regularly to go to their house, but we have no car to get us there easily now and can't afford the train fare either. So Rebekah was over the moon that Granma would be coming for tea.

Anyway, it was really fun seeing them for a bit. We had to quietly get out the camera before we could catch any of Dad/Gramps demonstrating to the girls one of the pieces of music Torvil and Dean had danced to. It was just ordinary conversation, and then he started putting on a little show that I just wanted to keep to remind the girls. I missed the liveliest parts (most of it actually), but you get the idea. Gramps is fun! :o)



When Mum read our post about the Noah game she said she wanted to try it, but didn't know if she could keep from laughing. So we also made time for a little go of the Noah game (our sign-language version of it). Choosing all of our animals took a little while as we had to like the sign of the animal we had chosen! Granma was right about the laughing!! I was too busy with Peter to get it mostly and when I was done the batteries dies, but again, you get the idea:



Can you guess what all of the animals were?

A walk in the woods

This was actually our family home evening (on Thursday morning, a week or so ago :o)). It was really fun. We sat in the woods near our home and read a story together and had a little lesson. It was really fun singing in the woods too - so beautiful and peaceful there when your right in the middle of it, despite the road not being too far away, especially now spring is on its way. Then we went for more of a walk collecting sticks to make various items with. Sarah made a great broom, and Rebekah wanted to stick to making a teepee. Michael put a roof on top, and we found a stick that had two built-in coat pegs, so Sarah wanted to try that one out - Rebekah did too but was very cold! Rachel and Hannah wanted to try a table between them, which is still in production, and Peter just loved eating dirt, climbing, and sliding down a dirt bank - it does make a perfect slide (he did it by accident when we were there the previous afternoon, and went straight back to do it again, and he obviously knew the spot when we got there again as he sat right down just as he would do at the top of a slide and slid right down :o) ). We'd have taken longer to finish off our creations - we were having a lovely time - but the girls were due to be picked up to go to a friend's house so we had to go. Such a lovely thing to do though.