Happy Halloween 2011!



Every  Halloween we have our traditional Halloween dinner before going out to trick or treat.  We put a fun halloween tablecloth on, use Halloween paper party plates and napkins (easy clean up), and get out the plastic halloween goblets I bought at the dollar store years ago.  If I can get some dry ice we have smoking rootbeer along with some other fun concoctions before they head out to load up on candy.  We love the fun side of Halloween!

Zombie eyes and monster teeth



Brains complete with roaches






Jack o' Lantern cheeseball




Mummy dogs







Easter Traditions

We are working on making and continuing some family traditions, especially around the holidays.  Check out some of our traditions for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

We have some fun ones for Easter as well.  Each day this week we have talked about one of the events of the last week of Jesus Christ's life and made a picture time line.

  

We have put in a request to the Easter Bunny for a Saturday delivery and so we have our hunt for baskets and eggs on Saturday mornings. 

Then our neighborhood has a wonderful egg hunt and pot luck breakfast down the street.  This year the Easter Bunny himself made an appearance!

We save Easter Sunday for our celebrations of the true meaning of Easter.  This afternoon, we watched two videos "He is Risen" from Living Scriptures, and "The Testaments" which is produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.  We then had our traditional "Resurrection Eggs" hunt.  The children are blindfolded (3 days of darkness in the Americas) and taken to various parts of the house.  They must then find their way to "Bountiful" (the family room) while overcoming obstacles and destruction (overturned chairs etc) that happened at Jesus' death.  As they make their way to Bountiful, they must also find the 12 eggs and bring them with them.  We then take turns opening the eggs in order and discussing the symbolism.

After dinner we then made "Resurrection Rolls" which the kids love and ask about every year. 

As a final Easter gift, inspired by this talk in General Conference, Paul and I presented the kids with large framed prints of a temple to hang in their rooms.

All in all, it was a wonderful day.  Though we had some squables and consequences as on any other day, it turned out to be special and memorable.

The Leprechauns came again!

Did you know that leprechauns visit us at our house?  They do!  They come during the night.  This year we discovered a new secret... if you draw a picture of a leprechaun and leave it in your shoe outside your door, the leprechauns will take you picture and leave you a treat.  We should have copied our pictures before the leprechaun took them.  We will have to remember next year.   They were really cute!  The leprechauns left us rainbow licorice and Rolo gold.

They also left us a treasure hunt!  The night before, we always leave our little pot out on the kitchen table.  When the leprechauns visit they fill the pot with toys and gold coins and then hide it.  Their footprints lead us to the first clue of our riddle treasure hunt!

The excitement didn't end there!  During our green St. Patrick's Day dinner we had another surprise.  We were busy eating our green linguine, broccoli, asparagus, green grapes, apples and kiwi with sourdough bread, when from the chandelier, one of the light covers and lightbulb fell onto the bread plate in the middle of the table shattering everthing and spreading glass shards over the entire surface of the table!  It seems the ring securing the light cover failed and it all came down.  Needless to say, dinner was over more quickly than anticipated.