Everything's Better with Sprinkles on Top

This week has gotten off to a great start!  Seriously.  I'm not being sarcastic.  The weather is taking a turn for the beautiful, and I think EVERYONE was excited and ready to go back to school this morning.  The kids all made it to the bus stop this morning without a single hiccup and I was able to clean the kitchen and run to Target before preschool time, AND -- while Alex was napping and everyone else was at school -- I had time on my hands to make a fun and fabulous treat for Family Home Evening tonight!

Ever since my sister, Emily, put up pictures from Pearce's birthday party, my kids have been dying to have these chocolate-dipped-sprinkle-covered-oreos.  And while they were definitely more time-consuming than I have the patience to make on a weekly basis, they turned out really well and weren't too difficult once I got the hang of it.

Emily sent me the link she found via Pinterest to make these Oreo Pops.  Since Sophie is allergic to white chocolate {there's dairy in it}, we HAD to make a safe version for her as well.  :)  Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips are always our go-to treat for her since they are completely dairy-free and she loves them.  I have to say -- I think the dark chocolate ones turned out just as pretty as the white chocolate ones! 

Ghiradelli white chocolate chips were used for the white ones.

Like I said, this week is off to a great start.  The weather has warmed up nicely and the kids played outside for most of the afternoon.  And after an entire week of being parked inside in front of the TV or computer, I'm not even going to complain that no one got their chores done.  Hahaha.  I'll take what I can get.  After a hastily thrown together "free space" dinner {i.e. there weren't as many leftovers as I thought and everyone basically ended up eating cereal}, we pounded out a quick FHE lesson trying to get the kids prepped and excited for General Conference this weekend.  After giving my talk in church yesterday -- which was all about preparing for, making the most of, and letting the melody linger on with regards to Conference -- I figured I should probably practice what I preach!  Hahaha.  

In all honesty, though, I really am excited for Conference and love to hear our leaders speak to us.  Going to Women's Conference with Grace this weekend was a really sweet and touching preamble to what we'll be able to experience this weekend.  The most tender aspect of all from this weekend was seeing Grace actually listen and take notes {complete with illustrations} for the majority of the meeting!  It seriously made me cry.  And even though I knew she was only doing it because I promised her ice cream on the way home if she did, the spirit touched my heart as I read through her notes and I really believe it touched hers, too.  

While preparing for my talk, I looked back through a LOT of conferences addresses.  Like a LOT.  Five years' worth to be exact.  So, to close -- and to continue our Conference Weekend prep -- I thought I'd list my top 5 of the past 5.  The five talks that I remember the most and that resonated with me the deepest over the last 5 years of Conference:

• Reflections on a Consecrated Life
• Being Temperate in All Things
• Stay on the Path
• Happiness, Your Heritage
• The Laborers in the Vineyard
• Of Things that Matter Most
• Helping Other Recognize the Whisperings of the Spirit

{Okay, yes.  I can count.  And yes -- there are 7 links up there and not 5.  What can I say???  It's really hard to have a shortlist of favorites!}

Happy Monday everyone!!!

Spring Broken

This has been a frazzling kind of week.  The house has been an abomination, bedtimes have been almost non-existent, and the weather has been less than cooperative.  Spring break has most definitely broken ME.  All in all, it has led me to think that boarding school sounds like a really great option.  Hahaha.  Just kidding, just kidding.   Although only kind of.  :)

While we didn't have anything "big" or "fun" planned for the week, it seems as though our "vacation" was still jam-packed with all kinds of things we needed to get done.  In hindsight, I'm realizing that scheduling all of the appointments I did during spring break week so that I wouldn't have to pull them out of school was not the best idea of all time.  Luckily, the week ended on a better note than it started, when Scott took Friday off at the last minute and I got to attend Women's Conference last night with the oldest of my little women.  Just call me Marmee.  Hahaha.  I was also able to FINALLY sit down and write out my talk for today by parking it in front of the computer for most of yesterday while Scott entertained the masses for me.  This week has been rough...

Here for your viewing pleasure are the highlights and the lowlights of our week.  And just to make it extra fun, I'll let you guess which ones are which.  

Up first?  Snow! Yes it's true we had an actual, real live, honest to goodness mini-snowstorm on one of the days this week.  Thankfully, it all melted as soon as the snow stopped, but still.

 My gourmet pizza lunch.  Seriously SO good.  And you would never believe it, but it's made with a cauliflower crust.  I pretty much follow the recipe here, but for this particular pizza I skipped the sauce and just sliced tomatoes to put on top along with a couple of pepperonis and a few bell peppers. And cheese, of course.   Then I sprinkled it all with a little bit of basil, oregano and garlic salt.  It was EASILY the highlight of that day.  :)

 IKEA

Kids Eat Free Tuesday!

{Not pictured:  Our failed attempt at going to an animal shelter for Grace to find a dog.  We were running late and got to the place 15 minutes before closing where we then discovered that most of the dogs had just been taken off for fostering.  To ease the pain of this discovery (along with the fact that we will most likely NOT be getting a dog for a trial run any time soon), Grace picked out "Stacy" at IKEA to take the place of one of her Christmas presents.  It's complicated.}

 Swiper swiped a WHOLE lot.

 Jane created some more artwork.

and WARNING! WARNING! GRUESOME PICTURES AHEAD!

 Jane had a dentist appointment.  After we were home for a little while, she asked for a snack.  I gave her one not thinking about the fact that her mouth might be numb still.  Jane obviously wasn't thinking about it either.  The end result was a huge chunk bitten out of the inside of her lip while eating her bell pepper snack.

The horror, the horror.

This happened on Thursday afternoon, and if anything it looked WORSE the next day.  Her lip is still swollen to twice its normal size and it looks absolutely terrible.  :(

Off to the Mingle and Treat before the Women's Broadcast last night.

And that was basically our week.  Interspersed amongst all that is pictured were appointments with the counselor for both Ethan and Grace {which went very well, thankfully}, an excursion or two to get ice cream, an EXPLOSION of rainbow loom rubber bands ALL. OVER. THE. HOUSE. thanks to Lover Boy, and a ton of other messes thanks to Alex and Jane as well.  Not to mention lots and LOTS of TV watching, Wii playing, and Movie Nighting.  

Now that Spring Break is over, my talk is done, and there's no Relief Society lesson for me to plan this week thanks to General Conference next Sunday, I am looking forward to a relaxing and stress-free week.  And hopefully lots less frazzle!  Hahahaha. Here's to the start of a GREAT week.  :)

First Day Freebie

We've survived Day 1 of Spring Break!  Barely.  Although, I guess I should wait to post that sentence until Ethan has finally settled down and gone to sleep.  You see, I decided to keep with recent tradition and make the first day of vacation be a "Freebie" day -- which basically means the kids can do whatever they want for the whole day so long as it didn't involve money and I don't have to take them anywhere.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Not a shabby way to kick off the week's festivities.  And for the majority of the day it worked rather swimmingly.  By the end, though, we were beginning to see that this idea works much better in theory than in actuality.  Because, unfortunately, there is no such thing as "free" in real life -- everything comes with a price.  And tonight's price was a 2 hour temper tantrum from son number one.  But first.  Here's a recap of our day!

 The above scene pretty much captures the essence of today.

• The gym was checked off the list first thing in the morning with the 3 youngers partying it up at the Kids Klub.

• TV was watched and Wii was played for the majority of the day.

• MANY a mess was made.

{Not pictured -- the kitchen, the front hall, the bathrooms, the bedrooms, and the trampoline.}

• Games were devised with ingenuity.

Alex and Jane have been using this piece of molding over and over again for the last few days as a race track for their cars.  No matter how many times I take it away and try to hide it {it needs to be reinstalled over the blinds in the computer room} they continue to find it and play with it.  Today they discovered that marbles roll down just it just as easily as cars.

• A successful shoe shopping trip was finally accomplished on my part.  And grocery trip was accomplished as well.

• Ethan periodically pounded it out on the piano and treated us to some new material playing his very own compositions.  They're kind of works in progress.

• I channeled my inner flapper.

• Grace spent most of the morning lounging in her bed watching a movie on the iPad.  She also wore me down into agreeing to possibly go and look for dogs at a rescue shelter tomorrow. 

• Dinner was improvised after realizing that the sloppy joe's I had planned would not be possible due to not having any meat in the freezer after all.  And since I didn't want to go to the store AGAIN this evening, I whipped up some homemade tortillas instead.  Canned black beans and shredded cheese comprised the filling.  Luckily, I had picked up more salsa when I was at the store earlier and we still had some sour cream left as well.  Crisis averted!

 {Recipe for "Best Ever Homemade Flour Tortillas" found via Pinterest.  They really are delicious.  The only change I make is to use whole wheat flour for 1 of the 3 cups in the recipe.  I've tried substituting more, but it makes them a LOT tougher to roll out.}

• Outside fun was had as well -- once the kids finally turned off the TV in the afternoon. 

 Diaper Glossner wanted to jump on the trampoline with the big kids as well.  When I told him it was too cold and he had to get dressed, pulling on his snow bibs was his solution.  Hahahaha.

Seriously, seriously hilarious looking.  Even funnier was when he came running in about 5 minutes later saying he was cold.  I told him he needed to put his coat on, but he refused while running past me and said he needed gloves instead.  Hahahaha.  That crazy little man found 2 mismatched gloves, put them on, and ran back outside to jump while still refusing the coat I tried to put on him.  {Don't worry, though, because he DID eventually come back in and let me put it on.}

• And finally, a third broom since we've moved here was broken by Ethan while trying to sweep Jane's flour off the trampoline.  Yes.  Flour.  She was jumping with it in a plastic baggie and gravity intervened. 

So there you have it.  A basic recap of the day.   By the end, though, everyone was beginning to unravel, and the extreme worst case disaster scenario of the house didn't help anyone's moods or tempers.  After getting all the little ones in bed, Ethan threw a knock down drag out fit {once again} about wanting a later bedtime and has since spent the last 2 hours steadily refusing to go to bed, sporadically banging on the piano to wake everyone up, and kicking and screaming at both Scott and I just for good measure.  Once he finally went up, he banged on Jane's door for a bit {although at least she was still awake} and then went and poured water on a sleeping Grace.  So yeah.  I'd say "Freebie Day" has participated in its last rodeo.  To end on a positive note, I think everyone's excited for "Kids Eat Free" day tomorrow at IKEA.  Happy Spring everyone!  :)

Egg Drop Soup

"Take pictures for the blog, mom!"  Per request, I'm putting up all these pictures of our Sunday afternoon activity.  Please forgive the photo dump. 

Having 9 o'clock church this year is mostly for the best, even if it does get a bit rocky at times when we're all at home in the afternoon and "there's nothing to do!"  Today, however, was saved when Scott jumped on board with Ethan's all-day-long request to have an egg dropping contest over the railing in our front hall.  Teaming up with Sophie and Jane, Scott took the lead in creating their egg-holding apparatus while Ethan and Grace teamed up to work on their own.  Meanwhile, I tried to console a tired little nap-missing Lover Boy who was having an absolute meltdown because I wouldn't let him play on my phone.

Sophie and Jane worked on tearing up lots and lots of little bits of paper to provide cushioning for the egg.

Scott made sure to protect the floor from any harm.

Seriously, seriously a mess.

Trying to figure out the passcode.

Everyone was SUPER excited when the time came to test out their handiwork.  They even got dressed up for the occasion.  Oh wait.  No they didn't.  Hahaha.  I kind of love that everyone came home from church and changed right into their comfy clothes or jammies, but Grace took it to the next level when she suited up in the footsie jammies that she just inherited as a Hannah-down from the cousins when they came to visit this weekend.  Never one to pass up a cool trend, Jane quickly followed in her footsie-steps {Hahahahahaha.  Get it??} and donned a pair of dinosaur jammies that I had just dug out for Alex this morning. 

{In case you are wondering, that is Grace's "mole" which she drew for herself and was super excited to have visible in all of these pictures.}

Scott made the first drop with their team's contraption.  The result?  A lot of sad faces.  Their egg did not pull through in the clutch.

After the inaugural drop was complete, Ethan was chomping at the bit to get up there and try out their team's handiwork.  And as you can see from their beaming faces in the picture below it was a success. 

Not so successful?  That would be Jane's drop.  But what else would you expect from a raw egg falling from the second floor of a house?  Hahaha.  After this drop, Ethan got a little too excited about dropping the eggs unencumbered over the railing and splattered a couple more before being shut down decisively by the authorities at large.

Poor little egg.

The Great Egg Drop of 2014 was a success despite the casualties that we experienced.  It certainly kept the kids happy and occupied for the bulk of the afternoon, which -- when you think about it -- is no small feat!  Here's to hoping Spring Break is off to a GREAT start.  :)  {A mother can always dream, right???}

Snapshots

Featuring blurry cell phone pictures of the day.  {Although the most hilarious pic of all, I've deemed unfit for public consumption.  It involves a pair of Spiderman underpants.  And Alex.  Haha.}  Here is how today went...

Once the kids were off to school, I spent the first hour of the morning cleaning up the main floor of the house.  For whatever reason -- perhaps it's the five kids -- the kitchen and family room cannot stay clean to save our lives.  And it doesn't help that the kitchen continues to be the Achilles' heel of our whole family chore operation.  You would think they were all allergic to cleaning it up.  The result is that if I don't get on top of it in the morning, it will never get cleaned at any other point in the day. 

Once everything was nice and neat and tidy, I was pleased to see Alex and Jane voluntarily removing themselves from pbskids.org in order to play together, and I decided to tackle a project that I started before my trip to Utah and never finished.  Back in the fall, I found a dress on clearance at Old Navy that I liked, but was just a tad bit too short.  I figured it should be easy enough to add a band of fabric to the bottom to extend the length, so I bought the dress and brought it home and then left it hanging in the closet {and then crumpled in a heap on the floor} for the next 5 or so months. 

Before.

During.

After.

Even though the level of difficulty for alterations on this dress was relatively low, working on it reminded me once again of how frustrated I get when trying to sew anything other than quilts.  Me and the seam ripper spent a LOT of time together this morning.  Haha.  While I was working like the proverbial bee, I was entertained by the sounds of Alex and Jane playing in the background.  Believe it or not, Tiana was the highly coveted Disney Princess Little People of the day and Jane had a merry old time taking it away from Alex again and again and then hiding it.  Once they moved on to playing superheroes, all was quiet on the kid front for a few minutes until I started hearing them shout, "Stab! Stab! Stab!" with gusto and force.  Like any good mother, I figured it was probably time to set my own project aside and go and check on the children.  As I walked into the family room, I found them maiming a cardboard box with plastic kid knives from IKEA. 

{Jane was especially into the stabbing part of this tableau.}

After deciding they probably weren't going to hurt each other, I went back to the sewing machine and finished up my task in just the nick of time before having to feed them lunch and get Jane to preschool.  I even got dressed in real clothes for the occasion.

Shameless full body shot selfie.  I'm working on trying to make less weird faces when I take them.  Clearly I've still got some work to do.

During naptime, I worked -- unsuccessfully -- for about 45 minutes on my lesson for Relief Society on Sunday and then decided I should try again tomorrow and work instead on finding something for the kids to eat for a snack after school.  I had just enough time to whip up some applesauce oatmeal muffins before leaving to pick up Jane, so I turned the oven on and got mixing.  It was only when I opened the oven up some 15 minutes later to put the muffins in to bake that I discovered the following horror:

That, my friends, is a completely melted plastic popsicle mold that I assumed Jane had stuck in there sometimes this morning.  I assumed right.  After turning off the oven and cleaning out the mess, I still managed to get the muffins in on time and ran to get Jane who confirmed that she had indeed been trying to "make popsicles" this morning and had stuck the mold in the oven for pretend.   New life lesson learned -- always check the oven before turning it on.  

The afternoon and evening passed swiftly by and since Scott got home a bit early from work today to watch a little March Madness, I seized the opportunity to run a few errands after dinner without any children to slow me down.  Before leaving, I ran up to my room to grab the shoes I needed to return and found Swiper-No-Swiping on the iPad in my bed, snuggled up with elephant and watching Superman cartoons on Netflix.

That sneaky little Swiper.  Hahaha.

Twinsies!  You can see by the look on Ethan's face that he is merely humoring my request to get a picture before I left.

Before running out the door, I had to snap one quick shot of my boys wearing the Superman shirts that were so lovingly and enthusiastically picked out by Lover Boy.  Ethan's is the newest acquisition which Alex glommed onto during our last trip to Target.  Like I've said before, Alex REALLY loves Target.  Probably because most of his favorite superhero paraphernalia have come from there.  Haha.  

Once I was home from running my errands, I finished off my day by taking a couple of pictures of my "new" dress to get a fresh perspective on its aesthetic before deciding what to do with it.  After poring over the image, and hemming and hawing over the styling, I have to say I'm still on the fence about this dress.  I don't know if I love the color-blocking of it, and I kind of think the length is now slightly too long.  As in it looks kind of matronly.  And cuts me off at the widest part of my calf.  I'm also undecided about the blue color of the dress and ultimately I question whether or not I'll ever actually wear this out in public. 

Hmmmm.

Hmmmm?  Hmmm.

I still don't know.  I think I will take up the new hem by half and then see what I think.  If I'm still not in love, perhaps I'll save it for Grace.  She really likes it.  And I really like her.  Hahaha.  Until next time...