Orville Anderson Tarkington Moose

Isn't that just the cutest name you've ever heard?  Orville Anderson Tarkington Moose is the main character in one of my favorite children's books, called Antlers Forever by Frances Bloxam.

It's a sweet story about a young moose who is alarmed to find that his antlers are loose one day.  The rhyming and rhythmic language make it fun to read and fun to listen too.  And and I just love to say 'Orville Anderson Tarkington Moose'!

Sunday School Crafts

We had our last day of Sunday School this past week and we had a celebration for Mother's and Father's Day.  We figured the Dad's get a little short-changed because we don't have Sunday school or regular school on Father's Day so we had a party for both!  It was a big success and here are the gifts my class made for their parents.

This was easy, but still turned out really cute.  I found these mugs at a surplus store for 50 cents each.  We just cut out a tie, glued a printed tag on a skewer, and filled it with candy.

I'm bummed that I never actually got a picture of the present for the Mom's, but I'll post pictures and links to the sites where I got the ideas from.  They turned out super cute!  I had made an extra as an example, but I gave it to a student who had been gone the week we painted.  

This was my inspiration.

Here's the site: http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2012/04/stenciled-mason-jar-vase-for-mothers-day.html

We painted the inside of a mason jar, wrapped a strip of burlap around it (no stenciling) then tied a string on with beads spelling 'Mom'. 

We filled our jars with the following paper flowers.

Hand print lilies - found here: 

http://easypreschoolcraft.blogspot.jp/2012/03/eastermothers-day-hand-print-lily-craft.html

And these poofy little things - found here:

http://www.2littlesuperheroes.com/2012/11/paper-flowers.html/

The instructions for this one says to use origami paper that comes in 4.5" x 4.5" squares, but I just cut up some scrapbooking paper that I had - I used 6"x 6" squares - worked perfectly.  And instead of using wire and washi tape, we used pipe cleaners and scotch tape.  The double sided tape was a must as well.

All the kids' jars and flowers turned out so cute!  I hope their parents like them as well!

My Mother's Day Gifts

In addition to a wonderful day spent with my kiddos, I also got some awesome gifts from them.

Mackenzie planted and grew this flower at school - not sure what it is yet, but we'll wait and see!

In Sunday School, she painted this pot and planted another flower for me!

Rylan made this footprint butterfly and hand cut-outs in Sunday School.

On Saturday he asked for a piece of paper and a pencil and told me I couldn't peek at what he was doing.  He wrote this poem for me - all by himself!  I love it so much!  It says:

"To mommy from Rylan - Tops are spinning so are you, theres red and blue and yellow to.  I hoped you enjoyed it."  I love his spelling so much!

In school on Friday, his class invited all the moms to school for a little Mother's Day celebration.  It was the best!  First the kids read the book, "I'll Love You Forever".  They each had a specific section to read, and they had all illustrated their own piece.  Rylan's picture is below - his part to read was, 

And while she rocked him she sang: 

I'll love you forever, 

I'll like you for always,

As long as I'm living

my baby you'll be.

It's hard to see, but there's an arrow from the boy to the Mom's arms and in the red bubble it says, "I'll love you forever."  Yes, I cried!

Then each Mommy/child pair found a spot to sit together and the kids read to us a book they made about us.  Here is Rylan's book about me.

"My mom is good at cooking pizza"

"The funniest thing I can remember about my mom is we said a same word and we laughed and laughed and laughed."

"My favorite thing about my mom is she loves me."

"If I could give my mom something special from me it would be 100 dollar bill."

"My mom looks prettiest when she wears her necklace."

Then we got to make an art project together.

And finally we watched a slide show the teacher had put together.  A couple weeks ago she had asked for a baby picture of Rylan and a recent picture of him and I.  All the pictures were put to music with a poem about a mother's love.  I cried during that too!  It was such a special little celebration and really made all the Mom's feel loved!   Rylan has such an amazing teacher!

Crock Pot Breakfast

A new recipe!  It's basically an egg bake in a crock pot!  I made it for supper as I'm nervous about having the crock pot on all night without watching it.  Not that I'm scared it will burn the house down, but with a new recipe I'm never sure if my crock pot will cook the same as someone else's and I don't want to wreck a huge crock pot of food just because I wasn't checking on it.  It was easy though!

Brown sausage and onion

Spray your crock pot.

Put in a layer of hash browns, 

a layer of meat, 

and a layer of cheese.  Repeat those layers.

Whip together the eggs, dry mustard, sour cream, milk, salt and pepper.

Pour over everything in the crock pot.

Turn that baby on low for 8 hours and then enjoy!

Nick loved it just the way it was and so did Mackenzie.  She even had three helpings the first night and surprised herself by liking sausage!  WooHoo!  It's a springtime miracle!

I thought it was lacking a little, so I added cilantro to my plate - delicious!  And so much prettier!  Next time I will probably add a little more milk and maybe a few more eggs, I would have preferred it to be a little mushier.  Oh and more cheese.  The recipe called for 3/4 of a pound of cheese.  I have no idea how much that is, so I grabbed a couple handfuls out of my gigantic bag of cheese from the freezer, but it could have used more.  I mean really, it's pretty hard to make some TOO cheesy.

But I will definitely make this again - it would be perfect to throw together at night for the next morning when family is staying over.  Now that I know how it turns out, I'm not afraid to do it overnight!

We Were Happy On Mother's Day!

I didn't get pampered, I didn't get a nap, I was still full-time Mom, but Mother's Day was certainly happy for me!  On our way home after a busy morning of Sunday School and church, Rylan announced out of the blue that he wanted to play mini-golf sometime.  Nick's plan was to be in the field planting all day and the kids and I didn't have any plans, so I thought, let's do it!  After a quick lunch, the kids and I headed an hour south for some mini-golf fun.  We've never taken them, and I'm not sure why - we had such a great time!

Rylan got a hole-in-one!  His first time mini-golfing and he did really well!  He's even more excited to take golf lessons this summer.  (yes, he knows the difference between real golf and mini-golf!)

Mackenzie just kind of sweeps the ball along, but she had a great time too!

On this particular hole, you had to first hit the ball into a hole where it fell into some water, then it rolled down a little waterfall and popped out down below where the real hole was.  It took Mackenzie a few turns to get her ball into the first hole, but then when the waterfall spit it out - it went right in the hole, so we called it a hole-in-one for her too!  She was so excited!

I already can't wait to take them back!

Then we went to the zoo.  As always, the little playground is the best part.

I don't take many pictures at the zoo anymore because animal pictures just aren't as much fun as kid pictures.  So unless my kids are in the pictures with the animals, it's not worth it for me.  Places to interact with the animals are the best though!  The goats are usually the perfect spot for that, but today the goats weren't interested in the $0.25 food pellets you can buy.  Weird right?  I've never seen goats NOT clamoring all over each other and often times fighting to get closest to the fence.  But we found that the horse and cow were totally into the goats' rejects.  

I love this cow - he's so calm and sweet.  And it just cracked me up that he would just stick his tongue out and wait for someone to drop food on it.  

Goodbye zoo!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!  Especially to my wonderful Mom and Mother-in-law - love you both!

Adventures In Farming

I grew up on a farm and had many duties, but never really had to drive any big equipment.  Dad had us driving the skid loader to clean out barns or clear snow, but we never helped in the field.  Well, Rach and I didn't - I think Spencer probably did, but not until he was older.  Anyhow, so I've never really driven a big tractor back and forth in a field - until today!
Nick normally has guys ready to help with the farming, but today he had no one, so Mackenzie and I headed out to the field after bringing Rylan to school to do some plowing.  Nick gave me a little driving lesson and we were off!  I was nervous about doing something wrong or pushing the wrong buttons, but once I got it figured out, it was pretty easy.

Here we go!

Cutest little co-pilot you've ever seen!  We took a whole backpack full of stuff - 3 babies (big ones) 2 blankets, a stuffed bunny, and a sippy cup for her babies.  I also took the iPad along for her, but I never got it out.  She played with her babies a little bit, but then they needed a nap.  After she got them settled behind her seat, she just sat there and we talked and sang along with the radio.  We had such a good time!

Here's the plow we were pulling.

This one is blurry because I took the picture while we were going and it's just a little bumpy in a tractor.  It's a pretty sweet system.  The green is the field and the yellow parts are what I had already done, all I had to do was paint the field!  The best part is that it has auto-pilot so once you turn around in the headlands you just get it lined up with one of the lines, hit a button, and it stays right on track for you.  Can't get any easier than that!

I packed a lunch for us and we ate it on the go.

I found myself surprisingly satisfied with just driving back and forth at 9mph.  It was peaceful, and just a nice time to spend with Mackenzie.  I was also glad that I could be helpful to Nick.  

Well, I was helpful until I got stuck.  He had warned me to stay out of the wet spots and I was probably overly careful to stay away, but this one came out of nowhere, it didn't even look wet!  And I was so close to being done - only a few acres left!!!!  I rocked it back and forth hoping to inch my way out, but when it just kept going deeper I knew I had to quit.  I was feeling so proud of myself and hoping Nick would be impressed that we had finished before noon, but then I had to call him and give him the bad news.  I got it stuck pretty good too.  See for yourself.

So, Mackenzie and I got out and had to walk about 200 yards to the car and she ended up being late for school, but that wasn't a big deal.  I was just bummed that Nick then needed to use up his afternoon to drive another machine all the way out there to pull it out.  I'm so thankful for such a wonderful husband though - I thought he would be frustrated with me, but he assured me it was no big deal, that everyone gets stuck, and even asked if I want to plow more tomorrow.  Is it strange that I was daydreaming about when both kids are in school full time and I can be in a tractor from 8:30am to 2:30pm without stopping?!  

Finally Spring!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks! I've been wanting to blog, but I also have so many other things on my to-do list, blogging has taken a backseat. And the weather has finally been warm and beautiful, we've been spending a lot of time outside. So all I have for you today is a picture of our afternoon snack, on the patio. Another glorious afternoon!

And yes, that's Mackenzie's baby in the stroller. She has been favoring this baby over her little ones, especially when it fits so well in the umbrella stroller we still have.