Easter Eggings and Huntings

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carrots (and turmeric sprinkled in) for yellow eggs & frozen blueberries for a blue/gray & yellow onion skins for red.

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lots of waxiness.  crayons on hot eggs makes for a cool effect (thanks for the tip mom a).

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3 crafty kids, 1 sleeping toddler, and the momma

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you might be wondering what happened to the other dozen.  they were either dropped, eaten, smooshed, or in other ways not worthy for the hunt.  

Spencer spent forever coloring this egg with a silver crayon.  In fact, it might be the only one that he decorated.
He specifically asked that I put this on the blog.  I found that funny.  We really never talk about our blog, even though the kids look at it often enough.

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Although the bigger kids were way into hunting eggs, Jiles lost interest after a very short time.  He was more interested in feeding the cat a smooshed egg that I stepped on.

Or just wandering around.

 Ezra has asked me countless times since Easter when we are going to have Easter again and hunt for eggs.  The kids put on a few mock hunts since;  they loved it that much.  And they love eating all the hard-boiled eggs, even though the peel about half the white along with the shell.  We have about 2 dozen left.  Egg salad anyone?

More Cousins and Some Floodiness

I think that Eunice is sick of so many kids running around here lately.  They're unpredictable and she doesn't quite know how to handle it.  Should she dart here, or there?  Should she run through the crowd, or turn around and jump the fence?  

We had more cousins and uncles and aunts come, let's see, almost 2 weeks ago now.  This time from Weston's side.  4 of Weston's 5 brothers and their families.  They came for the round up. 

There was:

Ammon and Leslie and their babe, Jaxon (11 months) came from Utah;

Tyson came all the way from Arizona;

Jamon and Staci and little Liam (91/2 months) also came from Utah;

and Daron and Jamee, with her 25-ish week pregnant self, and their children, Olivia (7), Carter (6), and Brigham (3) came from Nevada.  

Oh yes, and Kyle (11)!  He is the oldest son of Weston's oldest brother.  He came up with Daron and Jamee since they live in the same town.  That was a treat having him her with us even though the rest of his family couldn't come.  

They set a record "working" (branding, castrating, ear marking, vaccinating) 170 some calves in 5 hours.  They all grew up doing it and they have a system.  I think that they think that it is fun to do.  It's a smelly, loud place down at the barn when they're working cattle and I would rather not be there.  Sometimes I'll go down to take pictures, but I didn't even want to do that this time.  Sorry, calf-workers; I didn't document.

I did get some pix, however.

Mostly of this little crew: 

Olivia and Kate wearing their matching Grandma jammies; Ezra, Carter and Brigham wearing their matching Grandma jammies; Carter and Ezra doing the "no laugh race" while Grandma sings it; in the bunk room with Grandpa telling the kids the story of Daniel in the lion's den and the importance of praying (with the help of Henry the stuffed animal puppet) 

The first morning, which was a Saturday morning, the kids woke up early, got dressed, and headed to Grandma's house (this is pretty much what they do whenever there are cousins here).

I don't know where Spencer was.  I guess he was either already up there or still asleep.  It is only Kate and Ezra in the picture.

They met the cousins on the lawn and ran around like crazy maniacs in their barefeet.  The  cousins were still in their jammies.

Oh look, Jiles was still in his jammies, too.

Yeah, they had a great time together.  Probably the highlight of their play, for THEM, was the finding and catching of the 2 baby mice, which they named Buddy and Jully (pronounced Julie).  They made a habitat up on G & G's dirt hill.  G & G LOVED that! (heh heh)

Daron, Jamee, and kids and Ammon, Leslie and Jaxon left after church on Sunday to head back home.  

When we came home from church we noticed the creek was super high, like higher than we have ever seen it, so we went on a 4-wheeler ride to check it out.

Here's a comparison picture:  

September vs. April, same place, same tree branch.

A little stream in the fall, a raging river by spring.

No one wanted to ride with the prego on my little, jumpy, change-gears-with-your-toe 4-wheeler, so they all piled on with Daddy for the sight seeing.  Fine with me.  

We ran into G & G, Tyson, and the Jamon and Staci family who were also out to witness all the floodiness.

Oh my, isn't he a cutie.  

(I wish that I had gotten a picture of little Jaxon, too, dang it!)

Just wanna squeeze that chubbiness!

Project: Under The Big Top

The Annual School Carnival.

It's pretty much our PTO (parent teacher organization) fundraiser of the year.

Our PTO, like our school, is tiny.

As in tiny I mean like 12 sets of parents (which usually only a third come to meetings) and 4 teachers.

We had lots of donations and help with food.  It was great.

The decorating was the fun part.

It was a project, yet fun.

This year's theme was:

UNDER THE BIG TOP!

Totally a fun theme to decorate around = I loved it.

To decorate, we (like 4 of us) used what we had so that we didn't have to spend anything.

I took a lot of stuff from home to use.  Is that weird to be able to use your normal home decor to decorate for a circus?  Yeah, probably.

Made some stuff, too.

(pictures from my craft room at home)

Like: a 40-foot or so banner; another red tissue pom pom (had 2 already, which were totally ashy since they've been hanging by the woodstove all winter, so they needed a good shake); lots (and lots) of letters cut out of paper, felt and fabric; signs; and yeah, and whatever else (we shall see in the rest of the pix).

IN THE FOYER:

Pay here please.  Thrifted shutter (really long) that I had already painted black made a good chalk board and sign; the old school desk from our library at home; entrance curtains taken from my bathroom closet.

bulletin board in the foyer made over with a red table cloth; signs for prices, games, and times made with scrap fabric; the theme in "balloons" made from embroidery hoops, fabric, felt and yarn

ENTER THE CARNIVAL:

One of the moms decorated the booth for the wheel of fortune game since that was the game she ran.  I love her outfit!  We all decided to dress up circus-y.  (She was a gypsy, there were clowns, and a harlequin. I was a lion tiger tamer.  We couldn't find our kid lion costume, just the tiger one, so Ezra was my tiger.  I had a whip and hoop for my tiger to jump through.  Weston took a picture of us, but it turned out super duper blurry.)  The big top is the p.e. parachute from school draped over (and tied to) a canopy tent thing that our PTO president owns.  The blue rug is from my kids' bathroom.

The cake walk is always the most popular event.  When you win you get to pick a whole cake or plate of cookies!  The blue curtains are my bathroom curtains, and there's a red pompom. 

1. Theme "balloons" close-up.

2. Instead of doing p.e. the day before the carnival, I got to do an art project with the kids.  One of  the projects was painting the cans for the can toss.  I love how they turned out.

3. "Cakes" sign, just in case no one knew where the cakes were.

4.  The caricature booth that my brother-in-law did.  The fabric draped around it is what Kate picked out for the curtains in her room.

5.  The "focal point", or center of the front wall.  Frame I spray painted red last year, with embroidery hoop with fabric and felt.  Red curtains from my bedroom, white and black curtains I hadn't hung up at home yet.

6. The PTO Pres.'s balloon animals booth that she did.  She did some great balloon animals.

7.  The other project I did with the kids at school.  We traced their hand, cut them out, and then they painted and decorated them with scrap fabric and paper that we had used for other things in the carnival.  They did the same thing to paper plates to make them look like balloons.  We taped curling ribbon to the back and taped them to the wall at the carnival, spacing the hands from the ribbon to look like they had just let them go.   I got the idea from a picture I remembered drawing in my journal like 12 years ago.  Kate's is the green hand and blue plate on the left, and Ezra's is the blue hand and red plate in the middle.  I wish that I had gotten a closer picture.  They turned out cute.

8.  A big photo-op board that a guy from our church made.  He is so talented!

9.  One of the games, the fishing pond.  I got that rug from IKEA a few years ago. I love it's stripey-ness.

Lots and lots of light and balloons and color!


Ezra the tiger!   One of the teachers in costume.  Kate adores her.

One of the former students waiting at the cake walk.

My adorable sister, Wendy, and her darling little Ellie.  My brother-in-law, Andy, and his artistic self running the caricature booth.  There was always a line for his booth. (THANKS, ANDY!)

After the games portion was done, the lights came back on for dinner and the auction.  It was a fun and busy night, and very successful, fundraiser wise.  Thanks to all who helped out, came out, and donated!

We left with a bunch of balloons.  They hitched a ride home.  They are still here in my house, deflated, yet here.

And, just so you know, this is what my craft room looks like post-carnival, after making stuff (and I always think of stuff last minute, so everything is made in a hurry, which equals a mess) with 2 preschoolers under foot each making just as much of a mess as I do:

Like a major fabric/paper/whatever else bomb went off in there.
Yeah, gotta go clean that.
It's worth it, though.