T-Ball Preseason

This is our first year in t-ball and we're loving it. 

Hanging out at one of Clark's practices

The parade - what a fun time that was! Kent had on perma-smile. It was priceless! Kent's a Riptide. I was in charge of planning and making the banner. The kids all did such a great job with their handprints. I think the banner turned out cute and we won a runner up prize! Go us!

Clark's on the Saints (love the Saint Bernard!). We thought it was fitting since we're Saints. Ha!

Walking IN THE STREET! That was a pretty big deal for the both of them.

Our fans! Thanks for coming to support the boys Gigi and Kara!

Classic Clark

Love t-ball. So excited for the season!

Spring Break - Children's Museum

Spring Break was a lot of fun! We had a wonderful staycation and got a lot of great use out of our museum memberships! First stop was the Children's Museum. 

Ha - I think this is hilarious!

Kara and I played by the blocks and balls while the boys worked on gears and building. It was so fun to watch Kara. She was determined to hold all three balls in her hands at the same time. She would have one in each hand and then get this determined look on her face as she stretched her little fingers as far as she could to pick up the other ball. So cute.

Then the three of them all worked on towers together. Building and then Kara-zilla knocking down.

The boys loved the construction zone. Clark built a bi-plane and Kent built a racecar. There may have been a slight mommy meltdown as Kent was building the car, but the wonderful people of the museum jumped in to help him out. Thank goodness!

Penguins and Poison

The end of March/beginning of April was crazy with school projects. Clark had a penguin project for school and also the science fair project. They both turned out really well! He researched King Penguins and created a penguin out of a 2 liter bottle and some papier mâché. 

The class decorated their classroom like the Antarctic. It looked amazing. It was so fun to have Clark show us around and see how proud he was of his work.

Clark's poisonous snake project was really fun. He really knows a lot about snakes. I was quite impressed.

Love this one of the board in action. He was showing Gigi and Boompa how dangerous each snake was.

For the record: Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Brandon and Jenny also came to support Clark at the science fair.

The Monster Mash

...or maybe it was Monster Jam?!

Jason and his dad took the boys to Monster Jam again this year. Last year's event started Kent on his obsession with monster trucks. This year it rekindled the romance for him. I think the kids really loved going this time now that they knew what to expect. Jason was a little more excited too. He even wanted to make t-shirts for everyone. Everyone picked out their favorite monster truck picture and we printed it on ink jet paper and ironed it on to the shirts. Super easy - just had to follow the directions on the package.

Jason was so excited to see Max-D (upper left photo). I guess he came out and on the first run he flipped and didn't run again for the rest of the night. We joke about that a lot. Kent now is obsessed with El Toro Loco. He bought an El Toro Loco pillow for his souvenir. Clark still loves Grave Digger which is perfect since he wins all the time. His souvenir was a Grave Digger sword that I thought would be broken by now, but it's still slashing! They were all excited to see Iron Man. Clark loved the Zombie truck with its rotting flesh hanging off everywhere. Kent hated the Megasaurus that came out and ate cars. At least he didn't fall asleep this year!

They are already making plans for next year's big event. Hopefully they will be able to get pit passes next year and get close to the trucks. They will really love that. They tried this year, but it didn't work out. Next year it will!!

Winter OIympics 2014

We celebrated a LOT during February. We had Chinese New Year, the Superbowl and the Winter Olympics all in the first week or so! The kids were loving all of the fun stuff we did. I was just loving the food. Just keeping it real.

I decided that I wanted to have a little party to celebrate the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We made a paper chain out of the Olympic ring colors. I still have a bunch of strips leftover from our snake project from last Chinese New Year, so any time we can use our strips, we do. Here's what we did for Thanksgiving with more strips. And the leaves from Clark's family tree used these strips too!

For dinner we had Russian Blini. Oh. My. Goodness. Can I just say that I was instantly back in Russia when I took the first bite. The phrase for "blini with sweetened condensed milk" is one of the key phrases that I remember in Russian. That's how much I used to order them!! 

We used this recipe and they turned out so yummy. We had many different toppings to use: sweetened condensed milk (my favorite), strawberries, bananas, cream cheese fruit dip, chocolate spread, chocolate almond spread, chocolate hazelnut spread, powdered sugar, and maybe a few more things. I can't remember. It was fun to just try different combinations and see what we liked the best. I stand by my favorite of blini with sweetened condensed milk lightly dusted with powdered sugar on top. Oh, who are we kidding, you just load that thing up with powdered sugar! I won't be waiting until the next Russian Olympic games to make them though!

During the opening ceremonies, we played a little bingo game that I found online. It didn't last long. We really just liked talking about the different countries and guessing how many athletes each one would have. We had the globe out so we could find the different countries and we had google out so we could answer any of those tough questions Clark asked!

Clark really enjoyed the Olympics this year. Everyday he would follow the US on the app and see how many medals we won. He loved watching the videos of all of the new (to him) sports. He thought curling was hilarious. It was so fun to see how much he enjoyed the games. Made me love them more too!

Wilde Family Gingerbread Construction Company

Our first year doing Gingerbread houses! Let me tell you this won't be the last. Except next year I am going to be buying one for me too. I bought the premade houses at Costco this year so we could just get right to the decorating. I'm not sure if I'll ever brave the gingerbread and icing myself. This was so easy!

And we quickly learned how yummy it is to just eat the icing. Kent kept asking me if it was okay to put candy, frosting, fondant, etc. in his mouth. He couldn't wrap his head around the awesome idea that everything could be eaten! Definitely his kind of craft!

Our finished houses. Clark left a side of his house plain, so I quickly asked him if I could decorate that side. It was so fun to play with candy and frosting. I want to do my own next time!

For some other gingerbread house fun check out these fun sites:
The Gingerbread Construction Company
The World's Largest Gingerbread House

Watch Out Tom!

A turkey shoot out! I saw this idea from Frugal Fun for Boys and thought the boys would really love it too. They did for a little bit and then the older ones were off to play with something else. Kent stayed around with me and shot the turkeys. I love shooting targets ever since this summer when I shot the pellet gun.

I made both the file folder and the free standing targets. We liked the freestanding ones best. I won't bother with the file folder ones next time.

Long after the kids were gone my dad and I tried to get a photo of the turkey going down. This was as close as we got to the perfect shot. Good enough. Why were we trying, you ask? Why not?

What else can we shoot? A Grinch for Christmas or maybe coal?

We Were Thankful

Technically we still ARE thankful, but this was how we remembered our gratitude during November.

After we started piling up our leaves I thought it would have been fun to make a leaf out of a bunch of leaves. Kent spoke before I could and decided that he wanted to line up all his blue ones and then make them connect to a line of leaves from the other side. So let it be written. So let it be done. The leaves were just cut out of cardstock using my Silhouette and we taped them to the wall. Easy peasy. I might choose fewer leaf types next year (if I remember).

Some favorites from the leaves:

Jason is thankful...
-for bed time
-for his eternal family
-for the occasional overtime
-for the right to bear arms
-that Mary gets to park in the garage
-for a stapler

Mary is thankful...
-for Costco samples and happy kids
-for chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese
-for fabric
-that my talk in Sacrament meeting is over
-for an early morning jog on a beautiful day
-for smiles

Clark is thankful...
-for spending time with family
-for school
-for watching a movie
-for Minecraft
-for stinky farts (hey...we should be thankful in all things, right?)
-for turkey

Kent is thankful...
-for doing Christmas lists
-for singing
-for the letter "t" and coaches
-for doing up and over (to get his coat on)
-for my Wolverine costume
-for big football guys and small, tiny, tiny football guys

Kara couldn't contain her gratitude to a little leaf. :)

Paint Stick Snowmen

I originally thought this was way too early to be making a snowman craft, but since we've already had our first snowfall I say bring it let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! This was a super easy craft that didn't take that much time and was pretty easy for the kids with a little bit of help from the grown ups. We actually did these for our Super Saturday at church and my mom had some sticks left over so the kids got to make some.

Supplies:

Paint sticks

White paint

buttons

black foam (free hand cut to a hat shape)

brown pipe cleaners (make snowman arms)

googly eyes

scrap piece of fabric

foam brush

hot glue and gun

Step 1: Paint the paint stick white and allow to dry (check out the concentration on these two!)

Step 2: The picture clearly shows me using tacky glue which did work, but I think hot glue would have been quicker and it works better for the pipe cleaners on the back. So...

Attach the hat, eyes and buttons to the front of the snowman.

Step 3: Attach the pipe cleaner arms to the back using hot glue. The tacky glue didn't work at all! The best part about crafting with boys is that you just never know what you're going to get. Kind of like that box of chocolates...! I would never have made a 4 eyed snowman like Clark or put the snowman's hat on upside down like Kent did. It's always fun to see how they interpret things!

They both loved their snowmen so much! We added a pipe cleaner hanger to the back and they are proudly on display in their bedroom. I can't help but smile when I see them!

Soldier Field (well, almost!)

I know this is going to come as a shock, but Kent loves football. He eats, drinks, sleeps, lives...football. We went to pick up Jason some new running shoes for our big race in May. Kent was ecstatic that he lucked out and got brand new stadium in the process!

Read carefully...those are Kent's two favorite letters to write, "t" and "o". If you ask him what he wrote on the top of the box, he usually answers, "coaches."

Having fun with his teenymates! He loves these little guys. He asks to look them up on YouTube all the time. He watches videos of all the different guys you can get like the glow-in-the-dark guy and the Seattle Seahawks. Seriously, when he told me that he wanted a Seattle Seahawk teenymate I about died laughing!

Jason helped with the turf and the yard lines. Looks like he got a little tired by Kent's end zone. Kent marked the middle and his end zone. Clark had to help of course and label his side. He's very good about being the team with the mismatched helmets. Kent is always the Ravens and the Falcons because they have matching helmets (at least that's why I think he puts them together). The Titans and Redskins are always the opposing team (translation - mom or Clark's teams).

He is desperate to put together an entire team of teenymates! My response (to just about everything these days), "Put it on your Christmas list."

Trying to be Thankful

Like so many people, we're trying to show a little more gratitude this season and here was our first project. Turkeys! We each picked a color for our feathers and wrote something we were thankful for about some of our family members that live nearby.

It was fun to hear what the kids had to say about some of their grandparents and aunts and uncles. We also made some banana bread muffins and delivered them for our family home evening. The next morning when Kent woke up he said, "Can we do turkeys and bags again today?" So cute.

I'm so very thankful for my family!

Fuzzy Ghosts

I realize now that I should have saved this for a Christmas craft of Santa's beard. I blame the mommy brain!

The kids loved making their fuzzy ghosts anyway. Can you hear Clark's ghost noise?

Token picture of Kara enjoying the festivities!