Haylee’s Baby Blessing

We blessed our beautiful baby girl at church this morning. We were so lucky to have my parents, all my siblings, and John’s parents with us this weekend for Haylee’s special day. John gave her a lovely blessing and it was so wonderful to be surrounded by family this weekend.

The blessing was made even more special because Haylee was wearing a dress made from my wedding dress. Over the summer I cut up my wedding dress and used the pieces to cut out the pattern for a blessing dress. I cut out the pattern pieces and finished the edges then gave the pieces to my grandma to put together. I loved that I could do that with my grandma and the finished product came out even more perfect than I could have imagined. I had managed to save pieces from the overlay on my original skirt with it’s embroidery and beading and my grandma was able to replicate the overlay look on Haylee’s dress. It was stunning and I absolutely loved it!

I am so very grateful for this little family of mine!

FHE/Scripture Story Dolls

So I’ve actually had these made for a little while now and we’ve used them in FHE (Family Home Evening) once already, but I hadn’t had a chance to take any pictures.

I got the idea from a friend of mine who told me she wanted to make puppets for her son to act out the scripture stories. Since I tend to go overboard with things like this, I went a step further and made dolls. I plan on making more as we get through other stories, but the ones I have made will get us through a couple of weeks.

So here they are! When I was looking for inspiration I came across this etsy shop and fell in LOVE with her felt doll patterns (I want to make them ALL!). So I bought her Prince pattern and modified it to make the little guys you see here!

From left to right: Lehi, Sariah, Laman, Lemuel, Sam and Nephi (Yes, I realize the Nephi is the only one with shoes…I was getting a little lazy there at the end. I kind of like them better without shoes though, so I might take Nephi’s off at some point…)From left to right: Angel, Laban and Zoram. There was quite a bit of debate on whether or not I should have made Laban’s head detachable. You’d be surprised at the number of arguments there were for a detachable head. I decided not to freak out my children ;) Even if they don’t get it now, they will!

Aren’t they so fun?! I love them. FHE has been quite entertaining with them. We can’t seem to get Nathan to say the right lines. At one point he was Laban and I was Laman and I was asking for the Brass Plates and I told Nathan to say “No! You can’t have them!” and he just goes “Here you go! You can have them!” And Spencer just tries to eat them.

So even with adorable scripture story dolls, FHE is still a work in progress. We get points for trying, right? ;)

Philadelphia Temple Open House

The week after we got back from Branson, we drove up to Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia temple open house! We went up with my family and got to walk through and it was cool to be able to take the boys in and talk about temples.

“Please, no photos at this time”
My handsome boys :)
Oof, I’d forgotten how shaggy they were. They’ve had haircuts since this picture was taken, ha ha

Afterwards we went on the city bus tour and learned all about Philadelphia. It was fun, but soooooo stinking hot!
Poor Spencer’s face was so red all day!
Then we came home and all got sick. This was us pretty much all the week after. Oh well We’re finally mostly better now, thank goodness for that! ;)

Easter 2016

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter this year! We were able to have our Easter fun spaced out over a couple of days to prolong the celebrating. ;)

We colored eggs on Saturday. I was actually really nervous about dyeing eggs with Nathan this year - mostly because we have carpet in our dining area. Since we're renting, I'm slightly terrified of doing anything to ruin the carpet. But we kept it simple and it went really well, and I think Nathan enjoyed it too.

The whisk trick is probably the most brilliant idea for toddlers and egg dyeing! It totally allowed him to do it all by himself!

Since Nathan's first Easter we've been getting him a new church book to take to church, so Sunday morning the boys got new church books and the matching ties and hats (well, Nathan got a new hat, Spencer's was already made, I just needed to make Nathan one to match) that I made. They'll probably get candy next weekend, now that everything is on clearance :) And it was so nice to have John home with us - he had canceled all his extra meetings for that morning, yay!

Spencer was so excited to taste his :)

Once we got everyone ready for church, I tried to get a cute picture of the boys in their matching outfits. Even after bribing Nathan with M&M's to wear his hat and sit still for the picture, these were the best I could get ;)

"Alright, let's get outta here"

Even though none of them turned out the way I wanted - I still kind of love them. They perfectly sum up my life right now with these little mischief makers. 

Church was crazy as usual - though it was soooo nice to have my Dad to sit with us and help with the boys. Spencer spit up all over his white shirt (and my Dad's suit...sorry Dad...) before church even started (so he spent most of church in the spare outfit I had in the diaper bag, which happened to be pajamas), Nathan decided he needed to pee right in the middle of the Sacrament so we're running out of the chapel in the middle of everything to get to the bathroom and Spencer had a stinky diaper that I changed in record-breaking time to be back in the chapel by the time I needed to go up for choir. And that was just the first hour. Whew! :) 

We got to facetime with family and we had our traditional waffle dinner and it was a pretty good day!

For Monday's FHE I had such grand plans to do that resurrection egg lesson where you tell the Easter story with items in 12 plastic Easter eggs, but I never got around to putting it together because Spencer decided to sleep only 30 minutes for his afternoon nap - so it didn't happen. We still managed to talk about Jesus and the Easter story, but I'm not really sure how much got through to Nathan...

We pulled out our gospel art book and showed him this picture of Christ in Gethsemane:

Me: "Nathan, who is this?"

Nathan: "Jesus!"

"That's right!, What is Jesus doing in this picture?"

"He's looking at trees!"

"Um, yes, there is a tree in this picture. But what is He doing with his hands?"

*Nathan clasps his hands together*

Me: "Is Jesus praying?"

Nathan: "Yes! But he forgot to close his eyes for the prayer!"

*He clasps his hands again and closes his eyes*

I proceed to give the 10 second version of the story of the atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection, all while Nathan is trying to drive his cars into Spencer's head. We finish up with a prayer, that ended up with us all laughing because while John is trying to say the prayer, Spencer is trying to crawl on me and whack me with a wooden spoon, and Nathan is laying on top of me (I'm on my stomach) and grabbing me around the shoulders and trying to pull me over. We end up in a giggling heap by the time we get to "amen". 

Ah well. We tried. Happy Easter! ;)