A Royal Feast

This year we had our first annual back to school feast (idea courtesy of nieniedialogues.com).  I chose the theme "Remember Who You Are," and we talked about Abraham 3:22-26 (from The Pearl of Great Price).  I also quoted Elder Eyring from a devotional given when I was a freshman at BYU, "Remember Who God is and What is means to be His child."  We talked about the importance of our divine attributes and how knowing where we came from and who we really are can give us courage and strength as we face hard things during the school year.  We also talked about how knowing of a loving Heavenly Father brings us comfort and can help us to reach out to other people too.

For dinner we had cornish game hens, scalloped potatoes, and steamed broccoli.  The kids love it when I get rotisserie chicken from Costco, so I thought it would be fun (and make it more special) if they each had their own little chicken.  They thought it was great and AJ raved about how good it was.  Nobody could finish their whole chicken (everyone ate the legs and thighs but there was a lot of breast meat leftover that I was able to use for enchiladas later in the week).

AP kept covering his face when I tried to take a picture of him.  He did not want me to catch him smiling!

Following Nie's lead I made them each a crown.  D helped me and kept  talking about Medieval Times saying things like, "I can't wait to do Medieval Times again Mommy.  It's going to be fun to do Medieval Times at our house."  D found some animal phrase stickers in my stash and insisted on sticking them all over his crown.

I liked the idea and added some inspirational quotes to AP's crown.  

Then I liked it so much I decided to do the same for AJ's.  Her crown was already done though so I just put the quotes on the side.

After dinner I gave each of the kids a paper with their name on it and asked them to write down 2-3 good things about themselves.  Then we passed our papers and everyone took a turn writing something nice, or that they appreciated on each other's papers.  I'm going to frame them and hang them in each of their rooms. We finished off our feast with back to school blessings and then headed over to the Elementary for Back to School Night.

I loved preparing for this, and we had a lot of fun!  It was a great way to start off a new school year.  I also want to add that I finished reading Stephanie Nielson's book, Heaven is Here and it was so uplifting and inspirational (I laughed out loud, shed many tears, and felt so motivated to be a better wife, mom, and person).  She is an amazing woman and I highly recommend her book and her blog.  Check it out! nieniedialogues.com

Back to school

These are his true feelings...

Could not get him to try on one single thing when we went school shopping.  The trouble of shopping is so not worth having new clothes.  He prefers his comfy t-shirts and shorts.  Oh, and first day of school pictures are so not cool.  I'm just glad I got something of a smile out of him before he headed off.  And at the end of the day I got a pretty good report.

AJ on the other hand could shop and shop and shop and shop....  she was bursting with excitement at the prospects of getting back to her social scene.  She has her outfits for the whole week planned down to every detail (and drawn in her notebook).  She's quite the fashionista.

Spraying paint

D needed some outside time and I realized I don't do nearly as many "hands on" activities as I did when my oldest two were small.  I thought finger painting would be a fun thing to do, but wasn't in the mood for a big inside mess and felt like we could use some sunshine anyway.  So I looked for a homemade sidewalk chalk recipe and found this.  The first time we did it we didn't add the baking soda.  We just mixed it up and painted away.

The next day we had friends coming over, so we decided to try it again with the baking soda and vinegar.  D & I had fun mixing all of the beautiful colors.  

They had fun paining, but they loved the bubbling and fizzing they created by spraying their artwork with the vinegar.  In fact it was so awesome that AP had to get involved.

Pretty soon they were just dumping and drizzling paint as fast as they could so they could douse it in vinegar.

A great way to keep them busy for over an hour!

D Scoop

On our drive out to Maryland D played a lot of Plants vs. Zombies on the laptop.  D's favorite thing is taking care of the Zen garden.  AP was helping him with it when D said, "I love our little mushrooms.  They are so sweet.  [AP] can you even believe it?  Our little water mushrooms are so cute.  I just love our underwater plants.  I love it."

Last night we had shrimp for dinner.  D was about to take a bite of his when he paused, looked at me, and said, "Why do we have to eat shrimp mommy?  Shrimps are so cute.  We shouldn't eat them."

Later he and J were in his bedroom building with his legos when I came in.  D looked at me and said, "Mommy you are fabulous, did you know?"

He is a really good kid although he has become more of a tease lately, which annoys the big kids and AJ especially has not appreciated.  And even though he seems to be going through a bit of a stubborn phase and has been digging in on a lot of things (which can be frustrating for everyone) he maintains his sweet disposition and his catch phrases right now are "swwweeeet, " "I love it," and "did you know?"

Mount Vernon

I loved Mount Vernon!  I really debated taking the kids because it is an hour away and I am really good at getting lost, but several people had told me it was one of their favorite places and that there was a lot there to interest kids, so I gulped my nerves and we set out.  We got there without any problems and spent hours walking around without even seeing everything.  I was amazed by the vastness of the estate.  AJ and I talked about how awesome it would have been to live there and enjoy being on the water like that along with the awesome gardens, trails, and animals.  We also talked about how impossible it would be to keep it looking so beautiful without the help of A LOT of hard workers.  I just kept thinking how romantic an atmosphere it would have been; just like the movies ;)

Here are the kids in front of the mansion (they are the little specks on the middle porch).  The mansion was added onto many times during Washington's lifetime.  The Washingtons were a very hospitable family and always had guests.  The tour guide said that in the year after Washington resigned as president they housed nearly 700 guests!

No pictures are allowed inside the mansion which I was disappointed over because, aside from the historical value, there were several decorating ideas I would have loved to detail on camera.  Here are AJ and D just outside the Estate.

Waiting in line to see the main living quarters of the mansion. 

D trying to get a "sneak peak" through one of the windows.  He couldn't believe the shutters were wired closed.

The view of the Potomac from the mansions porch.  So beautiful in real life!

Stopping at the wharf on the way to the farm

We were greeted by sheep as we entered the farm

Singing "black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool?"

The greenhouse and upper garden

They all loved this giant old tree

I did get lost on the way home.  I took the wrong fork taking us into the heart of DC (we got a nice up close view of the Capitol Building though), and I could not for the life of me find a ramp going North instead South.  We did eventually make it home and even though we got lost, I'm glad we went.