The baby of the family

That's right, the last of the Maxwell clan graduated from HS!  Way to go, Mason!

And his family loves him enough that we braved the cold mountain rain to celebrate the big occasion.

Luckily he treated us with a little guitar action to make it worth it.  You are an awesome musician, Mason! (more on that in a later post...)

And good thing for us his graduation party was mostly indoors, and hence, much better weather.  It was a fun afternoon with lots of food, family and friends.

especially the tasty graduation caps, made by yours truly (and my husband).

Congratulations, Mason!  We can't wait to see all the great things you will accomplish!  Love you!

The benefits of M&Ms & Pixy Stix

Despite what you may have previously thought, they're not just for eating . . .

Mini M&Ms are perfect for teaching math!

sorting colors

counting and comparing amounts

(we also did patterns, but I guess I didn't get a pic of that).

And Pixy Stix are great for writing and letter recognition!

 

 

Of course, I set a pixy stick aside for them to eat when they are done. :)

 

Do you have any ideas you've done?  I am always looking for fun and creative learning activities!

Friendship Bread

For our March service project we decided to spread the love with our Amish Friendship Bread that we had been feeding and tending for a few weeks. 

We took our four starter bags and turned them into sixteen more.  The boys had fun mixing and squishing the ingredients in the bag.

 

They had even more fun deciding who they would share it with.  We gave starters and loaves of bread to friends, primary teachers, neighbors and school teachers.  

The boys loved running up to the door and delivering their goodies.  I hope everyone else kept the friendship going - or at least enjoyed some yummy bread!

What I Love

I love books and I love hot chocolate.  Sometimes at the same time.  I like my hot chocolate extra strong made with half water half milk and then cooled down with just a little skim milk.  And I really like to dip my nine-grain toast with butter in it.  Mmmm.  (I think I'll go have some right now.  Seriously.)  But that's not really what I wanted to write about and since there's not much more to say about hot chocolate, let's just talk about books.  I think that is one of the reasons I have been lagging in my blogging, I have been finding so many good books and then I start reading them and then that leads to more books and I can't get enough!

You can read more of my reviews on my Goodreads account. (If you're not on Goodreads, you should be!  I would really love to hear what you are reading and what you thought about it.)  But lately I have gotten hooked into a couple REALLY good, life-changing type books . . .

One Million Arrows: Raising Your Children to Change the World

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide



When I finish, I will review them on Goodreads, but I already love them and highly doubt that it will go downhill from here.  So I highly recommend them.

I am hosting book club this month and we are reading a book called Moloka'i.  I'd call it historical fiction.  It is a sad, but endearing story about a girl at the turn of the century who is banished, at the age of 7, to a remote leper colony on one of the Hawaiian islands.  I haven't finished this one either, but I would say it is a "must-read" to keep us aware of these atrocities that have happened in our past.  I have had a tear or two at least every other chapter.

And onto this coming year, in one of my book clubs, we decide the books almost a year in advance.  So here's the list, tell me if you have read any of them and what you thought...

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Moloka'i by Alan Brennert (yes, I will be reading it with both book clubs this year)
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
These is My Words by Nancy Turner
Decision Points by George Bush
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer
Matched by Ally Condie

Books that were cut from the list because of questionable content (as we are all good Christian women) - Shanghai Girls by Lisa See and Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.  Have you read either of those?  What did you think?  I think I may still read them to determine for myself, especially the latter as I have heard rave reviews about it.

Oh, and one other book I got from Cody's preschool teacher - Use Your Words - totally altered my parental thinking.  Even though it is written for teachers, I would highly recommend it for parents of preschoolers or toddlers.  Like did you know that you actually shouldn't tell your little ones to "say sorry"?  The best little snippet I took from it was - when giving directions to your child and they are not complying, assume that they didn't understand and go from there.  This has saved alot of frustration for both mother and child in this house, and I have come to see that often it is quite true.

I would love to hear what you're reading and any recommendations you have . . .

"Gingerbread" houses

Graham crackers, leftover Halloween Candy (+ a little extra) and some creativity makes for a fun evening.

I think they turned out fantastic and three happy kids say they had a great time - and that's what counts!

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Very well, thank you!

I was quite pleased with how our square foot gardens turned out this year.  My husband was doubtful, but I think I proved him wrong.  (oh, the small pleasures). 

So here's how it went down - from the beginning...

The boxes my hubby so kindly made:

Colton working hard at making the perfect mix.  The boys thought it was fun to play in it until I told them they were playing with cow poop.

All filled with dirt and looking beautiful. (There was supposed to be pea gravel in between, but, yeah, that never happened.)

Taking care of our seedlings shortly before planting:

Square feet marked off:

Planting the marigolds to ward of the pests:  (Don't look at that thing in his mouth, now that it has been gone for awhile it really makes me wince.)

And in the end?

Some things made it, some didn't.  Sometimes it didn't get enough water.  Sometimes things got left too long and went to waste.  But really, the best part is that we have had lots of yummy, fresh produce and my kids learned a little bit about where food comes from.  And so far they really enjoy the tasks of gardening.

 

And doesn't that look tasty?

And since this is our first time doing it this way, here's what I learned:

• Even though we love squash and zuchinni, I really can plant less than 3 or 4 plants of each. (But I have found some really yummy new recipes to use them in!)
• Although many of our seedlings worked, it may not be worth it considering some of the plants are only .75 to buy and that my sanity was waning after a certain 2 yr old pulled them out or dumped them repeatedly.
• Beware of squash bugs. You can buy something that kills them, but I learned that too late to save our poor pumpkins.
• Prop up tomatoes early on, or they will go crazy and you may become too lazy (or overwhelmed or something) to deal with it.
• Keep an eye on wild hooligans that may find it fun to whack at plants with sword-like objects.
• Remember what was planted - I kept waiting for my "green" tomatoes to turn red.
• The soil mix really does work . . . no weeds!  (In the garden anyway, too bad our lawn was covered.)

Any other pointers?  How did your garden turn out?  Do you do traditional or boxed?  I really want to know.

Skamania Day 3 & 4 - A weekend visit from our Seattle freinds!

Since I am so far behind on blogging, I am still talking about our Oregon/Washington trip, in case you're confused.  By Saturday, which was 5 days into our trip, we were in desparate need of some clean laundry, and since I was not going to pay $3.50 per shirt and $2.00 for each pair of socks to be washed at the hotel, I headed over to the local laundromat while Russ took the boys swimming.  At first I thought, "Oh, this will be kind of nice.  I will put the laundry in and then just sit and relax, read my book, etc."  Little did I know that would be cleaning out gross washing machines, because I put my money in it and then looked inside.  And that I would be going back and forth to the nearby grocery store because I ran out of change when the machine stole my money (only it didn't really steal my money, I am just commercial laundromat dryer inept).  Or that I would have to go back to the store because there was NO bathroom at the tiny little laundromat. Ugh.  So I had about 15 minutes of down time, in which I cleaned out my purse.  Yippee (w/ sarcasm).

But onto the more exciting part.  Some friends of ours drove about 4 hours down from Seattle just to see us!  They arrived right around lunch time, so we headed over to this place called The Crazy Pepper.  We had seen it the night before and decided we should eat there because we really liked the name.  And it actually turned out to be quite good.  Best part: the umbrellas that came in the drinks (not sure how Mexican that is, but whatever.)

After that, the big boys took the little boys while my friend, Jen, and I did a little shopping around Hood River.  It's your typical little tourist town, lots of boutiques and random shops.  It was fun.  I didn't spend that much money, because everything was either too expensive or too weird.  I think if I didn't live in Utah, I could pull it off, but . . . you know.  Anyway, so that night Jen and I stayed with the boys while Russ and Rahul went out and had some man time.  It's good for them to get away too. :)

Jen and Rahul crashed in our room with us, so the boys had a little floor slumber party, complete with glow sticks.  They were so cute once they were asleep, I couldn't resist.

The next day we hiked Beacon Rock.  It's famous apparently, and so of course, we had to see it.  I was never in a place to actually get a picture of it from any decent distance, so here's a picture I stole from the internet:

And here's what the hike looked like:

But the kids were serious troopers and did awesome!

And the view from the top wasn't too bad either.

And we all made it back to the bottom...

 

Since we had had a super late breakfast, we skipped lunch and headed back to the hotel for a bike ride.  The hotel has free adult bikes, so we had brought Corbin's bike and the bike trailer (for Russ' workout).  It was gorgeous!  That is until we had to ride back UP to the hotel.  It was fun anyway. 

 

We rode into town and got ice cream and homemade donuts.  Unfortunately the same guy was working as when we had been there the night before.  hehe.  Yeah, we're addicts, but it's vacation, right?

(Don't worry, you are now half way done with hearing about this vacation.)