A day at the Childrens Festival

We this afternoon at our local children's festival.

The weather was perfect and the crowds shockingly small.

 We started out with a picnic lunch in the sun.

 Followed by a trip (ok, several trips) through the inflatable maze.

 We got some pretty fabulous face paintings...

 ... and played in the park with all the toys.

 Followed by a few more trips in the maze....

 and a scary monster mask craft. Just as things were closing up for the afternoon, Little Skinner got his portrait drawn and on our way to the train station and a few drops of rain began to fall. How is that for perfect timing!

 Littlest Skinner topped off the afternoon by crashing and sleeping all the way home on the train.

The Inventor

Isaac loves to do crafts and build things and always looks forward to our Monday crafternoons. I often get in hot water when he is taking out the recycling and he discovers some useful materials in the recycling bin ( think egg cartons cardboard tubes, strawberry clamshells) or worse yet, one of his creations that I snuck in there. Although he loves to create and never gives up he gets pretty frustrated when his rocket doesn't actually blast off or his submarine only floats instead of diving. That us why he has so enjoyed a book we got him for Christmas. It is called crazy contraptions by lego ( they just always seem to get right, don't they?). He loves that he can build all kinds of machines that work like he hopes. Hurrah! Here is his latest build an accordion grabber.

We Love to See the Temple

We are getting more and more excited to see the temple go up so close to home. We drove past a few weeks ago on our way to Nana's and got a picture of our family. We have been excited to hear that it is scheduled for completion this fall. I have so many memories of the Cardston temple open house when I was young. It has been great to share those memories with my children and look forward to taking them to the temple open house.

Curiosity

A certain one year old around here has been eager to get his hands into the sugar bag in the pantry. Today he finally seized his opportunity while a was reading to older brothers. This was the result....

Valentines at our house

Yep, that's right, it's a quietbook

I've always wanted to make quiet book for my kids. But have been turned off by the sheer number of man hours required to make one. But with littlest skinner's big 1st birthday coming up and the enticing ideas one can find online (thanks a lot pintrest...) I was sucked into sewing my piece de resistance.
Although along the way while sewing late into the night fuel led by poached candy laid away for christmas, I sometimes wondered if I'd completely lost my marbles for taking on such a big project right before Christmas and when said one year old still likes to eat at regular intervals at night (yes, I am crazy like that). Now that I'm through the fire of a million tiny felt and Velcro pieces, I think I can say I'm glad a made this for my littlest guy. And, hey you're only one once right?

Here's the finished pages:

The Christmas Party

Isaac and Andrew got to go to the childrens Christmas party at Shaun's office this weekend. They came home thoroughly spoiled with gifts from Santa, pictures with reindeer, gingerbread cookies, and build-a-bear type stuffies. I had planned a
Christmas activity advent for this month with some activities to do as a family but we have covered about half of them already. How's that for killing two birds with one stone?