Google Reader

One of my favorite internet sites is Google Reader. It helps me keep up with all my favorite blogs including all of my family blogs, tech news sites, recipe blogs, flickr friends pictures, local news, etc. It also lets me share interesting articles with Becky and other friends. I used it to share interesting articles with Olympics trivia during the last couple of weeks.

If you want to learn more about it, check out this little video. It describes what Google Reader does in plain english.

Home grown produce

Our garden is producing tons of stuff right now. I'm really excited about all the cucumbers the kids have been eating lately. Dante was calling them cumebutters, which was really cute. We have already picked tons of beans, cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squash, some tomatoes, basil (we made pesto this last weekend and that was really good) raspberries, & carrots.

We have a couple of pumpkin plants growing, one from the compost pile at the side of the house. This is just one plant and it is a volunteer. It is also doing much better than the one in our garden. It must like the compost it lives in as well as the water from the lawn sprinklers. There are 2 pumpkins growing on the vine in the 2nd picture. I saw a few more little ones when I took the picture today. We also had a few volunteer cantaloupe plants growing in the garden, and I saw a baseball sized cantaloupe on it today. For some reason though, we have a hard time telling when they are ready to pick so they usually rot before we pick them. Maybe this year we can figure it out. Gardening sure takes practice.

Pottery Class Results!

We got the pottery back from pottery class this summer.

Valerie created an alligator (no feet, I guess they ran out of time) a fish, and the sea bowl where she has a clam with pearl inside, a starfish, a seashell and some kind of fish.




Scarlett also made an alligator, a fish and her sea bowl has a whale, a sail boat, a shark fin, and I don't know what the green thing is.



Ella didn't have time to make an alligator, but she made a fish and sea bowl. Her bowl has an octopus, a boat, and also something I don't know what is.


The teacher spent 2 classes letting them make the items, then the last class they glazed them. The only thing I didn't like about the class was it was over 20 minutes away in Highland. If she was right here in Orem, I would probably let them do classes all the time.

Now all I need is a place to put all their creations. I'm thinking of making a high up shelf in their bedroom to display their treasures on without little hands being able to get into them.

First Day of School

The kids started school on Aug 18th this year. Valerie is holding her backpack that we embellished this year. She was very excited to make the owl.
Ella started 1st grade and goes all day now. She likes to eat lunch at school now. She seems so young to me to be in 1st grade. I don't remember thinking that about Valerie when she went to 1st. I can't believe that Valerie is in 5th grade now, because the 5th graders seemed so old a few years ago. She gets to memorize states/capitols this year. Liz, maybe you could teach her the song or something. I never learned the state song when I was in school.
Scarlett is now in 3rd grade and seems to like her new teacher. All the girls are in dual immersion spanish/english and the teachers are all using a 1 week in english, 1 week in spanish program this year. (well maybe not the 1st graders, I can't remember what her teacher said). We have back to school night tonight, so I guess we will get better details then.
Dante is going to start a preschool next week 2 times a week in the morning. I am excited for that as well. I think he will have a great time learning, playing with kids his own age, and I definitely will keep busy while he is away. I'm excited to be able to go volunteer at the school without having to find a baby sitter.

Summer birthdays

After months and months of anticipation, Ella finally celebrated her birthday. She is getting to celebrate it multiple times this year since we went out to dinner at Brick Oven on her real birthday, got her a bike the next day, had a friend birthday at Kangaroo Zoo the next day, and will have a family party for her when her grandparents are in town.





We'll try to post some pictures from Kangaroo Zoo and the Dinosaur museum in a future post.

Running out of teeth

Ella's started running out of teeth in the front. When they get loose she starts worrying them until she can pull them out. I don't think she waited long enough for this one because she was saying it hurt a lot after she pulled it out, but then she said it didn't hurt anymore when we put her to bed. Our other kids treasure their tooth fairy money like collector's items, but Ella is pretty quick to invest or spend hers (or lose it).


You can often click on the pictures for a bigger version.

5K Fun Run

Becky and the girls did a 5K fun run on the 5th. They didn't take any shortcuts and did a great job. Dante was upset when they left, but he got over it eventually.





Our ward has also been doing a ward volleyball night once a week and Becky has really enjoyed playing. The girls originally just had fun running around while she played, but now they are getting interested in the game too.

LDS Temple Videos

There is a user on YouTube called lds9999 that has posted a video for every LDS temple so people can put them on their blogs. The videos include a slideshow of pictures of the temple and slides that have facts about the temple like when it was announced, when it was dedicated, who dedicated it, and stuff like that.

We live in the temple district of the Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork, Utah.

Summer Activities

This summer I signed the girls up for a pottery class through the UVU extension. They had 3 classes where they made 3D animals. The last class they got to glaze everything. We haven't picked up the finished projects yet. Probably sometime next week. The girls had so much fun at this class. Valerie, of course, wants to be a potter when she grows up (a goal for at least the last 4 years). She is excited for when she can do wheel turned pottery classes, and the teacher said she could teach wheel classes whenever we want to call her to sign up. So I guess we will have to do it soon. The other girls just naturally want to do what Valerie wants to do, so they love it as well. In the pictures you can see the fish, alligators and "sea bowls" the girls are working on painting. I can't wait to see the finished products.




The kids got passes to Classic Skating from the Public Library reading program this summer, so we went skating. Valerie is getting much better with the in line skates. Scarlett traded off from her scooter to her regular skates, and Ella used regular skates as well. Dante rode up a storm on his scooter when not trying to play the video games. It was a pretty fun night.


We have managed to keep really busy this summer and I can't believe that school starts in less than 2 weeks. Time goes by so fast.

St George Trip

On Pioneer Day weekend, our family took a trip to St. George, UT. Even though it was hot, it was a lot of fun. One of the missionaries at the visitor's center at the St. George temple told us that even though it was around 106 degrees down there, it was 101 in Salt Lake, so the difference wasn't that bad.

We went swimming every day while we were there. There were two pool areas at the resort. One had a little waterfall. We took advantage of the gas grill on our balcony. We made shish kabobs with beef, shrimp, onions, grape tomatoes, mushrooms and bell peppers.

We stopped by Cove Fort on the way down. The kids really enjoyed it and the kids got one of those toys with a disk and string that you spin around. While in St. George we saw Brigham Young's winter house and Jacob Hamblin's home. The tour had lots of historical facts about who made the chairs and Brigham Young's favorite kind of pie. I would have liked a little more church history thrown in there.

We saw some petroglyphs on Friday. They were in this tiny park in a residential area of town. We accidentally drove right by it at first because the park was so small.



After that, we went to the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. It's a museum that was built around a site where a bunch of fossilized dinosaur tracks were found. After looking at the different footprints, the kids did some coloring, stencils, and rubbing imprints.

Witch Head

I was working on a new prop this weekend. I bought a 2-part witch mask in a group buy a few months ago because I wanted to make it into a witch prop for our porch. This weekend I combined it with some hot glue and aluminum foil (for the structure of the head), the mechanism from a talking Douglas Fir tree and life-sized doll eyes. The video shows my progress so far.



I'll try to do an update about our trip to St. George on Pioneer Day weekend if Becky doesn't get to it first.

Primary Parade

This morning was the annual Primary Patriotic Parade for our ward. This time I was on the planning end of it. I think it was pretty successful for our first real activity. We had the scouts walk the flag around the circle one lap, then all the kids rode around the circle on their bikes, scooters or whatever they brought. We had snow cones for them afterward, and then we made rockets out of paper that shoot in the air with the help of a compressor. It was a lot of fun for the kids to make the rockets and also to watch them go in the air. They were going really high, we guess at least 50 feet.

New Polygamy Site

I just helped post a new site yesterday that was created to help clarify the confusion about Mormons and Polygamy. http://mormonsandpolygamy.org/

My quilt group quilt

IMG_1538.JPG
Originally uploaded by mrklaw

I just finished the applique on this quilt. The ladies in my group each made a bunch of the same color blocks in the center and traded with each other. I made mine with more blocks and did the applique in the borders. It was a really fun project and I am glad that I am done because I will probably be very busy from now on since I just got called to be in the Primary Presidency in our Ward (2nd counsellor). I will miss playing the piano for primary, which I did for the last almost 7 years. I got lucky they left me there for so long, and it was the best calling ever. BTW, this is not John, I just forgot that when you post from flickr it uses the flickr account, which is John's.

Our week so far

We have had a fun week this week. Valerie and I participated in a 5K run on Saturday morning. We really walked the whole way, but we had fun. Valerie worked really hard and made it to the end. We all won prizes when the race was over (stuff from a camping store). We had fun at Orem's Summerfest and then saw the movie Horton Hears a Who afterwards. Dante still isn't ready for the movie theater.

Sunday it was Morgan's birthday party so we went to Kearns. The kids had fun playing with their cousins.

Tuesday night we went to Thanksgiving Point Farm and saw the animals. The kids had fun riding the horses and feeding the animals corn. We saw some baby goats that were born that day and an all white peacock as well as regular peacocks.










A few weeks ago we bought a new patio set and started eating dinner outside. It has been really nice and fun. Yesterday Dante didn't get a nap and he fell asleep at the dinner table at 6 pm. He slept all night.

Last day of school!!

Last Day of School!!
Originally uploaded by mrklaw

Today was the last day of school. I took pics of the girls with their teachers and they are all really cute. Scarlett really loved her teacher and even gave her a picture that said I wish you could be my teacher forever. It was really sweet. We went to the park after we walked home from school today and before I could even finish getting stuff out of the car, Scarlett had fallen off her scooter and skinned her knees really bad. You can see them in the pic of her on the bike. We just turned around and went home, so they didn't get to play at the park today. A few hours later, (after she stopped crying about her knees hurting) Scarlett said "let's go back to the park", but I didn't think it was a good idea, so the kids played in the back yard for the rest of the day.
We also sold the old minivan today as well. (We bought a used '06 Chrysler Town and Country van in March) We were happy to get that over with as well.
Now what are we going to do with school over? I say sleep in for as long as we can. The kids had to go at 8am every day this week and it about killed me. Too bad Dante doesn't know how to sleep later than the minute after John leaves, which is usually at 6:59am. Sometimes he wakes up before John leaves for work also. John really wants to get black out curtains for his room. If only we had a guarantee that it would actually work.
Happy Summer to Everyone.

Too bad you can't smell over the internet

My flowers finally bloomed and I am so excited about it.  The lilac in front is my favorite with the white around the edges.  In back we also have the snowball bush in the background of the pic.  I just love it when the lilacs are in bloom.  When we walk, you can just smell them in the air.  Too bad they don't last all summer.

The kids have school till next Friday.  I can't believe how fast this school year has gone by.  

Pythagora Switch

A little while ago, I discovered via another blog a video of some crazy complicated Rube Goldberg machines that were created with household objects. The video was Japanese and we had no idea if it was a commercial or a clip from a TV show or what.
Here is a compilation of a bunch of them.



I did some searches on Google this weekend and discovered that the videos are part of a show called Pythagora Switch. It appears to be a kids show that teaches science and stuff. I guess Rube Goldberg machine in Japan is called a Pythagorean Device. I found an episode on Google Video. I hope you like it.

Look at me now...

I finally got John to add me to the blog so I can post on my own.  I also played around with the templates as you probably can tell.  Fun.

Making rag dolls on the Pioneer trek

Making rag dolls
Originally uploaded by mrklaw

I liked this pic of Val making the rag dolls. They did lots of activities that pioneers would have done. One of the adult leaders in her group told me when they were at the "rock quarry" the boys complained that it was too hard, but Valerie hit her rock and got the biggest chunk off. She kept it of course. Becky helped serve the food. It was so good. We had dutch oven desserts that were so yummy. They made peach cobblers and one pineapple cobbler. Delicious