Easter Festivities

 We had a low-key Easter this year. We opted out of the egg hunts and just spent time with family.

We decorated eggs at Grandma's and at home:

We woke up to snow on Saturday morning, but it warmed up for Sunday! We spent Saturday with my family- egg hunting, playing with cousins, eating yummy food, learning about the Resurrection, and of course holding Annie!

 

 

On Easter morning we woke to see that the Easter Bunny had visited! The kids explored their baskets and hunted for hidden eggs and we rushed to get ready for church at 8:30 a.m.! Whew!!

 Church was great! I always love Easter Sunday. Such an uplifting day. For FHE we watched a short video and read each of the scriptures that went along with it. I felt that it was important to make sure the kids realized that, thought they may read about and watch a lot of things that they know are pretend and made up, THIS is a REAL story. Jesus is a REAL person who suffered horrible things for all of us. He really did die and he WAS risen!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs

 oh. my. heavens.

I made these homemade Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs for Easter and they are to die for AND super easy!

 

No-Bake Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Eggs

Ingredients

• 1¼ cup creamy peanut butter
• 5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 
• Chocolate Almond Bark, or candy melts

Instructions

1. In a large bowl mix together peanut butter, butter, graham cracker crumbs, powdered sugar and salt until well combined. You may have to use your hands if you're not using a stand mixer.
2. Roll dough out on a wax paper lined surface to a generous 1/4" thickness.(place a another piece of wax paper over dough for easier rolling). Remove top piece of wax paper and using a small oval cookie cutter, cut out your eggs and place on wax paper lined pan. Reroll scraps and cut again. *I molded my dough into my deviled egg tray. SO much easier! Just spray with non-stick spray first to ensure easy removal once frozen. One batch made 12 eggs.
3. Place cut eggs in the freezer for one hour, or until firm.
4. Melt chocolate according to instructions on package. I used half a package of Almond Bark.
5. Using a fork, dunk each frozen egg in the chocolate, tapping off the excess. Use a spoon to push egg off fork on to wax paper lined baking sheet and refrigerate until set.
6. Enjoy!

Notes

These can be made using any cookie cutter shape, or you could even shape dough by hand.

The Apple Pip Princess

Another successful year of dance is nearing its end! Kensie performed in The Apple Pip Princess last weekend and it was spectacular! You should all read the book by the same name written by Jane Ray. Such a good story!

As always, it was a hectic few weeks leading up to concert, but I LOVE it. As always, I love being a parent monitor at Capitol Theatre because I get to experience the back-stage fun! As always, Kensie was great! This year the 5th grade were raindrops. The girls were apprehensive about their costumes, but they looked SO cool on stage. It was tough to tell who was who, however!!

Baby Ann

On St. Patrick's Day our first niece and girl cousin joined the family!

Baby Ann is simply adorable! The boys and I got to meet her for the first time while Kensie was at a dance rehearsal. She was pretty mad that she couldn't come too, but she got her chance later!

Congrats to Danny, Leah, and William!!

Rainbow cake in a jar

This is a fun recipe for St. Patrick's Day!  My kids loved it. I've seen recipes that use a cake mix but I've found that the batter is too runny and the cakes don't turn out as cute. Making your own batter works better!
Also, you can substitute the frosting with whipped cream, which is just as delish!

Ingredients
Cake:
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups milk
Betty Crocker Neon Food Coloring or Wilton Food Coloring (for bright rainbow colors)
8-10 ½ Pint Jars
Cooking Spray
Sprinkles

Cloud Frosting:
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup boiling water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3 unbeaten egg whites

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Take off the screw caps on the jars. Spray with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.
3. Put butter in mixer and beat at medium speed until somewhat smooth.
4. Pour in sugar and beat well.
5. Add 2 eggs.
6. Mix well.
7. Add: vanilla, baking powder, salt, flour, and milk.
8. Beat until it is mixed.
9. Divide your batter into six separate bowls (approximately two large ice cream scoops of batter into each bowl for even distribution).
10. Tint your batter the colors of the rainbow- Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, & Violet.
11. Using a small spoon, carefully spoon in each color of batter into layers or use a Ziploc bag and cut the tip off one corner of the bag to pipe each layer into the jars. 12. Place jars in a 9×13″ baking pan (with rim) and fill with a 1/2 cup of water to create a water bath for your cake.
13. Bake for 25-40 minutes or until your cake springs back and a skewer poked in the center comes out clean. (length of time will depend entirely on how tall you stacked your batter!)
This should yield 8-10 rainbow jars

blogworthy

UGH. I'm in a major funk lately. I'm blaming it on the fact that we're finally getting the winter we didn't have during winter.....I'm in  the hybernation mode that I should have been in during December and January.

The only blogworthy thing worth mentioning is that Matt & I got new cell phones. We've finally entered the age of technology and can now text, surf the web, and play Angry Birds to our hearts content. AND we actually get signal at our house! Amazing!! We're trying hard not to be "those people" who sit in the same room and ignore each other, only communicating through texting and requests to play Words With Friends.

After having the phones for a day and a half I had a mini panic attack and was certain that these things were going to ruin our lives! Then I realized that I can check my email and facebook while I'm waiting at the bus stop, instead of holing up in my bedroom and ignoring the kids for an hour while I'm on the computer. It's all good.

happy valentine's day!

Science Fair aka why I hate that my kids are getting older

I love the Kindergarten days. Days when your kid brings home unrecognizable artwork and cute made up stories in their illegible writing. No stress involved. I am NOT loving the monthly book reports, daily math homework that I cannot even figure out with a calculator, and projects that are accompanying this 5th grade year for Kensie.

Sure, I always make her do her own work, but I still stress about it for some reason. As soon as she is done with her book report for the month, I start thinking about the next one. Is she reading enough? Will she finish the book on time? Does she know what she's doing? It's hard for me to let go and turn over the responsibility and control. She always does great and is a fabulous student, so I don't know what I'm so stressed about!

The science fair was one of those things that I thought for sure I would be a nut case about, but I was surprisingly stress free about the whole thing. Kensie's teacher decided that they would assemble their boards in class (no gluing for me!), and Kensie was diligent about keeping up with her experiment for 2 weeks. All I had to do was help her type up what she had written in her notebook. She did a great job. She was a little bummed that she didn't win an award or move on, but you should have seen the experiments some of the other  parents students came up with!

valentines

 We decided to change things up a bit this year for Valentine's Day. Instead of the traditional shoe box, we used cereal boxes. Just cover in wrapping paper, cut a hole, add a handle, and decorate with whatever random leftover doodads you have hanging around!

I was also getting sick of the Valentine candy for the classmates idea, so this year Jackson is giving toy animals and the older kids are giving Mad Libs (thank you, Design Mom! Genius ideas. I just love her!).

Much better than antacid hearts, I think!

lack-luster snow fun

 The lack of snow this year is totally getting on my nerves. I know some people are rejoicing, but I love the 5-6 feet of snow we usually have at our house in the winter. So do the kids.

This year there have been no snow forts, no sledding, no red-nosed children stripping off their snow clothes and cuddling in a blanket with hot chocolate. Last week we finally had just enough snow to play in and for 2 days that's all the kids did. Sure, you could still see the grass poking through on the hill, but that didn't stop them from climbing up and rollling down. They even explored "the woods" at the top of the hill.

Now, the snow on the hill is nearly gone and I don't know if they'll get another chance! I sure hope they do. Maybe in May.....