Spiders and Gak

Tuesday night Chris has Young Mens. This means that I am always searching for ideas to keep the kids entertained for the night. Usually they spend their nights playing with dad and exerting a lot of energy running and wrestling. Without dad home they get restless. Last Tuesday I decided to do a few Halloween crafts. We had our friends down the street come over and made spiders and Gak.

I hadn't made gak since I was in elementary school. But I remembered that I loved it and that is was pretty simple to make. I picked up some Elmers glue and Borax at Wal-mart earlier that day and once Chris left we started our projects.

The kids loved stirring the glue and water together.

They decided on green and orange as their gak colors.

It was a success!

We made spiders out of an egg carton, markers, pipe cleaner, a few puff balls and of course googly eyes. The kids had a blast and were so proud of their spiders when they finished.

Taycee wanted her spiders to be nice. So they all ended up with happy faces.

This was Kaden's mean face. haha. He wanted all of his spiders to be mean and scary.

A few of our finished spiders

The next day we hung them from our kitchen light to make a little Halloween mobile.

I am scrambling for ideas for tonight. Any suggestions?

Conference

Ah Conference weekend. I love it. I look forward to it for months before it comes. It is full of uplifting words, good food, and an excuse to stay in jammies and sit on the couch. :D It doesn't hurt hat I am guaranteed Chris will be home all weekend siting right next to me.

Conference this month didn't disappoint. Saturday while listening to conference I actually made raspberry peach jam with Jocelyn. We went to a fruit stand and picked all of our raspberries the night before. I made 3 batches and now have 12 containers stowed away in my freezer. I also made a batch of lion house rolls. So we enjoyed the last part of conference eating hot rolls slathered with freshly made jam. It made me feel domestic and productive. It made Chris giddy. Oh how he loves home-made jam. While Chris was Priesthood Saturday night Jocelyn and her kids stayed and visited. I was feeling extra generous and had pan of hot fresh chocolate chip cookies ready when Chris came home.

Sunday morning we got up and decided to make a fun breakfast since we had extra time. I had left over peaches and raspberries that I didn't use in the jam and so we decided on fruit crepes. It will definitely be a new tradition. It got a 5 star rating from everyone.

The "fixin's" Peaches, Strawberries, Raspberries, powdered sugar, whipped cream, and vanilla yogurt. All on rolled up inside a tasty light crepe. Outcome?.... DECADENT.

The talented crepe flipper. The kids thoroughly enjoyed watching daddy flip the crepes into the air. Surprisingly enough most of them landed back in the pan.... most.

Doesn't this make your mouth water? It was even tastier than it looks. Honest.

The kids LOVED them... as in out ate both Chris and I and were still asking for more. My children are fruit addicts.

I believe this is Taycee's 5th one. We finally had to cut her off for fear of so much fruit causing some issues.

Breakfast was followed by another amazing 4 hours of listening to our church leaders speak. The weekend ended with FHE at grandma Halladays with all of my side of the family.

Conference weekend will you please come back quickly? April is not nearly soon enough.

Gonna Miss This

Recently I heard a song that reminded me SO MUCH of life right now. I have heard it a million times before but it just resonated this time. It is by Trace Adkins and it is called You're gonna miss this. As I was looking through the last months pictures the words of the chorus came to my mind.

Your're gonna miss this....

You're gonna want this back....

You're gonna wish these days, hadn't gone by so fast.

These are some good times, so take a good look around...

You may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this.

Yeah you're gonna miss this.

And I truly know that I will. I will miss the days when Taycee begs me to "find Norman the Nephite" in her book 3 times a day even though she already knows where he is on every page. I will miss watching Chris chase the kids around the house grumbling in his deep voice "then I'll huff and puff and BLOW you down!" I will miss the late night snuggling with my tiniest babe on my chest. I will miss inhaling the sweet scent of Jergens baby lotion as I kiss her cheeks a million times a day. I will miss the sheer joy in Taycee's face when she gets to wear matching outfits with Addison. I will miss watching Kaden light up with pride when he figures out how to read words like "we, the, to, and it". I will miss so much of life how it is now and I will want it back.

However, with all those things I WILL miss. I don't think there will ever come a day when I will miss coming down the stairs to find this in my living room.... :) :)

Take the good with the bad I guess. :)

-me

Kilie's Baby Shower

Just a few shots from Kilies' baby shower this past weekend

Untitled from Jill Clayton on Vimeo.

Three Months

3 months! Holy Crumb! I can not believe that it has been 3 months since this little bundle joined the party. I get anxiety just thinking about how fast time is going and how quickly she will grow out of this adorable snuggly teeny weeny baby stage. I just want to keep her little forever!

She is slowly becoming more alert. And when she is awake and alert she is full of smiles.She is starting to talk a lot more and Chris is determined to get her to laugh some day soon. She has a "squinty" eye and her right eye is usually half closed. Every once in awhile we get eyes wide open though.

She is steadily getting bigger and now fits perfectly into most newborn clothes. She is still eating 3 to 4 oz every 4 hours and has been my best nurser yet. ( I only know how much she eats because every morning I have to pump and give her a bottle because I am just too full)

She sleeps anywhere from 7-9 hours at night (most nights) and we are slowly finding a schedule that works for all of us. Her acid reflux is still awful and she is constantly spitting. It seems to be bothering her more than usual as of late and we might be heading to the doctor to try a different medication. We are currently on Zantac and we have tried Prevacid but neither seem to have done much good. :( It is sad and we wash lots and lots of baby clothes at our house.

These pics were actually take back when she was only 6 weeks. But I never got around to posting them so I thought I would share now.

And this months hippos pics... I think she has gotten so big this month

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that four months doesn't come nearly as quickly as three months did!

Who said science wasn't delicious?

One of the awesome perks of having a husband who is well... nerdy. (love you honey) Is you get to do cool things with his scientific knowledge. This week for Family Home Evening we made liquid nitrogen ice cream. And let me be the first to say it was DELISH!

First we combined all of our ingredients in the kitchen aid and mixed... then came the fun part

Add a little liquid nitrogen

add a little more...

Stir Stir Stir and.....

Voilà Perfectly creamy home-made peach icecream in a matter of minutes.

Who needs Bill Nye with a Chris Clayton in the house?

I think we shall make more tomorrow.. rootbeer flavor perhaps...for the BYU-UTAH game.

GO UTES!!

Pre-School year 2

This handsome little guy started his second year of pre-school. I don't know who was more excited about it him or me. :D It is so great to have somewhere to take him a couple times a week where he can sit down and learn from someone besides mom. He always comes home so excited to tell me what they did that day. I think his favorite time is singing time because the first thing he always tells me is what songs they sang.

This was his little dude he was suppose to decorate like himself.

Favorite things:

Wii

Slurpee treats

color green

So we made a dude with a green shirt holding a wii remote and a big slurpee. He was quite pleased.

He also told me to give him really big muscles because he is really strong... but I lack in the artistic department.

Taycee doesn't quite know what to do with her buddy gone. When we got home the first day she ran to get her binoculars and her sippie cup full of milk and then stood by the door telling me she was ready to go to school with Kaden.