Birdfeeders and Conference

 

We made birdfeeders at Home Depot this morning. Last week we made these cool chomper toys. The kids have LOVED hammering and building simple things.

Nicole painting her birdfeeder "like a rainbow"

Michael making his birdfeeder with Dad.

There was never any question what color Michael would choose. BLUE! He was super focused and very interested in making sure every last corner was painted well. His hands got pretty blue too!

We had quite a time getting all of these home, but I'm proud to say the van didn't get any paint on it!

Diana loves her daddy!

Getting ready for Conference.

Diana loves the tiger. She got her bottle and crawled over so she could snuggle with it and kick it while drinking. SO cute!

Watching Conference oh so peacefully. Sort of.

"Mom take a picture of me!"

"Me too! Me too!"

"Okay everyone get in a picture so we can get back to watching"

A few minutes before the boys went upstairs for "quiet time" so we could actually hear the tv.

 

Diana crawls and wrestles all over this tiger!

Easter

We had some wonderful friends over for FHE, their daughter is such a great friend for Nicole and their other two daughters were born within a month of Jake and Diana. No egg dye spilled and I think the only person to drop an egg on the floor was me :)

We had Easter dinner with the missionaries and the kids were awesome helpers when I went shopping earlier in the week and they each got stickers from the cashier for being so good. It was one of the rare occasions when someone came up to me and said "what a sweet family you have" as opposed to (the sympathetic and understanding) "you've got your hands full". Then the kids did a sticker page, art and wear a mask that Grandma Ostler sent while I did the baking. We had tricolor rotini pasta salad, Watergate salad, egg nest bread (bread with colored eggs that cook on top), deviled eggs, Hummingbird cake (a Southern staple that is INCREDIBLY tasty), fresh strawberry pie, slush punch, and a ham of course. I didn't get any pictures of our Easter Sunday family getup, but Nicole had a sweet dress, Diana wore a pink fluffy dress from Nicole's baby days and the boys wore matching light blue dress shirts. All darling, but we were in a big rush to be out the door by 8am to make it to a homecoming talk by our nephew and the camera was the last thing on my mind! :)

Diana fell asleep drinking the other day. Made me laugh to see her all drunk out on milk :) She had her 9 month visit a few weeks ago. She is 16lbs5oz (9th %), is 27.5in long (46th%) and her head is 17.5 in around (63rd%). She has been a very healthy, happy baby and is starting to pull herself up on things and get into the toy box. She even made her brothers proud by pulling hard enough on a cabinet lock to make it snap off. So it begins again!

Jake is three!

My beautiful, blue-eyed, wiry, fiesty Jacob is THREE tomorrow!

Jake knows his sweets. He really does. A neighbor brought over some brownies and when Jake took a bite he spit them out they were so gross to him. Apparently they were vegan brownies? Anyways, he wanted a dark chocolate cake and since our theme was Cheetah Party! I set out to make the tastiest cake I could given the limitations of no dairy or soy that I'm working with right now. I sifted the dry ingredients to make it fluffy and used my butter-like spread.

Big pan. Little pan. I cut the little cake in half, and then one of those halves I cut in two for ears. The other half was the lower part of the mouth.

I trimmed the top of the little cake so it would lay flat and used those trimmings as well as a little piece trimmed from each ear to make the nose bridge, nose, and top of mouth.

Since the frosting was with a nondairy/nonsoy it was pretty melty. So I did a layer and then popped it in the freezer for 10 minutes and the frosting in the fridge. Then took everything out and did another layer quickly. This is the crumb coat, I used the coat to give the cake it's base shape as well.

And here is the finished product!

My goal with desserts is that no matter how cool they look I want them to be even tastier and I think this really worked. It is delicious!

The kids colored cheetah pictures and put them all over the house and they helped me hang up crepe paper. It was just a family party, but half of the fun was getting ready for it! Then for the party, we played pin the tail on the cheetah, sang "Going on a Cheetah Hunt" (to the going on a lion hunt song)...

 and did some karaokee to "Born to Be Wild"

then Michael wanted to sing a song

and Jake busted out a Tim McGraw song for us. My overall impression of my kids doing karaokee is much like in Night at the Mueseum when Ben Stiller is playing with the museum intercom. Spot on. Squealing high and low, beat boxing, the works.

Then it was time for the presents! Since the kids would have opened anything looking remotely like presents way ahead of time, we kept his presents in things they would never think to open :)

Jake got a cheetah stuffed animal! He also got a ton of trucks a friend gave us and the kids were in paradise driving everything around.

Diana loves playing with our stuffed animals. She "wrestles" with them.

All four of the munchkins happy as can be.

Post-party cheetah :) The ears and mouth were pretty popular! It was one of the funnest family parties we've had.