Kate's Concert

The Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade concert was tonight.  I got really close with the video camera for this song, and it just brought out Kate's inner ham. 



What do you do when your child starts extemporizing her own motions?  Do you look stern and shake your head, hoping that she'll shape up and just sing it straight like everyone else?  Well no, you just try to hold the camera as still as you can while laughing, and capture the moment for posterity.

(When she holds up her crooked finger for "I think to myself," she says that's a question mark.  It's so funny to see what she comes up with.) 

Easter

Joseph, a friend in Kate's class, invited us to their neighborhood East egg hunt on Saturday morning. It turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day and everyone had a great time. Kate collected quite the haul. (We're rationing the candy--think we can make it last till Halloween?)

By Sunday our sun was gone, and it was a little chilly and windy.  One hopes that, having Easter later in the year, it might actually be warm enough for those Easter clothes.  Not quite, but we braved the temperatures long enough to get some quick pictures outside after church.



Kate wore this dress that Scott got for her in Mexico.  I made the little sweater to go with it. 




Andy has a bit of black jelly bean schmutz on his face.

I put together a little Easter box and sent it to a friend in Korea (안상희 in 포항) with representatives of the three Easter candy fauna--eggs, bunnies, and chicks (marshmallow peeps, of course).  She called to tell me how much they enjoyed it.  They don't really celebrate Easter in Korea, so it was something interesting and different for the kids.

Parks Appreciation Day

We appreciate parks!  Saturday (the 16th) was Parks Appreciation Day.  Our ward was assigned Titlow Park as usual. (Kate has been calling  it "Tiplow"). Doug was in charge of signing people in and passing out equipment.  Some people picked up trash and others planted trees.

Kate went down with Doug at the beginning and did help pick up some trash with the nifty trash-grabber, but by the time I showed up with Andy I guess the novelty had worn off, so we just spent the rest of the time playing. 



It was a nice day, but windy.  And the sunshine kept coming and going, which makes for uneven photography.








There was another group that was having an Easter egg hunt around the playground.  They put out the eggs ahead of time and then had a group breakfast in the picnic shelter, leaving all the eggs lying around unattended.  Since trying to keep the kids from touching the eggs at all was obviously a losing battle, I figured it would be okay as long as the eggs stayed in the general area.



Andy discovered that some of the eggs rattled, and was having fun just walking around shaking them.







Honk!

sidewalk chalk layout

Challenge #3 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page about something our family likes to do, and design the layout to represent the activity (say, if you enjoy playing Monopoly together, you could make a page to look like the Monopoly board). I had a hard time picking something. What do we all like to do? LEGO? Reading? I suppose I could take pictures of everyone playing on the computer.

I decided to go with sidewalk chalk.  We have been doing that a lot lately. 



I thought doing the title in chalk would probably fit the requirement of the referential design. I wrote the titles on the sidewalk but then discovered that they were too big to fit in the frame (with my lack of wide angle lens), so I had to bring out a chair to stand on while I took the pictures.



I also made a border with my crayon line, which you can get here.

Two Little Dragons

Kate's green dragon costume has been passed down to Andy, and Aunt Karen made her a larger pink one. We had some nice weather today so we went out and took pictures.









"Aaaaaaaah!"

Andy sure makes a cute little dragon. He seems to enjoy running around with the costume on.

Grandpa Al (inspiration layout)

Challenge #2 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race. We were supposed to layer one paper on top of another, and then cut out shapes in the top layer so the bottom one showed through. Then add a picture about a family member who inspires you, with 25-50 words of journaling. I decided to do a page about Doug's dad, and got him to do the journaling. (Keeping it under the 50-word limit was tricky!)

Suede Lacing tie
frame from The Paper Drawer,
cantaloupe tracks from Potato Prints

Bottom paper by Megan Farrow (Flergs), top paper by me. Leaf by Anne deJong. Michelle Coleman's stamped alpha. Worn overlay from Something Blue Studios.

(Thanks for your help with this one, Doug!)

Chalk Dragon

On Friday it was finally not raining, so we went out and drew on the sidewalk with our neighbors Glory and Sky.  Last year's chalk was all worn down to itty-bitty nubbins, so Doug had gotten us some new chalk the day before.



I drew this big dragon and the girls colored it in.  Now some of our new chalk is worn down to itty-bitty nubbins too.





Kate finishes up the tail.



We discovered that Andy knows his colors. Or at least some of them. I asked him to bring me the yellow chalk, and he did!

our family in...

Challenge #1 of The Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race was to create a layout with six facts about our family. That was the hard part for me--deciding on six things.  

See how I have my head tipped almost exactly the same way in both pictures?  I didn't do that on purpose.  You may also notice that Doug is wearing the same shirt.  That was deliberate.  I love that shirt.

frames: Paper Bag Frames and The Paper Drawer.
flower: The Paper Drawer
stamped dot: Potato Prints
white paper: Masks and Mats
other papers by Megan Farrow (Flergs), Michelle Coleman, and Loretta Labarca.

Spring Break

Kate was off school this week.  Doug's break (between quarters) was the week before that.  Alas, that they did not coincide.   I was hoping we could go out and enjoy some parks, but it ended up raining almost the whole week. Kate did get to go over to her friend Maddy's house a couple of times, so that was nice.  Let them entertain each other for a while. 

We had a coupon for $15 off a Mattel product, so Doug and Kate went to Toys R Us and came home with the game Snorta.It's hilarious.  Good fun for the whole family.