My Children... the artists!

I have great hope in my children's future! They express their art in so many ways. For instance...

Laycee loves to color. All over my journal entries, in both sets of our scriptures, on the dishwasher, on her body, on their toys, our expensive t.v. screen, and here is an example of her favorite canvas. The wall. This lovely illustration is in Grayson's room.

Grayson apparently has a future in cutting hair. I was on my computer while Jaye was chatting away and when I looked up I noticed her hair. I shouted, "What did you do?!?!" And without hesitation, Grayson booked it to his room. I asked Jaye, "you're not the one who cut your hair, are you?"

When I asked Grayson why he did it, he said, "I didn't mean to!" So apparently, he accidentally held a pair of scissors to her hair and unintentionally hacked off some bangs. Riiiiight....

So there you have it. The Future Monet and Paul Mitchell. I'm so lucky.

In a Galaxy far away....

Another FREE day of activities!!! And perfectly fitting for our geeky family! May 4th was National Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with You... Get it?) In honor of this important National celebration, Toys R'Us hosted a free lego star wars building day. So once again we loaded up the car and headed to Idaho Falls.

Every kid got to build on of these space ships and take it home.

                      I love Laycee in all these pictures. She is making a flying sound in all of them.

After building the ships, we moved on to the next most important national Day. FREE Comic Book Day! Woooo!!! We headed to the Outland Comics Store and picked up free comics for the whole fam.

Last year's free comic day had this freaky costumed woman... it was nice to have a non-freaky, Ghost Buster attending this year. He was the star of the party (made his own ghost backpack and it was pretty sweet.) Grayson refused to go stand by him, which was surprising because he believes in REAL Ghost Busters) but Jaye jumped right in.

                                                        Great Day for this family!!!

Earth Day

Sometimes, I forget that we are completely dirt poor because we are DANG good at finding cheap things to do as a family! Early in May, the zoo in Idaho Falls hosted an Earth Day Celebration... in other words- *FREE ADMISSION*!!!

We took the kids up for an exciting day of animal viewing. Laycee's never been to a zoo so it was especially fun to watch her light up with every animal, and make all the animal sounds (She's a little obsessed with roaring.) We took most of our pictures on Barry's phone, so there are actually no animals in my photos.

The petting zoo was hilarious. Jaye LOVES animals... from a distance. At one point all the goats tried to come get some treats from her and she started screaming. Barry had to run in and save the day. Maybe next time we'll stay on the outside of the fence.

You can tell we had a looooong day, this picture was taken only a few minutes after leaving the zoo. My girls were TIRED!

A ton of companies donated gifts for the Earth Day raffle, and out of the hundreds of people there... Our ticket was one of the few drawn! So fun! But by the time we made it to the table, all that was left was this gift basket of cleaning supplies from Melaleuca.  Oh well, a prize is a prize!

Dating and Marriage activity

     This post is mainly for my Mom who wanted to see pictures. But this last Tuesday evening we had a combined Young Women activity about dating and marriage. The first half of the activity focused on the purpose of dating and virtuous living. Following this section, we announced to the girls that we were now going to go to their fake wedding reception where they could dream about what kind of future wedding (and groom) they really wanted.

    For the reception, there were three tables set up, and a cake table complete with an ADORABLE wedding cake made by my talented friend! While we ate the cake, a newlywed and a woman who has been married for 60 years spoke on the blessings of a temple marriage in their own lives... it was a sweet, wonderful evening. And the wedding cake was AWESOME!

I LOVE this wrapping paper, found it at Walmart of all places.

The little favors on the table were lemon heads and bliss chocolate (to go with the purple and yellow theme) and the attached note said, "Don't settle for a "sour" relationship when you can have eternal "bliss".

Cheesy, but they were so cute!

At the end, the girls got to get a gift from the "gift table". Each bag had a ring pop and a booklet with group date ideas, and quotes about dating, sexual purity, and eternal marriage.

The cake was soooooo cute, vanilla cake with raspberry filling, and homemade marshmallow fondant! And she made it all while miserably sick and newly pregnant. Talk about amazing!

I hope the girls felt inspired. I know it sure made me appreciate my marriage and my STUD-MUFFIN husband!

What would Kay do?

       I read a life-changing book a few weeks ago. Well, at least life-changing for this household. It was called, "Cleaning House: a mother's 12 month experiment to rid her home of youth entitlement," by Kay Wills Wyma. The objective of this woman was basically to teach her kids important skills they need to know as adults, and stop coddling them and doing the work for them.

     I find myself thinking about this book in lots of little moments, but today was a pretty big moment for me. I've never been too great at staying on top of laundry, but being pregnant and tired has not helped the laundry situation. I was behind by about two weeks, in other words, after two days of work, I had a mountainous pile of clean clothes, ready to be folded, on our living room couch.

    As soon as Laycee, the anti-folder, was asleep I started to work on my incredibly daunting task. And then Jaye sat down with me and asked if she could help. Bring on the stress. At first I answered, "No Jaye. You helped me wash the clothes (she likes to throw the clothes in the water), but Mommy needs to do this alone."

   She stayed sitting right next to me, so I kind of just ignored her while I continued on my way. A few moments later, I look over and she was trying in earnest to fold a shirt. At that moment, I thought of my book. Why did I need to fold clothes alone? Why shouldn't my kids learn to fold clothes now? The only reason I thought of was, "it's just so much more convenient and fast to do it myself." But Kay Wills Wyma spent 12 months trying to overcome that attitude, so I needed to give it a chance.

    I showed Jaye how to fold the shirt, hovering over her like a vulture. But to my surprise, the second shirt she tried turned out nearly perfect! She could do something I never thought she could, because I wasn't willing to test her abilities. And so, I gave her a pile of shirts and pants to fold (after showing her how to fold them.)

   And then, to my complete and utter shock, my five-year-old son saw us and whined, "I wanna fold clothes!" I didn't know clothes-folding looked so exciting. Now, Grayson has been taught how to fold but I've never, in my life, heard him request the task. I threw him a shirt and he said, "I want to fold all my clothes."

    And so, the three of us sat and folded. And I taught them how to seperate their clothes into which drawer they would go in. And they totally got it! It blew me away. I didn't even have to watch them because they were folding so well! I almost ruined a perfectly enjoyable learning experience with my sweet kids, all because of "efficiency".

    What a terrible excuse "time efficiency" is. I'm glad I made time for family instead.

     Even if it involved laundry.

GREEN For the Day

Sometimes, I can't wait for my kids (Grayson) to start school. But today was one of those days, where the magic of childhood just makes me wish I could keep them young and at home forever. I'm grateful for my Mom who always made a big deal out of holidays, even Saint Patrick's Day, for a family who is in no way genetically connected to Ireland at all.

I let the kids stay up Saturday night, past bedtime, to build our annual Leprechaun trap. I'm so bummed I forgot to take pictures, but pretty much it looked just like last year's lego contraption. It was the first magical moment, seeing my two kids sit and work together for a common goal, while laughing! A RARE occasion at our house.

The following day, I woke up to Grayson's excitement. The Leprechaun came! Unfortunately, we didn't catch it this year, but he left a trail of "gold" all over the house. The kids had a blast finding it all.

 Laycee found one piece, sat down and popped it in her mouth before we caught her (just like Mommy). I love her little chocolate face.

 I need to remember for next year... Grayson was pretty disappointed that the Leprechaun didn't leave a note this year. Last year the Leprechaun wrote them a tiny little note and left it in the trap. I hope he remembers to do that next year!

After the gold hunt, I blasted Celtic music as we colored St. Patrick's Day cards for the kids to give to their teachers at church, then made green jello poke cupcakes for dessert. Then Daddy and I got our aprons on and started on a very green breakfast- green pancakes with green whipped cream, green eggs, and green milk.

Grayson was sad we didn't dye the bacon green. That sounds soooo gross.

Yes, I even took a picture of the green milk.

After church, we ate the cupcakes (BEFORE dinner, oops!) and then took some around to our neighbors. I had a great family home evening planned about the history of St. Patrick. He taught the Irish about the Godhead, using a Shamrock to explain Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. I even made a cute worksheet for everyone to color.

 But I kind of fell asleep on the couch.

And Barry put the kids to bed alone.

 I guess we'll have a post-holiday family home evening tonight. But it was a Fantastic, non-Irish Family Day!

What's in a name?

    Grayson has actively been trying to name our baby. It's hilarious. The name that he and Jaye originally picked for Baby 4 was "Gamey". "You know, like a game?" Luckily that name has been forgotten. We moved on to some real winners like Key, Co, Coda (named after his dead fish), etc.

    Lately, however, the names have gotten more and more... human. He told me in the car the other day that if it's a brother, we should name him Oscar, and if it's a sister we should name her Evie. Not too bad. And tonight, after reading a bedtime story, Grayson declared, "That's what we should name him! David. That's a good name!"

(PAUSE).

"Or we could call him, Snappy!"

Snappy Ricks. Has a good ring to it.


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Side story: Seriously. This is the THIRD time this month, as in the last FIFTEEN days, that Laycee has taken the plunge into our toilet. (Ha... Ahhh, pun-y.) She has almost downed two rolls of toilet paper into the bowl, which is no bueno for us poor college students. It's like our money is just being flushed down the toilet! (haha! Ahhh, pun-y again). It's not that she's just sticking paper in there, but then she likes to take the wads out and dump them on the floor to make room for more toilet paper. SO GROSS!!!

I don't know what's harder, training her to stop playing in the toilet, or training the rest of us to JUST CLOSE THE DOOR after business. Looks like all the Ricks fam needs some serious potty-training. (hahaha!)