Friday review

So I survived the cinnamon roll baking experience (see previous post).  I haven't had any complaint calls, so hopefully everyone was happy.  I don't think I want to eat or bake cinnamon rolls for a really long time either.  Glad that is over, and thankfully they only do that fundraiser once a year.  The joys of being a band mom. . .

Some other exciting news this week. . . Miss A had her first high school track meet and did awesome!!  I really have no idea where she gets her running talent.  I am not a runner, and neither is Ben, but man, that girl can fly.  She ran the 2 mile, 1 mile, and 1/2 mile races and got first in every single one of them.  Way to go!!  She broke her own personal best times in both the 2 mile and 1 mile.  She beat her fastest 2 mile time by over 30 seconds!!  Yes, I am a proud Mom.  She got home very late last night, but she was very happy.

We have our annual Easter egg hunt this weekend.  We have been doing that every Saturday before Easter since we moved to the country almost 8 years ago.  Every year I say if it rains, we cancel, and we have never had to cancel.  I have never had to worry about canceling because of snow, but this year might be the first. . .

I got the new Hobbit movie for my birthday, and it hasn't even been opened yet.  Been a crazy past couple of days.  Hoping for time to open it and actually enjoy watching it this weekend.

Just loaded up on eggs to dye tomorrow afternoon.  A friend asked me, "you have to buy eggs?  I thought you had chickens."  Yes, we do have chickens, and they lay wonderful, yummy eggs, but we only have 5 hens.  They lay enough eggs for us to eat (except when you have to bake 6 dozen cinnamon rolls in one day) but not enough extra for us to dye a few dozen for Easter.  And actually fresh eggs are not the best to hard boil.  They are really, really, really hard to peel.  It is a pain.  Older eggs are much better to hard boil and peel, so we buy white eggs to dye.  When I have to buy eggs I always about fall over when I see how expensive they are.  Really, a dozen eggs is how much?  Man, I love my chickens!  The brown eggs dye really pretty, but we are going with white this year.  I did a post about dyeing brown and white eggs here.

Hope you have a Happy Easter and have a great weekend!!

2012 Blue Jeans week 14

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter.  Ours was beautiful.  So grateful for my Savior and all He has done for me.  I am truly blessed.  Here is what we have been up to this past week. . .

Sunday:  Our church has a semi-annual General Conference, and we usually watch it over the internet, but Ben figured out a way to hook it up to the TV.  The kids always enjoy playing with legos while listening.  We love General Conference weekend.

Monday:  Mashed potatoes are one of our family's favorite foods, but it is rather labor intensive, so the kids know if they want it, peeling potatoes is required.  Miss O was in charge of peeling potatoes for dinner tonight.

Tuesday:  First track meet of the season, and it was a beautiful day.  It was small meet, but Miss A did awesome and came in 1st in her races.  Go, girl, go!

Wednesday:  We enjoyed a nice afternoon at the park on early release day today.

Thursday:  Getting ready for Easter and dying eggs--a favorite activity for everyone!  We dye our brown chicken eggs, and they turn out so pretty!

Friday:  Every year we host a Easter Egg hunt/potluck dinner with a bunch of friends.  My kids love filling the Easter eggs full of candy that we hide.  I think they love it so much because they have to sample each kind to make sure it is good :)  Mr J and Miss E were good egg stuffers today.

Saturday:  Our 6th annual Easter Egg Hunt/potluck.  It was raining in the morning, and we were worried we would have to cancel, but the sun came out, and it warmed up right as we began.  The kids have lots of fun hunting eggs, and it is a great time to spend with friends.

Thanks for visiting!  Have a great week!

Blue Jeans Week 14

Hope you all have had a good Easter weekend.  Here is what we have been up to. . .

Sunday:  Miss A took this picture.  It is definitely dandelion season here--achoo! 

Monday:  We played Bocce for family night.  That is a fun yard game if you haven't played it before. We would recommend it.  Any age can play, and that makes it even better.  Miss O tries to give Mr J some tips.

Tuesday:  Soccer--I am so glad we only have one more week left of soccer!  So glad it is a short season.  Mr J was killing some time between his games while we watched his sister play today.  Post-it notes and a pen are essential to have in my purse at all times--they are great entertainers! 

Wednesday:  In art at the kids' school for earth week the kids did "recycled" projects.  These "flowers" are what Miss O did with her partner and are called the "Plants of Doom" made with pop can tabs, feathers, scrap paper, paper straws, a can, wire hangers, and a CD.  Awesome.  Love Earth Day projects.

Thursday:  Kindergarten Field Trip day!  See previous post for more details and pictures.  We went to a farmstead about 2 hours from our town.  Had so much fun with Mr. J and his class!

Friday:  When we moved to the country about 6 years ago we started having an annual Easter Egg hung and potluck because we had the space, and I'd always wanted to do it.  This year was our 6th annual.  We eat in our summer house, then either moms or dads hide the eggs while the kids play "Bunny, Bunny, Hop" (our Easter version of "Duck,Duck, Goose") and then they are off to egg hunt, and Ben usually runs over a few unfound eggs with the mower the week after :)  It was beautiful weather this year and so fun!

Saturday:  Easter egg dyeing day.  We are so not fans of hard boiled eggs, only Ben likes them, and we usually just end up throwing away the eggs because we dye so many that Ben can't eat them all, so this year Ben suggested we just dye them without hard boiling them.  Mr J and Miss E were not sure if Dad was correct about this theory that non-hard boiled eggs would work, but it did.  So, now our morning scrambled eggs have very colorful shells :)

Hope you all have a good week.  We have had so much rain.  I am glad we got our garden in so our plants should be sprouting soon!  Love spring!

 

Dyeing Eggs--both brown and white

In case you didn't already know, we have chickens at our house. We have 3 Rhode Island Red laying hens. They give us pretty and very yummy fresh brown eggs. With Easter coming up we were wondering how it would be to dye the brown eggs?
Now I didn't hard boil many brown eggs. I bought 18 white ones to hard boil and only hard boiled 4 brown ones. Why, you ask? We aren't big hard boiled or deviled eggs fans around here, and from experience I know that we end up throwing out our dyed eggs after about 2 weeks, so I wasn't about to waste all my good fresh brown ones on egg dyeing. I didn't have a problem wasting the white store bought ones :) So on Saturday everyone got to work. They had big plans. . .

These were their results. We were impressed with how the brown ones dyed. Can you spot the original brown eggs? There are 4 of them. (answers at the bottom of post). They took the colors a deeper shade and turned out very pretty. I wanted to show you some pretty creative egg dyeing by my girls and Ben. . .

Hello! Did you know eggs can wear glasses too?

A pretty tri-colored egg. You have to have a steady hand to get the lines straight as you hold them in the different colored dyes. Way to go Ben!

Good-night! Sleep tight! Don't let the egg bugs bite!

(answers: dark brown/orange on left, dark purple in upper left, dark red that says "Easter" with a heart on it, and Ben's tri-colored one are the 4 brown eggs, did you guess them right?)