Tanis's Science Fair Project Trials

So now that Tanis is in 4th grade he has to do a project for the Science fair. He decided to do one were we saw how many books egg shells could hold. So he 1st started with 2 eggs and found that only 2 books would balance on them. So the next one was 3 eggs and then 4 eggs. We found out that 4 eggs obviously could hold more books then the others. It was lots of fun.

Design Team Layout

So I haven't blogged in a while about any of my scrap booking layouts and I loved this one so I thought I would share. The line of paper is Carolee's Creation Fern. Carolee's is probably my 2nd most favorite paper line or I guess I should say that it is the 2nd most bought in my paper boxes after Basic Grey. I was really scared as I started to look for ideas and found basically nothing except the one layout on Carolee's site but it was so easy to work with and I did these 5 cards and my layout in about an hour which is really fast. Hope you all enjoy.

Liz and Ben (aka Jimmy) White's Sealing Day

Derek and I had the privilege Friday February 13th to be in the temple with Liz and Ben while they took out their endowments and then the next day we went back to the temple and they were sealed and had Heidi and Hans sealed to them. What a spiritual and exciting couple of days it was. I also got to make Hans's sealing outfit and then hold him at the alter while the children were sealed to them. So even though Derek got me nothing for Valentine's Day we were in the most special place we could be for that day, a sealing room watching to of our dear friends make the highest commitment to our Father in Heaven.

3 events for January

So this month we had three great events. First Ashley had her ballet recital and it was the Peter Pan Production. Then Tanis had Pinewood Derby which he had fun making his car. I would say this was probably the hardest year of it for mom though. Derek wasn't around to guide Tanis at all so I had to take him to get it weighed in and it had no weights on it and the wheels weren't attached. To say the least after that night I was in tears watching all these dads with their boys and their perfect cars come into get weighed. I really hate those dads out there who do the entire thing for their boy. That is what makes the boys who do their own cars sad (and their parents) because they aren't ever winning any of the races. How do you teach your children creativity, about winning and losing, and good sportsmanship if you are the one making the car. So we had a few boys who's dads did their cars and of course they are the ones going to districts. I guess I now know how Derek has felt these past few years about it all. Our last event for the month was Wyatt's birthday. He turned 2 on the 24th and I can't believe he is that old. We had his party at McDonald's and just let the kids play and then had cake and presents. It sure is fun to watch 2 yr. old's learn about birthday parties. He loved everything he got. All in all we had a great fun month.

The Reason Nikki hates to Cook

Ok so I am know to not be a good cook and it is a joke around our house that when Derek started to date me and married me he thought he was getting this amazing women who could cook, sew, and would clean because she has a degree in Home Ec Education. But the truth is I have always hated to cook and didn't have to do it lots growing up because my sister Aly loved to cook and always did. So I thought it would be fun to make homemade chocolate chip cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve with Ashley (Tanis had no interest in it). So I got it all mixed up and when it was done I said this looks really liquidy compared to ones I have made before but I showed Ashley how to drop them on the pan and we got it done and started to bake them. I looked in on them when there was about 1 minute left and the whole cookie sheet was one flat cookie and it was almost dripping off the pan. I called Linda (my mother in law) in and we started to laugh. She asked did you use the small round container for the flour. I said yes and then she told me oh no that is the powdered sugar. So my cookies had no flour just 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 cup of brown sugar and I had doubled the amount of chocolate chips because I hate not having enough. Needless to say the were very sweet. I was able to put the right amount of flour in to the mix and they turned out fine but they are a little hard. You can see the 2 different batches in the picture. So from now on Santa I am sorry but you will probably get store bought cookies.

Christmas at the Peterson's

Ashley loved everything she got and her favorites she would act like she had fainted.

Most of the time this is how you would see Tanis. He rarely reacted and we never knew if he liked any of his gifts but he did.

Wyatt was so fun to watch this year. When he figured out what to do he wanted to unwrap everyone's gifts. He thought the object with cookie monster was to step on him and then he would make noise.

Here are the kids with the Santa cookies and his milk before they went to bed.

Every Year the kids get new pj's to wear. The last 2 years I have sewed them. This year I didn't sew the boys shirts but they still turn out adorable. These are courtesy of Nana.

The Trial of Christmas Picture Taking

So I really forgot what it was like to have to take pictures with a almost 2 year old. I now remember why I took the older 2 to Wal-mart or Sears all the time and would spend an hour there while the photographer tried to get a photo. And these few pictures don't even show the drama that was happening in between them. Wyatt was very determined that he was not going to sit in the train position (one kid in front of the other) like I tried to do in the 1st picture. My girlfriend Karen had did it for years with her 4 kids and I thought it was adorable why not try it with mine. Guess I will try again next year. So all in all I think I got one good one which of course is the last one so it wasn't a total failure.