Drama! Drama! Drama!

Well, the drama never ends around here, I tell ya. After Monday's adventures I thought things would calm down. Nope. Tuesday morning Evelyn's teacher took her to the office because she wasn't feeling well and had super pink cheeks (I never did get a picture). So, instead of going to work with Shawn, I went and picked her up and brought her home. We got into a doctor that afternoon who said it was probably fifth disease. Nothing major - just a virus that causes a rash once it isn't contagious anymore. So back to school she went on Wednesday - pink cheeks and all.

Wednesday morning I did get to go the temple for a Relief Society temple session. It was a full session (of women anyway), but there were only 4 sisters from our ward there. We did have lunch in the cafeteria afterwards and it was fun to visit with them. After school I went with Shawn to the Romeo and Juliet rehearsal to take some snapshots. Felicity came in crying and told me about the terrible day she had had. I later found out more about some of the things that had upset her and that led to a private chat at home and a letter being written to the principal and her teacher about some boys who were being naughty while a substitute was there. None if it was directed AT Lissy, it just upset her and needed to be stopped right away.

Thursday morning Shawn hung out with Lissy at school and took part in a meeting with the principal, school counselor and a couple other girls who had heard what was going on. He was also there in her class when the principal and counselor went in to talk to the whole class. After school I went with Lydia to activity days to help out since our other leader suddenly moved over the weekend. They made and decorated cookies to take to a few people in our ward and it took two hours instead of the usual one. It was fun, but I did go home with a migraine. That night I went to the Cub Scout Blue and Gold banquet while my awesome hubby performed the traditional Thursday night dance transportation and library run.

Friday I had a stuffy/runny nose and sore throat, so I stayed in bed all day and drank lots of juice. After school Evelyn went to play with a neighbor and Lydia had a friend over to play. Friday evening (about 5 pm) we answer the door to our neighbor who is cradling Evelyn in his arms while she is crying and has a wad of tissues stuck in her mouth. She had been jumping on the trampoline and hit a boy’s head with her top front teeth. They were loose - baby teeth fortunately - and her gums were cut and bleeding. The bleeding still hadn't stopped after an hour and a half and we emailed a picture to Brent (my brother who is a dentist).He called and asked if her teeth used to be at that angle and then suggested we take her in for an x-ray just to be sure the bone wasn't broken. So after trying to get a hold of a couple of emergency dentists we finally heard back from one but he couldn't see us for another couple of hours. So, we decided to try our new (wonderful) dentist who fixed Lydia's tooth and he was able to meet us at his office within 10 minutes! He took x-rays and thought the bone was okay. Then he let us decide if we wanted to pull the teeth out that night, or wait a couple days and see if Evie could wiggle them out on her own. We decided that she would be more miserable leaving them in than just getting them pulled, so he gave her some nitrous, numbed her up and pulled them out. She was a trooper! She didn't even cry and we discovered that when she gets tense, she clenches her legs and feet - not her hands. Mommy even got to pretend to be a dental assistant and hold the x-ray film and put on the bib thing. We got milkshakes afterwards and took them home for everyone, but Evie couldn't really figure out how to eat hers with her numb lip. She could barely even get a drink of water or swallow some ibuprofen. The tooth fairy came that night and left double the usual amount since there was double the teeth.

Saturday we woke up and our heater wasn't working. Could anything else go wrong?!?? Someone eventually came to look at that and it turns out we were using too high quality filters and that was overworking the heater. Oh, and it was really dirty and needs to be serviced, but it is working again. Yay! Today has been a nice Sunday. We all went to church, made it to choir practice, watched the USA/Canada hockey game, took a little nap, finished up our home and visiting teaching, had a yummy dinner and plan on reading our family book when the girls are done with dishes. I'm hoping this next week is a little calmer, that we can stick to our schedule and that no one needs to go to the doctor or dentist.

Warning: A little gross

Here is a picture of Evie's teeth about a half hour after the accident. This is the one we sent to Brent.
And here she is after the after-hours trip to the dentist.
The tooth fairy is on her way!
This is the next day - looking pretty yucky still.

Visiting Teaching Handout

Here are the cute little handouts I made to take to my sisters this week. My VT partner just moved last weekend, so I will be going solo. These are from a blog called See Me Visit Teach and the directions for this handout can be found here. Her ideas are so cute and easy and they make me want to go Visiting Teaching just a little bit more, so that's a good thing right? I used some stick on bling for the purse "clasp", brads to attach the handle so it will swing out of the way a little, and cut up "freebie" magnets for the closure. I found the Palmer money candy at Walgreens - 99 cents for about 13 "coins".

After a trip to the dentist

Just for you Brent - here's some after pics. What do you think? I'm no professional, but I think it looks pretty good. Definitely way better than the before shots anyway. We'll see how it holds up.

A Chip Off the Old Tooth

Here's what Lydia did today. I swear that girl must have a magnet in her head that attracts her to metal poles. This is the second time she has crashed into one and we have had to get into the dentist pronto. This time she was twisting in a swing. Can you ban kids from everything on a playground? We found a dentist who was willing to squeeze us in this afternoon. We were looking for a new dentist anyway, so the other two that turned us down today just lost 5 new patients. And we were able to make arrangements to get 1 kid to the dentist, 1 kid to the orthodontist, and 1 kid to and from ballet all at the same time.

Lissy's turn...

... to be sick. Felicity woke up early Friday morning with the flu and stayed home from school again. We kept her home last Friday too due to a cold. Shawn took the day off too, so we all just chilled at home. Saturday I went to a baby shower and Shawn taught Karate. Then I took Felicity in to urgent care because her throat hurt. Yep. Strep throat. They didn't even do a culture - the nurse practitioner could see and smell it. Yum. So her cold, flu and strep should be feeling much better in the next day or so. Hooray for antibiotics. We're still trying to relax as much as possible and infect as few people as possible.

Valentine's Victuals

I hope you all had a "LOVE"ly Valentine's Day!
In honor of the very first Valentine's Day dinner I ever cooked my husband, I decided we would have Chicken Cordon Bleu for our Valentine's dinner. The original was accompanied by instant mashed potatoes, canned gravy and frozen corn. I'd like to think that over the past 12 years that I have become a better cook, so I upgraded the sides a little. This year we made penne with a pink cream sauce and steamed asparagus and served leftover sparkling cider (From New Year's) served in festive pink plastic cups
For dessert we made a black forest cake in the shape of a heart. I would recommend adding the whipped cream and cherries just before serving as we had cherry landslides while we waited to serve dessert. It was super simple - Devil's food cake mix, XL tub of chocolate frosting, can of whipped topping and can of cherry pie filling - and oh so tasty!

Oh, Green, Where art Thou?

I know it's only February, and Valentine's Day is barely over, but I am missing the color green - green grass, green trees, green leaves, green plants springing from the soil. And I don't even really like the color green. Especially not as much as Lissy likes the color green. So, I started putting up my St. Patrick's Decorations and adding some green into my day. My favorite right now is our leftover Martinelli's bottles from our Valentine's dinner. I soaked the labels off, stuck the last surviving flowers from Felicity's birthday bouquet in them and plopped them in my kitchen window and let the sun shine through. Ah, Green, there you are.
My little leprechaun friend is another vintage postcard printed out and placed in a dollar store frame. You can't quite read the whole sentiment, but it says "Erin Go Bragh!"

Florence Nightingale

That's me today. Nursing my daughter back to health. Lydia threw up 3 times last night, so she is camped out in her bedroom today. Am I terrible mother to be completely irritated because I was awoken at 1:45 am and again at 2:30 am? It wasn't the taking care of a sick girl that was so irritating, but how darn chatty she was! If you're sick, I think you should act sick. Especially in the wee hours of the morning.

Anyway, I did get to go back to sleep this morning after the other girls left for school and have now found some patience and a little energy again. And the good news is she must be feeling better because the Gatorade I ran to get her and the Chicken and Stars soup (which has "cute tiny stars") are staying down. Now if I can just talk her into taking a nap :)

I am taking advantage of the sick day to get a little cleaning done that I have been neglecting - the microwave, the pantry, mopping the kitchen floor, clearing off the counters, etc. Now I am going to run one more load of laundry and sort the girls clean clothes for them to fold when they get home from school.

Fantastic Frame Find

I went back to Dollar Tree to get more black frames and found them in red also! Yippee! I like the red much better for Valentine's Day. Don't you?

Lissy's Paris Room

Here is Lissy's room with a few new additions - the mirror, curtains and rod she got for her birthday. Also, the "French Felicity" F's I just repainted. The vinyl wall decor she got for Christmas (it doesn't stick very well on her wall though). Her little shelf has a wire dress form for her jewelry, a green glass bottle and vinyl letters to spell out "bonheur" - happiness in French (Felicity's name means "happiness"). Her dresser was too messy, but on it we have a silver tray with all her toiletries and a picture of the Eiffel Tower in a silver frame (it came in the picture frame).

Another crafty afternoon

So I was inspired by my friend Joy to finally make some of the big flower hair clips that are so popular right now. Here is her craft blog tutorial. Thanks Joy! I had some leftover bright pink daisies, so I started with those and that quickly spiraled out of control and I went through my scrapbooking supplies and kept going. I had gotten a lot of flower petals from an online swap a few years ago and a lot of the flowers are just too big for my taste in scrapbooking. However, they were perfect for hairclips! I also had some alligator clips that were already covered in ribbon from a huge lot of hairclips I purchased at a discount a couple years ago. The flowers that were on them kept coming off and I just saved the clips. I also already had the little bits of bling for the centers. So in the end, 15 hair clips - $0.00, cute girls - priceless.

I'm a bit of a control freak, and I didn't want these to just get shoved in the bathroom drawer with all the other hair clips, so I rigged up a ribbon clip to hang in my scraproom where I can control who wears them and when. I just tied a pink fabric sash/belt thing onto a keyring (both laying on my craft table) and hung it on a push pin stuck into the wall.

While I was in a crafty mood and cleaning off my table I ran across a couple of projects that needed some spray paint. The large letter F was originally white and the smaller one pink. They are now black with some green accents to go in Lissy's Parisian themed room (I'll post more pictures of her room soon). The little wooden birdie basket was a country blue color. My hubby kindly removed the handle and taped off the birds for me several months ago. The black is more versatile for me and it is now on my buffet holding valentine boxes ready to go to school.
And these are the beautiful flowers Lydia and Evie made me for my birthday. My favorite color - yellow.

Miscellaneous crafty stuff

While I had my glue gun out the other night working on my glitter hearts, I also decided to fix this little donkey. He is from a resin nativity set that I got a few years ago for the girls, and his poor little ears broke off. A couple snips of felt, a little hot glue, and he has new ears. They're not as good as the original ears, but he's happy. I also glued some pieces of felt onto the bottom of some wooden boxes that have been scratching up my bookcases. Easy fix. By the way, can you tell who just had to jump in the picture? Silly girl.
For family home evening on Monday we worked on valentines. Lydia had to make a box and wanted me to get a picture. My girls love to glue paper onto boxes! My favorite parts are the stand up pipe-cleaner heart and the curly cues on the side. Lydia continued to make hearts out of her scraps after she had labeled all her valentines. Evelyn also got all of her valentines labeled. I have seen a ton of cute homemade valentines out there, but when I can get a box for 35 cents or less on clearance, that's what I'm doing.

Valentine Decorations and Crafts

So, when I went to put up some Valentine decorations, I realized I didn't have many. A trip to Dollar Tree was in order. I found some glittery heart picks and a really cool black picture frame, which really isn't valentiney, but I liked it. I should go get some more and paint them holiday colors....

Anyway, I took four of the glittery heart picks and stuck them in my houseplants. Creative, I know. The other three I cut the pick part off of and glued a twine loop on the back so they could hang on my welcome sign in my entryway. So easy!
I googled "free vintage valentine images" and printed off a picture to go in my black frame. It says, "And there will be one long Spoontime, Dearie." Who doesn't love a good spoon time? Also so easy!
The rest was stuff I had in my box. Last year at Albertsons they had some Valentine stuff 90 percent off! So, that is where I got the cute little pink votive cups and phrases. The heart-shaped box of chocolates was also 90 percent off. The chocolates didn't last long, but the box was too cute to throw away. It has a beaded texture and is really quite pretty.
The really old stuff was this little wall hanging by the front door and a heart garland that goes over our living room entry and dining room window.
And this welcome heart that I think I made at a BSU student ward homemaking night.

Crafty Attack

So I've been in a crafty mood lately, but here is what my craft table looked like - not conducive to crafting. That's my box of sewing supplies still out from the day I mended and made the butterfly cape. I started sorting it and then had to go make dinner or something trivial like that. Eventually, I started cleaning it off, and it is still messy, but I just decided to work on stuff as I excavated. Some of the projects were so easy I don't know why I haven't done them earlier. Besides this table, I have a box of full of "projects" on the floor as well. I've been pulling a few things out of there too. I'm trying to do a little every day and I'll share with you, if you don't mind.

Recipe Blog

I've been adding some recipes to our family recipe blog at the request of my sis-in-law. Just thought I'd let y'all know in case you need to get out of a rut. Some of the recipes we haven't had in awhile - but they're "keepers" in our book. The link is over on the right in the side bar - It's a Keeper recipe blog. Enjoy!

I Like Pie?

So, when a friend commented that her pre-adolescent was also fond of this random phrase, I thought, "Am I missing something?" So I Googled it. Apparently it is quite the popular random phrase. See this post at Urban Dictionary. I still don't get it though..... Anyone else have a clue? I guess I'm getting old.

"That **** Donna Reed"

For my fellow Gilmore Girl fans out there - you'll get the reference ;)

Yesterday was my Donna Reed day. After volunteering in Lydia's classroom I came home and got all domestic (okay after I watched my recorded "What Not to Wear" and a little Rachel Ray). First I got out my sewing machine and did some mending. I got everything in my pile done except for Lydia's dance costume pants - I need brown thread for that. That means I fixed 1 sheet, 2 pairs of girl's jeans, 1 pair of girl's slacks, 2 sweaters, 1 pair of suit pants, 1 men's shirt and 1 girl's shirt.

Then, since we were having soup-from-a-can for dinner, I decided to make some rolls. I used my mom's Madge Rich Rolls recipe - so really, I guess it's Madge Rich's recipe. I'm pretty sure this is the first time in my married life that I have ever made rolls from scratch. No Rhode's rolls for me this time. They turned out yummy and out of the 2 dozen I made - two survived the meal.

While the dough was rising I decided to make a butterfly costume that I have had for YEARS (so long I can't even remember when I bought it - maybe in Provo?). I have the sewing machine out, so why not? It is just a fleece panel, so was actually quite simple. I couln't find the little brochure I had with the directions, so I just made it up - which made it even simpler maybe since I didn't stress about all the embellishing. This is the first time I have ever appliqued anything and I'm excited to say it was pretty easy - of course, they were just circles - but I could maybe do that again. They girls were excited to try it on and are now debating on who gets to be a butterfly for Halloween.
Lydia the butterfly.Evelyn the butterfly.