This is called a "3 month Review"...

SURPRISE! I BLOGGED AGAIN!
I actually just imported my photos clear back from Christmas today. This is my attempt at sharing a fraction of the last few months with you.

Dad and daughter as shephards:


I love doing fun food for the holidays. It's one of my favorite things. Here are our cute snowmen and reindeer cookies:



Megan and a couple of neighbor girls built this snowman (all by themselves) for a lady in our ward. You've got to love Paige in the picture - she just walked down the street with me to pick Megan up, but wanted to stand in the photo as if she'd help build the snowman! :)


Cooking with the kids:





Princesses, kittens, fairies, and butterflies live at my house:


(I have to add that Megan made her own crown, and the kitten ears on the headbands for her sisters.)





I threw a Valentine's party for Megan and about 8 friends. It was fun to do something like this for her - just because I wanted to:



Paige's new favorite TV watching spot - the windwsill. Unfortunately, Ashlie loves climbing up in here now too:


This is my little buddy...
Ashlie and I go to library story time on Wednesdays together, and Mondays and Fridays she kindly goes to the church and plays in the gym while I exercise with other women in my ward. I'm LOVING this! Tuesdays and Thursdays Ashlie gets to play with her little friend, Emmett while his mom and I volunteer at the school. Most of the time, I love being with this little girl of mine:


I was able to volunteer in Megan's classroom for the Valentine's Day Party. The mom in charge chose to work the party around a Star Wars theme. I got to bring the cupcakes which I let the kids decorate with either Star Wars or Heart toothpick "picks", and with fun sprinkles. One of the other moms brought A TON of really neat Star Wars Legos that the kids built with for the Lego competition. The computer lab teacher loves Star Wars, and the mother asked him to come in and judge. Megan's spacecraft didn't win, but I was proud of her for building one! There were some girls that didn't.



Fun days at school! Here's the girls on their way to school on "Crazy Hair Day", and Paige after 100's Day in Kindergarten:



We had a fun night at their school last night. It was Family Literacy Night, and for an hour and a half we rotated to rooms and listened to stories, and the kids participated in activities that went along with each book. For Dr. Seuss they each received some ooblek, and made a "cat in the hat" hat. At the Harry Potter room we tasted jelly beans, then in the room for "Diary of a Worm" the kids touched worms, watched them crawl on the carpet, and then watched the mom make worms out of this cool science solution. Megan and Paige have been starting school at 7:45 am 3 times a week for quite a while now, so that they can participate in the school choir, and a school art class. Here are their cute leprechauns they made in art class last week:


This year the girls left out one gold candy, and one gold bracelet each, to try and attract the leprechauns to our house for St. Patrick's Day. Well, it worked! We had a nice leprechaun that came and filled their candy dishes with even more gold candy! He left a note saying that he was a nice leprechaun, and just liked to look at gold and jewels, instead of being one that took gold. Megan made traps for the leprechauns, and even caught some! We took a year off of having our traditional green eggs and ham for breakfast, and started the morning off with Lucky Charms. I made a St. Patrick's Day bingo game that we played as a family, and the girls made fruit loop necklaces (rainbows :) ). Anyway, best part of the day was probably our traditional mint ice cream / oreo frozen pie!



Our blackout round:


I wish there were more pictures of Brad and I to share, but honestly, with young kids, I'm the one taking all of the photos. Brad's normally on the video camera at the same time. The kids are cuter anyways. Our life is full, busy, but not too busy. Things just seem pretty perfect lately. I am really enthusiastic about the new job chart / incentive program I've put together for Megan and Paige. They've been going beyond the morning checklist, daily job chart, and "help the spirit be in our home" that they earn tokens for. They've been doing extra service each day in order to earn themselves even more tokens, that they trade in for rewards. Brad and I have been enjoying reading some good books (I'm half-way through the Hunger Games series for the 2nd time), and like I said, I'm enjoying exercising with friends. I just decorated my house for Spring yesterday, and that makes me happy. Megan came in 2nd place in the 3rd grade Arbor Day poster contest, and just finished up swimming on Thursdays with her school class. Paige writes all the time. She writes the way things sound, and it's cute. Her drawing is getting really good, and she works on it a lot. I haven't had Brad work on any house projects in a while, and I think he's loving that! I will do my best to update again soon - it's a great way to kill an afternoon, right?! - Camille

January's Primary Song

I just wanted to pass this along, because I think it's pretty neat...
The January song for Primary is "As a child of God". I'm the primary chorister, so yesterday I introduced the song to the kids in my ward. I shared with them that a simplified version of the song is in the January issue of the Friend Magazine. I challenged those that have a piano or a keyboard in their home to learn the top hand. Taking a closer look at the magazine last night, it said that every month they are going to include a simplified song in the magazine. I took 10 minutes today and taught it to Megan, and she can already play it. I just labeled the keys on the piano, and wrote the note name above the notes on the sheet music for her. I'm so excited about it, and think it will be a super good way for the kids to learn this song.

If you don't have the Friend magazine, it's really easy to get it at www.lds.org (click on magazines, then Friend, and there's a link right there).

Post Water Line Repair Photos

As many of you know, our water line running from the street to our house sprung a leak last Thursday. Four leaks actually. We had a vacation to St. George planned Friday morning - Sunday, so our water was turned off during that time. Brad spoke with lots of plumbers / excavators on Monday and got their bids. Tuesday (yesterday) we were excited for the project to start, so we could get life back to normal again. Our excavator / plumber was very confident that he'd only have to dig a hole around the meter, allowing him to pull the old pipe out, and the new one in (without disturbing the yard too much). Last night at 7pm he and his crew realized that the pipe was not going to pull. It was completely stuck in the ground, not even budging. That's when they tried digging in the flower bed by the house, so that they could try pulling it again. It still didn't work, so that's when they had to dig up the lawn. Because they had the excavator originally starting by the street, then digging by the house, and then eventually digging in the middle, the lawn got ran over by the excavator like crazy. Last night somehow a brass connector piece was buried in all the dirt somewhere. Without the piece our plumber couldn't get our water hooked up last night. So, this morning about 7:15 they were back, and finished at 10:30. They ended up putting about 8 hours into a job they thought would be quick. I am so thankful that the crew seemed very honest, and that our plumber said he'd never raise the price after giving a bid. They did their best to dig shallow to get the lawn scraped off, and they set it to the left, and placed the dirt to the right. They also intentionally left the area raised up so it could settle during the winter. Our flower bed is definitely going to need a complete overhaul come spring, but we'll be okay.

Here are some sad looking photos I just took this morning. Now I'm really excited for it to snow (to cover up the ugly!):














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Officially Not Smarter Than A 3rd Grader

I've decided that I'm officially not smarter than a 3rd grader! On a regular basis, Megan's homework reminds me of math terms that I haven't used in 15 years.
For instance, yesterday Paige showed me this, and asked me to tell her what the words said:

I told her, "It says, one, two, three..." and so on. She was so upset with me. She absolutely did not believe that that's what the words said. After insisting that what I told her was true, I tried to teach her that there are 3 ways to show a number: you can write the number, you can spell out the number, or you can draw dots to symbolize the number. Immediately Megan corrected me and said, "What about standard-form and picture-form?"

Seriously?!

So then Megan wrote out an example of standard form for her mother! 50+5 = 55
then she drew 5 towers of 10 blocks each, plus 5 individual blocks.

It looks like if I'm ever going to use that elementary education degree of mine, I'm going to have to hit the books again! :)

2011 HALLOWEEN FUN

It's been a fun, exhausting week!! I took Ashlie and Paige to a Halloween party at the library on Wednesday, then to a neighborhood party on Friday, then we had a family party down in Kaysville on Saturday, Megan's classroom party on Monday, then trick-or-treating! We toasted pumpkin seeds, made white chocolate covered strawberry ghosts, and ate rectangular shaped homemade pizza instead of our traditional pumpkin shaped one (because I was in a serious hurry!). I dressed Ashlie and Paige in their costumes 4 times, and Megan 3 times...and washed Paige's witch costume 3 times this week! :) We trick-or-treated until the kids couldn't go anymore, and they came back very happy kids! Here are some pictures I wanted to share...

All ready for the neighborhood party at the Ray's house:

The doughnut game!


Decorating pumpkins!


My family, my sister Kim and her family, and my mom & dad.


Me & Brad the leprechaun, my two cute cowgirls, and my cute little witch. Brad has the most perfect leprechaun voice by the way:


Happy girls after finding goodie bags in the leaves:



Playing a game that Brad and I put together for the kids:


Sunday I came home from choir practice and saw this cute spider web hanging in my living room! These two were responsible:


Sunday night we carved our pumpkins. I was proud of Megan for drawing the face on her pumpkin for the first time. I thought she did great!
Megan's pumpkin:

Ever since I did a jack-o-lantern activity with my primary kids, Paige has known that she's wanted her pumpkin to have these eyes with the eyelashes. They turned out cute!

Here's Ashlie's pumpkin!


Monday I got to help do a Halloween party in Megan's class. I did a couple of games with the kids. For one of my games I had a basket filled with about 20 or so Halloween items, and I had all of the kids come up in groups to view them. Then I gave them probably a couple of minutes to write down what they remembered. The boy that won remembered 18 items. I was impressed! This is Megan's copy from the game:

Megan playing the doughnut game:

Megan won her round of the doughnut game, so she got to be one of 4 kids to repeat the game in "The Challenger's Round"! To win your round you had to be the first to pull your doughnut from the string. You didn't have to have it eaten entirely. I couldn't believe that Megan won the challenger's round, and that she ate 2 large glazed doughnuts during class!


Our ward did a trunk-or-treat at 5:00, then we went as a family to a couple of different neighborhoods. The second neighborhood we went to had tons of kids out and about everywhere, and it was a lot of fun. We don't have sidewalks or very many street lamps by our house, so we don't get trick-or-treaters (so we visit other neighborhoods). We were out until 8:00 and the kids' buckets were full!
Ashlie at the trunk-or-treat:

Megan and Paige's hauls:


2 year old on a sugar high!

Some very happy kiddos!!


Favorite moments from last night: Megan skipping down the sidewalk while trick-or-treating, and Ashlie saying trick-or-treat louder than her sisters (the entire way up people's sidewalks). She was so much fun last night. She wanted me to carry her in between houses, but even when her bucket was getting heavy she wouldn't let me hold it. She was not going to let it out of her sights! :) I put all the candy buckets away up high in their closets before bed last night, and Paige told me she wouldn't go to sleep until I put her bucket on her bed. She said "I promise I won't eat any". I guess she just wanted to know it was close by? :) I didn't find any empty candy wrappers in her bed this morning, so I'll assume she kept her word.

Now it's time for some fun November memories! Happy November everyone!