projects.

the kids have been up to lots of crafts.  they had earned some things from the general conference store, if you recall.  they spent hours for days making these melty bead animals.  it was great having them consumed with creativity.

i taught brady how to use the iron, which was also a useful thing to learn

brady created a marble run/ habitat for his imprisoned {i mean, pet} praying mantis, who sadly died {starved to death} after brady couldn't catch enough flies to feed it.  we later learned, while doing a little research that praying mantis never eat dead insects.  oops.  next time we'll remember that and let them remain free on our lawn.

he was very proud of his creation, and now we have a petrified praying mantis.  

grammie morgan brought these projects with her when she came to visit in June and we proudly displayed them for several months until we began packing.

brady brings home these large pieces of paper from school and we like to try and do projects with them.  grammie had also brought these holographic sparkly space stickers with her so i divided them among the two kids and let them go to town creating their own galaxies!

brady's:

brady's was complete with earthlings in a rainstorm

olivia's:

i was quite impressed with her drawings.  she did have a little help from brady from time to time...(alien)

the rocket and  rapunzel towel were entirely her creations

and at the end we found a worthy place to hang them!  it brightened up their closet, and they were able to continue drawing and coloring them from time to time when the whim hit!

i had bought olivia a really cute snow white book at goodwill in montana last year.  we kept it in the car for road trips and over the course of a few trips she managed to tear several pages out and rip them to bits when she was mad about something.  not wanting to just throw the book away, we tore out the rest of the pages and went to town cutting out different objects to create a special house for snow white to live in.  olivia wanted lots of help with this part, but when it came time to create and glue she wanted to be all by herself.  she was quite proud of what she came up with and even though we ended up tossing more than half of our little bits it was still a cute little way to use her book instead of just throwing it away!