More Food

September 10 was National TV Dinner Day. There wasn't room in the freezer for actual TV dinners so we brainstormed what kinds of food you might find in a TV dinner and decided on some we could fix ourselves. So our homemade TV dinner consisted of ham, frozen corn, creamy mac and cheese, and for dessert we were going to have brownies but we were given a pie that we needed to eat up so we had some of that.

Then as a family we ate our dinner in front of the TV. We watched the movie, Emma, the version with Gwyneth Paltrow. TV and dinner. We celebrated.

September 12 was National Chocolate Milkshake Day. We had woo-woo. Yumm yumm.

At home, Jr. made cookies for a food class assignment. He had to get pictures of him measuring and send it to his teacher. Then when they were all made, he shared the cookies with us. Aww. Such a nice boy.

So that's been some of what we've done with food lately.

Ice Cream for Breakfast

February 1 was Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. It's not on our calendar because it's every first Saturday in February, not the same date every year.
I enjoyed some ice cream in a mug of hot chocolate for breakfast. Yumm.

I don't feel bad at all about having ice cream for breakfast. I also don't feel bad about letting Jr. Jr. and Lucky both veg in front of the TV. They both had coughs so TV is a distraction when people are sick.
Sweet little Lucky, when I went to set up the humidifier for him in the early hours of the morning, he told me not to get too close because he didn't want to get me or Jet sick. Awww. I love my children and I will be grateful when cold/flu season is over.

The weather was good that day and Jeremy and the two oldest went to a gull identification clinic like Nichole and I went to last year. Yay for birding.

While they were looking at gulls, they ran into some friends who were out looking for bald eagles. Birding is fun for the whole family.

It's a good thing Nichole didn't have the boys' cough because that evening she went to a girls' night at a friend's house. She had dinner and watched a movie and took brownies to share. She had a great time. The boys were happy that she had leftover brownies to bring home. Yumm. We like brownies.

Ah, The Life Of a Celebrity

We had an early morning this morning.  We got the kids up really early to go up to the Museum of Ancient Life to the Wonders build.  Jeremy was on kutv2 news in the morning.  They also talked about kids summer camps at Thanksgiving Point, so our kids got to be involved in that.  They got to make rockets out of alka seltzer and film canisters.

Jeremy made a balloon caricature of the interviewer to give to him.

Besides KUTV, the Wonders have been getting some other attention.
The Daily Herald had an article about it.
The Daily Universe had an article about it.
With how early our morning was, we didn't get much done today.  Well, Jeremy did.  Today was the first day he started the Temple of Artemis.

And here is a picture of the finished Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

I can barely fit it in with my camera.
It was an early day.

And Then There Are Those Other Celebrations

Yesterday, I mentioned on this blog about how some celebrations take planning and effort and some celebrations are easy because we just do what we normally do.  Then there are those times when there is planning, but it doesn't exactly come together as planned.
Today, September 7, 2012, is the 85th anniversary of when Philo T. Farnsworth showed a working electronic television.  Now TV is great, right?  But do we really need to celebrate this Philo T. Farnsworth guy?  Well, yes.  In my family, we do.  It was an important thing for everyone in my family growing up to know who Philo T. Farnsworth was.  Not just because we like TV, but because Philo T. Farnsworth was my grandma's cousin.  See, it's Family History.

So I had things planned to celebrate today.  After a lovely breakfast of breakfast burritos (thanks, Jeremy.  You're my hero), the older kids went to school.

Then the younger kid and we parents went shopping and to the library where we checked out some books about television inventions and inventors.  I intended to read with the kids after school about Philo T. Farnsworth and talk about how we're related and that he is known as the "father of television."

I also planned to make a pie when Jr. got home from school.  Mmmm.  Strawberries were on sale this week.
It took longer than I expected.  After two attempts baking the crust (see, it happens to all of us- not just with birthday cakes),

and a few hours of cooling later, we ended up with a nice looking strawberry pie (thanks, Mom, for the recipe, and for letting me call you countless times to double check on things).  It tasted so good.

We invited some friends over to enjoy it with us, so by the end of the day, we didn't have time to sit down together to read about Philo T. Farnsworth.
So not exactly what I had planned for today.  I browsed through the library books myself and the kids can look at them later.
But hey, we had pie.

Turn Off Week

We recently took a challenge from the April 2011 issue of FamilyFun Magazine. Turnoff Week. No TV, computer, etc. etc. for a week. I prepared by cueing up a week’s worth of blog posts and set them to post one every day while I was off. Jeremy still needed to use the computer for work, but no facebook games or hulu.com in the background. We had a couple instances where we did use the computer as a family during the week, though. One was to watch a video that went along with our scripture study (it was special for Easter). The second was to watch the premiere of Part One of the documentary, Working with Bubbles (work related).

But there was no sitting in front of a screen, wasting time.
The first day was kind of rough. The kids and I were having trouble getting along. It felt like there was no point in doing the turnoff thing, it wasn’t helping us at all and I couldn’t even get a break from the kids’ attitudes to get on the computer or watch a show.
Then the next day came. The kids knew we were planning on doing a Passover dinner so they were looking forward to that. They even helped make the unleavened bread.

Everybody started being nicer while we did this special activity together.
Without the distractions of TV and computer, we were able to focus on more important things. I was able to focus on more important things. I took Jr. (and sometimes Jr. Jr. as well) out every day, either to go shopping or to play at the mall while Jeremy was working at home.

We played more non-electronic games.

Jeremy even taught the kids how to set up a chess board (Jr. had his own way of doing it).

We played dress up.

Nichole's ballet bear got to try on a new outfit (which she's had since Christmas. Thanks Mom and Dad T.) and join Nichole for a tea party.

We used our creativity. Nichole ate like a mouse and Jr. sculpted an "E" out of his toast, one that sat upright on his plate.

We played "Cinderella.”

We tried some new foods.

Jr. Jr. even tried peas for the first time.

We decorated Easter Eggs… with crayons.

Jr. even decorated himself.

Nichole had her Easter party at school.

Unfortunately, we did have some sad times. We didn’t always get along, though I was definitely more patient that week than I had been for some time before. Some of us took turns not feeling so well.

Jeremy and I talked about how the end of the week was very different from the beginning. It was so hard in the beginning, it almost didn’t seem worth it. But things did improve. It reminded us of a talk given by President Uchtdorf in the April 2009 General Conference.
He had a friend who was struggling with his testimony. President Uchtdorf suggested some things for his friend to do. His friend practically gave up after only one week. It wasn’t working for him. I knew I couldn’t give up on this Turnoff Week if it wasn’t working after only one day.

Overall, I’d say the Turnoff Week was beneficial for all of us. Too bad the first thing we did Monday morning was get on the computer to make comments on the family blog.

We’re going to have to work on figuring out a balance.
So if I don’t blog as much for a while, know I’m trying to figure out that balance.

It was a good family week.