Piano Recital

Tonight was our piano recital. It was a very good one. It was kind of emotional for me. This was the last recital for five of my students that I have been teaching now for years. They are moving on to college and other things. It was kind of neat though that I had these kids come to me not knowing anything and now here they are playing the piano. It is really cool. My three oldest children also played really well. Here are the video's of them playing.

Abigail, playing "Ode to Joy"


Joshua, playing "The Purple Cow"


Jacob, playing "Ballade"

Busy Weekend

This weekend was a busy one. On Saturday, I had a Stake Service project that I went to and then John and the kids loaded up the tree that we cut down and took three loads of trash to the dump. Then Jacob mowed our whole yard for the first time. It is really neat to be able to have the boys getting old enough to really help and do some of these kinds of things.

Abigail had her first soccer game. She really had fun.

This is not the best pic. I will get a better picture next week.

Then John made us dutch oven potatoes and Hamburgers for dinner. It was a great day. I love it when we get so much accomplished.

Jacob's Science Fair

This past weekend Jacob took 2nd place in the School Science Fair and got to go to the District Science Fair. He didn't place at District, but had a lot of fun. We are proud of him for taking 2nd place at the school and getting to move on.

He did his science fair project on which batteries last longer: Name brand or generic. His results were they were both very close. So for the money it saves you, buy generic.

Are We Ready for an Emergency

Tonight, for Family Home Evening we had a test run to see if we are prepared. It all started at dinner. I didn't cook anything and when I called everyone to the table to eat, John turned the power out in the kitchen and the weather turned out nicely. The wind was blowing and the dark black rain clouds were blowing in and then the power went out. The kids are scared and then John comes in and says"I think we're having a earthquake, quick get under the table." So we all gather under the table, (Abigail is now crying hysterically) and we talk about what to do in an earthquake. Then we had everyone go to their rooms to pretend to sleep and then John pushes the fire alarm. We all exit the house and go to our family meeting point. Now everyone is having fun. Then John shows us how to shut off the gas and water.

Now comes the fun part. Because we have had an emergency we need to pull out our 72 hour kits and eat dinner from this. Well, I filled our 72 hour kits 4 year ago and after we got all the food out, everything was expired! (ha, ha,) Good thing we did this now and not when there was a real emergency. So we ended up throwing almost everything away and had french toast for dinner.

But we learned a few things:

1. Don't store things that expire in the same year you buy them.
2. Store things that you really will eat (we had things that were on the list that nobody like)
3. Rotate the food yearly so when a disaster strikes you have fresh food.
4. Put your food in a ziploc bag for easier rotation. (I had sealed our kits in mylar bags, but you can't rotate food in and out of them. If they were in a ziploc bag I could rotate things easier.)

So now I will go buy new food for our 72 hour kits and hopefully remember to rotate it more often.

It was a pretty good FHE and all the kids learned a few things.

Easter/Spring Break

Well, this past weekend has been our Spring Break and Easter weekend. Of course, it SNOWED!! My kids were not too happy with that, but they made the best of it and put their snow clothes on and went out and played in the snow with their cousin McKayla.

We died Easter eggs Friday night. It was fun. I had taken some better pics, but after I had taken them, I realized the memory stick wasn't in the camera!! ugh.




On Saturday, we went to Grandma and Grandpa Atkinson's for an Easter party and to watch General Conference. It was a great conference. It seemed to me, they talked a lot about how to raise your children. Very good stuff. During dinner, Wyatt kept trying to steal food off of Grandpa's plate.


We had an Easter egg hunt at Grandma's. The grandkids all loved this. Here are some pics.