A little overdue, we had our annual Father's Blessings FHE. We always start off with a discussion on the power of Father's blessings. Then we proceed to the actual blessings. Each of the children who wanted, and me, received a blessing from their father. Once again it was a powerful experience.
We had a brief round of Apples to Apples Jr. for our activity.
We ended our evening on a sweet note with Waffle Sundaes. Our awesome neighbor gave us a box of crepe mix, that we made waffles out of earlier in the day. Everyone had a waffle with a scoop of ice cream and their choice of ice cream toppings. Yum!
Sadly, this was my last week as Wolf den leader. Fortunately, I'm still in Cub Scouts and will see my boys at the monthly Pack meetings!
The boys had a good time with the "Sock Wave" gathering activity. At first, they were unsure about taking off their shoes and socks. They put their socks on a flat sheet and all grabbed the edges like we did with the parachutes in grade school. They "waved" the sheet up and down until their was only one sock remaining on the sheet. They had fun seeing who's sock survived, then they had even more fun searching the room for the rest of the socks!
After our opening exercises, we talked about the food pyramid (Requirement 8a). They were very good at naming foods from each category. I felt bad stopping them so we'd have time for the fun stuff when they were having so much fun with the "business" stuff.
For the "fun" part, I gave each of them a 6 inch square of tin foil to build a boat anyway they pleased. After they were done, we tested it's floating ability in tub of water and placed pennies on it one at a time to see how many it could hold before it sank. I brought enough foil to let them all try it again. Once again they didn't want to stop the "fun" part to go on to the treat part.
This week they made their own treat. My assistant found these giant marshmallows. Each boy got a marshmallow, half a Twizzler peel-apart, a 2 mini chocolate chips. After they peeled apart the licorice, they pushed in eight "legs" to the marshmallow to make it look like an octopus. For the finishing touch, they pushed in chocolate chip eyes. It was hard to get a picture of the completed octopi because they were eaten so quickly. I think the one pictured already lost it's eyes.
It was exactly the kind of den meeting that makes me sad to not work with these great boys every week!
I found this great quote on Marta Writes.
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." - John Wooden
I had so much fun with this last week, I'm making it a weekly feature! Here are some of my favorite RSS feeds:
I've been wanting one of these for a while, and now I have my own Mother's Pin Necklace. I bought this at Monzanita's etsy store. They are very reasonably priced.
If you have a son in scouts, you might have wondered what to do with the advancement pins your son has earned. I now keep mine on this necklace, Cub Scout Pins go on the blue and gold side, and Boy Scout pins go on the green and red side. I wear this to Pack Meeting and show off a little at my son's hard work (OK, some of it is my hard work with him)!
A couple of weeks ago, my daughter was lamenting that no one would share an apple pie with her. So she we got together for a pie party. What a great excuse to get together, eat pie and party! With a blog title like "Easy as Pie", I should be eating pie more often.
A week later another kiddo found an alternative to the PIE standing for Pursuit in Excellence, it's Prepared in Everything. The two go hand in hand, it's pretty hard to pursue excellence if you aren't prepared in everything!
I posted my last Stay at Home Summer Camp review at Arizona Mama. Our last week was a little low-key as we learned a little Sign Language. (Can you name this letter?)
We had a good time this summer, and I already started thinking about some changes we'll make to next summer's program.
Our lesson was very simple. It was from the Faith in God book, under Serving Others. "Make a list of the qualities you in a person. Choose one quality to develop in yourself. Discuss how showing respect and kindness strengthens you, your family, and others." I'm working on kindness. I have plenty of room for improvement on that one.
Following up with last week's lesson,we still didn't play a traditional basketball game. It was way too hot,so we altered the plan and played inside with a Nerf ball and a small hoop.
For our activity, we tried a new dice game called Farkle. We didn't have too much time to really get into it, but it seemed pretty fun. We'll definitely have to try it again.
Our treat was Root Beer Floats, (except for me, I just had ice cream).
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense. - Harold Kushner
I saw this really fun idea to feature my favorite RSS Feeds of the Day. (I only wish I would have noted where I saw it. Don't you hate it when you're sure you'll remember something, but then you don't?) Here's a few that caught my eye today:
What's your favorite post today?
I know you've been anxiously waiting to see how we finished up our Deadly Creatures Camp! Pop on over to Arizona Mama for all the fearsome details and a picture of the paper plate wolves. (Not to be confused with the paper plate hyena on this post.)
Monzanita has the cutest dinner menu board on Etsy. I ordered my own personalized one. Instead of listing the days of the week, I had her list my family's names.
Every week, I have everyone choose a dinner. It takes a lot of the pressure off of me, and I don't take it as personally when there's complaining about a meal because I probably didn't choose it.
I also had my menu board flipped sideways and she added a shopping list in a second column.
This lesson came from our Bishop in a round about way. He was teaching the youth in Bishop's Youth Council about planning their mid-week activities with a purpose. One of my kiddos shared this thought of focusing on what we want to accomplish with our activities. These can be specific activities pertaining to our callings, to our families, or to our personal goals.
An example of planning in our callings was a Mutual activity was an obstacle coarse where the youth were blindfolded before the completed the coarse. The purpose of the activity was to teach important gospel principles in a fun way. Both objectives were met. Another good example of planning with purpose is the recent Eight Cow Wife Relief Society meeting.
We focused on our family. There had been a lot of arguing the last few weeks. As a family we came up with a plan to reduce the arguing and tension in our home. The solution we came up with is for family members to take turns leading a family activity - something fun, that doesn't require much planning or time. We planned to play a family basketball game. Unfortunately, I didn't follow through with reminding everyone, so the activity didn't happen. On the up side, there was less arguing. I'll have to try again to pull off the basketball game this week.
Our activity was a game of Jenga and our treat was my favorite Hershey's brownies.
Marty of Travelin' Oma had this great quote earlier this week. "The secret of success is to get up in the morning, and go to bed at night, and in between do something you want to do." - Bob Dylan
As we left our flight, we were adorned with a lei and directed down the gangplank to the awaiting Luau in the Cultural Hall. One of the RS counselors explained that we were becoming eight cow wives that evening. We had several stations to help us accomplish this worthy goal.
Cow #1 - Grazing, a cow's gotta eat, right?
Cow #2 - Cow tipping - date night ideas
Cow #3 - Mad Cow - we made a relaxing foot bath powder to take home
Cow #4 - Cash Cow - budgeting
Cow #5 - Holy Cow - Family Home Evening ideas
Cow #6 - Cow jumped over the moon - setting goals
Cow #7 - I forgot what it was called, but we were to visit with as many sisters as we could through out the night - thanks for the comment, it was called Chewing the Cud!
Cow #8 - Til the Cows come home - endure to the end (of the meeting)
I always enjoy going to Relief Society for the break from being a wife and mom, but this activity was especially fun!
A new month brings a new theme. We are having a lot of fun with the Waves of Fun theme. Most of the boys think of water when they think of waves. I also think of the flag waving in the wind or a friend waving hello.
We started off with a water related word search. Following up with our Pack Meeting, we worked on the picture or story element of the United States Heritage Award. We finished up our meeting with Elective 12c, the boys mixed drops of food color in water to create orange, purple and green from the primary colors. Do you like how we worked water into something to earn them an arrow point?
We sent them home with a patriotic Popsicle.
Arizona Mama has part one of Deadly Creatures Camp up today. This was a really fun theme - I especially like the themes with a lot of information. We could have had a deadly creatures summer with all the different killer animals out there! This first post focuses on a few we found underwater.
No, I'm not talking about the game where you tell your children to go stand by the wall without moving or talking while you read your book in peace. This is a game I played with my friends when I was a kid.
One person is "the storekeeper". They spin everyone else, one at a time, except for the buyer who tucked away where they can't see or hear what's going on. When the storekeeper lets go of the person he's spinning, they freeze as soon as they can. The storekeeper tells them what kind of statue they are, like a ballerina or pianist.
After everyone is posed and assigned, the buyer comes in. The storekeeper shows the buyer each statue and pushes the statues button. The statue comes to life and acts out their assignment until the storekeeper pushes their button again. (Statues were known to run off so the storekeeper would have to chase them down to push their button again.)
The buyer chooses their favorite statue, after seeing them all in action. The chosen statue becomes the next buyer, while the buyer becomes the storekeeper and the storekeeper becomes one of the statues.
My kiddos really liked this old-school game and asked to play it again several times. It definitely beats tag!
This week's lesson was about the 13th Article of Faith. We looked to Philippians 4:8 and read the admonition of Paul and make sure we all understood what it means. To help us memorize it, we wrote it on a white board and read it aloud together. The white board was passed around and everyone erased two of the words. We read it again, remembering the words that were erased. This continued until the words were gone and we were reciting it completely from memory. The children were much better at this than me!
We played Go Fish for our activity and had a new oatmeal bar thing for a treat. It wasn't my favorite, but the kiddos liked them.
I've been wanting one of these for a while, and now I have my own Mother's Pin Necklace. I bought this at Monzanita's etsy store. They are very reasonably priced.
Monzanita has the cutest dinner menu board on Etsy. I ordered my own personalized one. Instead of listing the days of the week, I had her list my family's names. 
This lesson came from our Bishop in a round about way. He was teaching the youth in Bishop's Youth Council about planning their mid-week activities with a purpose. One of my kiddos shared this thought of focusing on what we want to accomplish with our activities. These can be specific activities pertaining to our callings, to our families, or to our personal goals. 
