Tootsie Roll Procrastination

My friend Samantha is having a competition on her blog, and I, naturally, waited until after the last minute to participate. Better late than never, right?

Contest: Find the most creative way to use a specific candy - whether in a craft, poem, dance, etc. When I read that the candy for the month was Tootsie Rolls, I remembered Tootsie Roll flowers that I had seen years ago. Back in high school, we took a field trip to Ehove, the local career/vocational school. We signed up for classes to take, and being the overachiever that I was, I signed up for things like business, medical (like I would ever succeed around blood), and other worthwhile things. Other people signed up for culinary arts and got to make Tootsie Roll flowers. I was jealous.

Flash forward 10+ years, and I saw use for the skill that other people had learned on that field trip. Presenting my Tootsie Roll flowers!

Step One: Gather ingredients.

Step Two: Divide Tootsie Rolls into 5ish pieces each. Flatten those pieces into petal-like shapes.

Step Three: Assemble petals around a center roll and insert a toothpick.

Beautiful, aren't they? (That odd-looking one on the far left is a calla lily. Obviously.) What did we do with the finished product?

The only sensible thing to do . . .

We ate them.

Now you should go to Sam's blog and vote for me!

Samuel the Lamanite

I wish I could say that Larkin and I taught the twins how to do this in Family Home Evening (see earlier "David and Goliath" post), but after learning about Samuel the Lamanite months ago, Will and Anna's memories have retained this part of the story.

Script -
Anna: I'm Samuel the Lamanite, and don't throw arrows at me.
Will: I'm a Bad Guy, and I throw arrows anyway.
Anna: Awww, man!

Maybe next time, we'll emphasize the whole "teaching the people about Jesus" part of this story. Except due to the fact that the twins decided to play this out on their own without any prompting from us, maybe we'll wait to teach that part. I don't want my kids to call others to repentance in play groups quite yet.

David and Goliath

We learned about David and Goliath during Family Home Evening the other night. We acted it out to help make it more real for the kids. I think it worked.



That was almost as much fun as Jonah and the whale from last week. The people of Ninevah/Will really liked the part where the whale/Daddy spit out Jonah/Anna. He laughed pretty hard and then re-enacted that scene for the next few days.

Cliché

I know this is clichéd . . .




but these kids are growing up way too fast.

Lesson Learned

Time lapsed: 10-15 minutes.

I was using our treadmill. Larkin was playing XBox. Will and Anna were . . .


making sure we had all the pieces to all of our board games all at once?

Larkin and I handled the clean-up of this specific mess. We thought Will and Anna had worked hard enough that day. Aren't twins fun?

*Bonus question: Can you name all of the board games in this picture?
**Hint: There are 11 total games spread across the floor.

Side-note: We have several more games. We're just glad we reached the twins before they could reach the remaining games.

Memories...

Recently the kids have really been developing their minds. It is amazing to me to see how well they remember the things they love. They have both become quite the little singers. We will have to do another post with the song styles of William and Anna. They are getting pretty good at Primary songs.
Their memories have also shown up when they "read" books and in the form of dance. Here are a few videos of them showing off their talents. The first is of William doing the "Rexie Dance," as he calls it. Will loves dinosaurs, so when Disney's Dance-A-Lot Robot came out with a dino-stomp, Will was immediately sucked in.



This next one is of Anna "reading" Where the Wild Things Are. It's kind of hard to hear her at first because William always wants to play with the camera. But, if you listen close, she recites the book word by word and page by page.




We have also noticed that it is the end of July and we only did a small post at the beginning of June. In effort to catch up we have posted several pictures at the Le Sueur family web-site. Go check them out. There are some good times documented there.

Water Fight!!!

The twins and I decided to have a water fight one day while we waited for Daddy to get home from work. We found that the slide worked GREAT when wet - next time we'll know to put some kind of slip-n-slide at the bottom to make the transition from slide to grass a little more smooth.

Then we joined Ethan and Lindsay's family for a Memorial Day BBQ and water fight. Good thing the twins had already had some practice! (Pictures are posted at Le Sueur Street.) I can't really tell, but I think the kids had a good time.

It's official - William is exactly like his daddy.