Sunday, March 30, 2014

Weekly Wrap-Up - March 30

This week can pretty much be summed as birthday and sickies . . .sigh . . .

We did manage to fit some school in amongst the rest. Ashlyn is LOVING, the art curriculum we're reviewing (check back in about a month to read our review of that!). So pretty much an free time she has, finds her working on that. Lexie is enjoying the curriculum as well, but isn't quite as . . . obsessive about it. It's interesting to see, not only their different interpretations of the assignments, but also their different overall approach to it. Just because they're identical twins, they are most definitely NOT identical, I love it!!!!

At the BEGINNING of March, we got fabric to make Bible-time costumes for them to use in Sabbath School. All month, the Bible stories were about Abraham and all but one of them, suggested having an "adult" dress up as Abraham and/or Sarah to tell the story. Since this is the little kid's Sabbath School class, and Lexie and Ashlyn are my helpers, they get to pretend to be "adults" when the program calls for this. But life's been busy, and it wasn't until this week that we found time to make the costumes, sigh . . . we DID get them both done (but haven't had 2 well "models" to model them both at the same time. Their Sabbath dresses are short sleeved, so the pink sleeves aren't there when they wear them at church. I just made it up as we went. The head dresses were easy, 2 remnants of different brown striped fabrics, they just hemmed them and were done. Lexie finger-knitted brown yarn to make the ties for both the head dress and the robe. For the robe, we took 2 rectangles of fabric, the length we wanted the robe, and for an estimated width I had them hold their arms straight out to the sides, and took approximately from elbow to elbow. Cut one piece in half (down the length), then seamed the sides, up to where the arm hole would start, and the shoulders across the top. And that's it. we may hem it at some point, but the rough edges kinda add to it, and it's a fabric that I don't think will unravel too badly with occasional use.

After the lovely spring weather last weekend, winter returned this week, sigh.  We even got snow flurries a couple days, but thankfully nothing that stuck. It WAS cold enough to require coats when going out, sigh. Here, Lexie and Little Bit are posing with their new tote bags from Miss Judy before we head to the store. 

In addition to Wednesday being Little Bit's Birthday, it was also the day Ashlyn got sick, sigh. Little Bit had been planning, FOR WEEKS all the things sissies were going to do with her ON HER BIRTHDAY! And Ashlyn spent the day sleeping, which left Lexie to be bossed around by Little Miss Five! She did awesome, helping with meals and such, and not complaining at all, about playing 5-year-old games all day.

Thursday, Ashlyn was still sick, so we hung out at home. 

Friday was Lexie and Ashlyn's birthday.  Ashlyn was feeling better, but still not 100%, so it was abit subdued, but still a nice day.  Little Bit had the brilliant idea that "since it's your birthday, you should play with me!" but handled it ok when they vetoed that idea LOL. We finished sewing the above-mentioned costumes. And got ready for the grandparents to come celebrate birthdays with us the next day.

Little Bit had declared she wanted a strawberry heart-shaped cake with pink sprinkles and, once the Easter candy started appearing in stores, she added that she needed Peeps and eggs too. . . Conveniently, mom had a heart shaped pan that she sent home with us last time we visited them. I had good intentions of making a healthy-ish strawberry cake, but when Ashlyn being sick meant all grocery shopping AND preparations had to be done on Friday, with her still not feeling good, I caved and just bought a strawberry cake mix. I love that, while we aren't nearly as healthy as I'd LIKE us to be, Lexie's reaction to the bright pink cake batter was . . . that is PINK! YUCK!!! LOL. Little Bit was thrilled, however (sigh). . . I DID convince her that the pink sprinkles would show up better on white frosting, so at least avoided adding MORE food coloring that way, and the finished product did turn out cute! And most importantly, SHE was thrilled with it.
Initially, we'd talked about just getting a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for the big girls, but then, Thursday evening, I found a recipe online, to make you own ice cream bundt cake, with a crunchy layer like DQ's cakes have and it sounded easy enough to be do-able. The girls loved the idea so we made their cake. They chose Chocolate Moose Tracks for the bottom, the middle crunchy layer was crushed Oreos and Magic Shell, and teh top layer was Peanut Butter Carmel Brownie ice cream. It was kind of messy to get out of the pan (by the time I melted it enough to get it loose, the top was too melty - if we do it again, I'll get it out of the pan a day ahead & re-freeze it on a platter) but overall easy enough and YUMMY!!

So, in addition to the above-mentioned cakes, the plan was to come home after church and have all the grandparents at our house for dinner, and present-opening. BUT Ashlyn woke up Sabbath morning feeling worse again, and opted not to go to church. The plan for Sabbath School had been for Lexie to be Abraham, and Ashlyn to be Sarah, and each had memorized her parts (about 1/3 page each). When I pointed out that, as leader, I couldn't hide away in the (too small for me to fit) tent, like Sarah was supposed to do, Lexie decided she better be Sarah (she didn't like my idea of just saying that Sarah was SUPPOSED to have been in the tent, but wasn't), so Sabbath morning, in about 15 minutes, she memorized those lines so I could read Abraham's part and she could be Sarah. 

Grandmom (Rodney's mom) decided she didn't want to risk catching whatever Ashlyn had, so it was just my parents and grandmother.  Apparently 11 is the age where we glare at people who want to take our picture with the cake, but oh well . . . After lunch, dessert, and presents, I noticed that Lexie had disappeared upstairs, but thought she had just taken one of her new books upstairs to read in peace or something. When my parents were getting ready to leave, I called up to her and got no response, so went to check on her, and she was fast asleep. Uh-oh! I let her sleep . . . at some point that evening she woke up and said she had a headache, drank some water, and went back to sleep. When I went up to tuck Ashlyn and Little Bit in, Lexie had a plastic bucket next to the bed, so I asked if she had thrown up. She said no, but she felt like she might, and in the middle of the night, she did (but had that bucket handy, so no big mess. I still don't know if she had a headache that caused her to throw up (some of my headaches do that), or if she has what Ashlyn had, but needless to say, we are taking a very relaxed start to this new week, sigh . . . conveniently, it's a NOTHING PLANNED week, so if we need to take a sick-week, we can.

In positive news, Ashlyn seems fully back to normal, finally, today!  

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