Music Fundraiser--Potato Bar

 Tuesday night was the music department's fundraiser potato bar.  The 4 older children all had performances that night & with that had lots of food assignments.  (Callum on the drums)

 Zane (right) & Alberto ("Berto") on the trumpets.  So we took 7 plates of goodies for the auction, 2 containers of sour cream, and the stuff to make homemade root beer (with dry ice).

 The Jr. & Sr. High band.  (front is Callum & Brienna & standing in the back is Zane)

 Brienna & Callum.  I didn't get to hear all of their songs because I was helping in the kitchen quite a bit.

 But what I did hear was awesome.  Our new music teacher, Mr. Germer, is fun and the kids enjoy singing/playing the pieces he has picked.

 High School band--we only have 7 members.

 Despite their small numbers, they perform with top quality!

 This is the 2nd graders performance.  This song was about the time change--"tick, tock, move the clock back".  I love Emmalee's smile in this picture.  She said this was her favorite song.

This is the song that involved all of the elementary kids--set to an Irish song.  They all did some "Irish dancing".

 As you can see--our gym was packed full.  It was the best turn out for a music fundraiser in the 10 years we've been here.

 On our way home, I was greeted with the full (or almost full) moon.  

This is just 1 minute later, only zoomed in a little.  

Van "Issues", Sunday Rest, & FHE

So our van runs fine, but has some body issues.  It is over 20 years old, so I know it's getting up there in years.  On Friday, Brienna & Lindsay went to Rexburg to pick up their prom dresses and then headed to IF to see Lindsay's mom (Sheree) who was just getting out of surgery (broken ankle/leg).  During their travels, Lindsay was somehow able to get the passenger's side door to open (it hadn't opened from inside or outside for about 1 month) and close so she had been using the door (instead of climbing into the front from the back).

 But as they were leaving the hospital, the door wouldn't stay shut.  So Brienna called home to see what we could do to help her.  Mind you, Rusty and I had just came home from IF & shopping (been home about 1/2 hour) so we really didn't want to drive down to rescue them.  So first I tried to explain the part that needed "pulled out" so it could latch shut to the van body.  But she couldn't get that to work.  So then I suggested tie-down/bungee cords with duct tape.  She was finally able to find the duct tape and one tie-down.

 So this is what she did to the outside of the door.  And on the inside, she used a tie-down from the passenger door handle to the passenger one.  But when she got home, she couldn't figure out how to release the "ratchet" so she climbed out the window.  Hahahaha!  I wish I would have got a picture of that!  

Luckily, Rusty was able to work on the van Sat. morning & now the door opens from the inside & he was able to bend the "hook" so it will shut now.  Needless to say, we are now looking for a "new"(er) van.

 Sunday Brienna decided not to get her hair curled (didn't want to get up so early) so I only had to put a bow in her hair.  And we put in the hair jewels that we didn't get around to the night before.

 a close-up of her beautiful corsage.

 After church, the girls all laid down on the couch (or in Emmalee's case--"sat" down) & took a nice nap.

 For Family Home Evening on Monday, we made Easter egg sugar cookies.

 WE didn't make sugar cookies for Valentine's so I told the kids we would make them for Easter.

 Here we are rolling out the dough

 And putting the on the cooling rack.

 Benjamin frosting his cookie.

 Emmalee working on decorating her cookie.

 They looked at the pictures on the cookie cutter package & tried to copy them.

 If you look close, you can see frosting on the side of her mouth--she said they were delicious!

 The finished products.

 I had therapeutic fun decorating some cookies after everyone was in bed.  It had been quite the eventful few days, so it was a good release to be a little creative.

First thing in the morning I worked on a couple loads of laundry, mixed up the sugar cookie dough (it has to be refrigerated at least 3 hours) and made a double batch of ginger snaps.  I had taken a "quick" trip to Rexburg Monday afternoon to return Brienna's dress along with 2 other dresses & to pick up her purse that she had left at the restaurant they ate at on Sat.  She is lucky that 1) she remembered she left the purse there & immediately called them & 2) that someone was honest enough to turn it in.  I also had a couple of things I needed to get at Wal-Mart.  And of course, we had to stop at Ben's favorite store:  DI where he found a couple of treasures.

In fact, I finished the last cookie at 11:30 pm (I had more cookies, but ran out of frosting so I froze the rest of the cookies for another day).  Some of the cookies are/were for the music fundraiser/potato bar for the dessert silent auction.  With 4 of my kids in music, I ended up taking 2 plates of cupcakes, 2 plates of gingersnaps and 2 of the sugar cookies and 1 plate of choco. chip cookies (the red ones that I had frozen).  More about the potato bar in the next post.