More Staycation Fun

After our fun lunch at Starbuck’s  Cafe, the kids had “free time” to tour France. The older kids played a game where they took their digital camera and went around the house finding everyday objects that represented each letter of the alphabet. It was really cool to see all of the creative letters they found hidden in the swirls of the light, or panels of the doors, or circles and shapes of the many appliances hidden in the pantry. Brianna took the pictures on her camera, which at the moment is lost (she is very, very sad) so we will have the post them when we hopefully find it. Here is our special Valentine’s Dinner. We always have it on our heart tablecloth, and have a red theme, where all the food is red or pink. Lots of fun!

Red Dinner Menu

• Spaghetti with red or white sauce
• French Bread
• Red Jello topped with whip cream and strawberries in our fancy cups
• Deviled eggs (not red, but Mommy’s favorite)
• Milk or water to drink

I found it funny when I downloaded all my pictures how many I had of food, and so few of people! I think I was so busy with all the activities and keeping the kids happy that I didn’t stop to have them smile for a picture. Brianna got some cute pictures, so when we find her camera we will share some more. I guess it’s funny to me that I had so many of food because I really don’t fully love to cook. I LOVE the preparation part, the table setting, the planning, the matching food, and the cute Valentine’s themed food. I thought these jello cups were so cute, and I thought all the kids would love having whipped topping on the top, but almost everyone wanted to give away their whipped topping! It was so funny to me, I thought every kid loved whipped topping. Needless to say, Aaron and I ended up with a lot of whip topping on our jello.

After dinner we played Book of Mormon bingo with pink heart shaped marshmallows for the place markers, the kids watched church movies for a little bit,and  we played a fun “Heart”  scripture game. I found this game on a LDS idea site-sugardoodle.net . It is a kind of scripture chase, but instead of finding the scripture reference directly, you shout out the page number, and then the teams rush to look at all the scriptures on that page for the word heart. The first team to find it would get a treat. It was a lot of fun, and Brooke and Emily were our fastest little lookers. At the end they had over 15 candies! Good job girls!

Here is the game as listed on the site. It is by Linda Harper

First I asked a trivia question: How many times does the word "heart" appear in all of our standard works. (1006 times) I had everyone make a guess and the one who came closest got a small bag of hearts. (By the way, the word "Love" appears 368 times).
Then I took several scriptures that had the word heart in them. I gave them the page numbers and told them to search that page for a scripture with the word heart. It was different chasing by page numbers. It really got them into the scriptures, reading to find "Heart." The first one that found it, read it and then I gave them a heart. Here are the scriptures I used, all from the New Testament:
Page 1227 - Matthew 22:37 - Love the Lord thy God with all thy Heart.
Page 1192 - Matthew 5:8 - Pure in heart
Page 1201 - Matt 9:4 - evil in your heart
Page 1208 - Matthew 12:34 - abundance of the heart
Page 1196 - Matthew 6:21 - there will your heart be also
Page 1277 - Luke 2:51 - all things in her heart
Page 1285 - Luke 6:45 - treasure of his heart.
Page 1307 - Luke 16:15 - God knoweth your heart.
Page 1352 - John 14:1 - Let not your heart be troubled
Page 1356 - John 16:22 - your heart shall rejoice
Page 1372 - Acts 4:32 - of one heart
Page 1427 - Romans 8:27 - searcheth the hearts
Page 1483 - Eph 3:17 - Christ dwelling in your heart
Page 1440 - 1 Cor 2:9 - Heart of man
Page 1545 - 1 Pet. 1:22 - a pure heart
I mixed these all up as we chased them.  It was a fun about 10-15 minute activity.

Our Eiffel tower carefully constructed by our in-house engineers Brooke and daddy. They worked for hours trying to get it just right.

 

Day 2 of our staycation was a bit more laid back than Valentine’s Day was. The kids had their breakfast choices of cereal and then played for a good part of the morning. Another great thing about staycations is that everything doesn’t have to be planned out, just getting to relax and play is part of the fun. We had a very “French” lunch of French toast, bacon, sausage, and juice, and then Aaron took all the older kids to see a movie. Abby, Scott, and I enjoyed my favorite part of staycations-naps whenever the moment calls for one, and then got dinner ready for our returning guests. We had Crepes for dinner, with all the yummy desert-like toppings that really shouldn’t count for dinner, but hey, it’s vacation right? Or Staycation rather. After dinner, we had to take our visiting guests to gymnastics and then off to another family’s  house for the rest of the week while their parents were gone. It was a hard good-bye, only made better with  the promise of a return on Saturday to play some more. Our trip back to the states that night ended with us each getting to sleep in our own cozy beds. Ahh..there’s no place like home! Good thing we got to visit the city of love with never having to leave it.