I know the price sounds steep, but they are full of so much goodness and just remind me of a tropical island and I feel at home. If you haven’t tried a dragon fruit, you must do it NOW! Not only are they beautiful but they taste great too. They have a cool crisp inside with little black seeds that are edible (well, I eat them). These guys are not super sweet which I love and they remind me of a kiwi.  They make just the perfect snack for Summer. They aren’t cheap, so yes, I hid in the closet to eat one because I didn’t want to share (don’t judge me).

So on to the smoothie – My wonderful Mom bought me a Nutribullet for Christmas and I have been using it everyday. I’m so in love with it, I recommend it to everyone! The night before, I cut up the dragon fruit, mango (skin on! So many vitamins!) bagged it and then threw it the freezer along with a couple of other baggies with different varieties of fruits. In the morning, I threw it in to the Nutribullet with some spinach, kefir, a little water and BAM….it’s awesome It’s like a frozen smoothie, yogurt, probiotic, vitamin packed wammy.

I don’t have dragon fruit and mango in my house everyday so here’s a little list of what I usually keep on hand for my smoothies:

Greens (I prefer Spinach but you can use others such as Kale)

Flax seeds

Apples

Bananas

Other favorites are pineapples, oranges, cucumber, mint leaves, berries, chia seeds…I could go on!

In one of the other corners of my life I manage this Southern Utah site called Alive! Utah. We love to giveaway stuff on the site every once in a while. And we like to make sure the giveaways are packed full of Utah vendor product. Our Mother’s Day giveaway is going on right now and there are some pretty amazing prizes in this big giveaway including stuff like amazing chocolate, a music CD, a photo session, jewelery and recipe books and more.
Best part is all the vendors participating are right here from Utah and all of them are women. Go check it out and enter in the next 5 days.

See the Mother’s Day Giveaway to spoil yourself or another woman in your life.

The girls of Troop 2149 got together and looked at some of the issues facing girls today. After some brainstorming, they came up with the idea to create a series of puppet shows based on these issues and perform them for our Service Unit Daycamp. They had over 60 girls in attendance. Get some popcorn and pull up your tweens and enjoy our production of “The Bully” ~

At first glance I thought “what a silly book, why would he pick this!”  But as we read, laughed and finished the book we soon realized how fun poetry can be to read and write.  And, much to our surprise it has a chapter of “PoemStarts to get you Started” at the end of the book.

When I was young I had a fondness for poetry, I loved to write and rhyme.

I LOVED reading Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic, so when I stumbled along these Shel Silverstein videos I was so excited to show my boys.

We found these titles as well for National Poetry Month.

And if you want a bit more poetry fun try Building a Poem, a Haiku Scroll, or this Poetree.

image via Sturdy for Common Things

My littles had an INCREDIBLE time visiting the Baby Animals at This Is The Place!

My big boys were as excited as my little ones to hold to the baby chicks.

We gave kisses to the ducks and send them on their way.

We rode horses, YEEHAW!!

The blacksmith mesmerized us with his work.

Some of the best doughnuts in town!!  Melt in your mouth goodness.

The mini train is a must!

As well as panning for gold, seriously SOOOO FUN!!

Andddd, my 3rd grader, Logan was excited to see the Hogan.  They have been learning about them in school.

Honestly, we just LOVE This Is The Place!  Baby Animals Days continues till May 24th, so let’s hope the weather will somewhat cooperate!

If you don’t already have a recycling program in your house this is a great week to start.  If you do have a program going on, are there ways to improve?  I know we or should I say I recycle, but I’m not sure if my kids truly understand why we recycle.  You can also talk to them about saving energy, turning off lights, turning down the heat and A/C. This is a great week to have that talk and make them aware.  Awareness really is what it’s all about.

image via Thanksgiving Point

Get outside and enjoy the WORLD we live in!  The Tulip Festival @ Thanksgiving Point

and the Bulbs and Bloom Festival @ Red Butte Garden are both AMAZING.  Talk about the flowers and how they grow, how volunteers plant these each year so we can ENJOY their beauty.

Read or watch The Lorax.

There’s no better place than Red Butte Garden to celebrate Arbor Day! As Utah’s very own Arboretum, they can’t wait to share their knowledge about the wonderful world of trees with you. Join them for a fun day of family activities and interactive Exploration Stations throughout the Garden and take home a small tree to plant in your own yard!

Arbor Day is a Free-Admission Day thanks to Salt Lake County Voters and Zoo, Arts and Parks (ZAP).

So there you have it, a slew of easy, but fun ways to celebrate Earth and Arbor day.

After reading Robin, Where Are You?, we picked the birds we wanted to draw and got to work.

We then cut out our birds and pasted them on our tree (that I made).  We hung it where everyone could see and the kiddos loved looking at it daily, taking pride in the birds they had drawn.

All in all, a pretty successful art project.

A Kitten Tale by Eric Rohmann

Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake by Thomas Taylor

Bear In Love by Daniel Pinkwater

Wee Little Bunny by Lauren Thompson

Wee Little Lamb by Lauren Thompson

Wee Little Chick by Lauren Thompson

I Love Birthdays by Anna Walker

I hope you enjoy these treasure like we have!  Do you have any spring books your family has LOVED?

You can’t go wrong with Oobleck, unless you have a little boy who is OCD.  We’ll see how the 5 year old does with this ooey gooey fun experiment!

image via skip to my lou

We made these cute hats years ago, my babies are growing too fast!

We’ll be doing these  fun learning games with the little ones.

And last but not least, a fun art project my biggest boy came up with.  He thought it would be a great idea to draw our own characters and give them names.  No picture, my apologies!

Have fun with your Dr. Seuss birthday activities!

You get the gist!  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang will go down as one of our all time favorite performances.  The set was ASTONISHING, the actors were INCREDIBLE, and props were out of this world.  Of course, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang did not disappoint with its swimming,  flying and soaring.  The Barron and Baroness had my boys and I laughing out loud, while the fun loving music had us tapping our toes.  This is one production you won’t want to miss!