So Much For My Posting Streak...

It's been almost a week, but I have more updates. We did end up making candles from old crayons. This was the first time I had ever made candles, so I'd highly recommend searching online for more detailed directions from more experienced people before giving it a try.

I bought these wicks from Michael's:
And decided to make the candles in these tiny canning jars I had gotten from a family member that I wasn't likely to use for canning: I used a small dab of hot glue to stick the wick to the bottom of the jar so it wouldn't move around.

I read that you should always melt the wax in a double boiler, so I used another canning jar (so I could just keep it as the "candle jar" and not clean it out) for that. I tried a couple of different methods. The first set, I used regular blocks of wax (also a freebie from a family member...this is what used to be used for canning jelly--don't do that, it's not safe--and is often still sold near the canning jars). I completely melted the regular wax first
And then added in broken crayons to get a color I liked
Now, I had read you should heat the jars so that you didn't get air bubbles between the wax and the jar, so I put them in the oven at 200 for a short while, which melted my wick, so on subsequent sets, I didn't do that (and I did get air bubbles). My final products came out okay except they all sunk in the middle (maybe you usually top them off after a little while? I don't know). The pink candles in the back are the first set. The blueish candle on the left is only crayons, with no other wax added. The red ones I melted the crayons first and then added in regular wax, which was a bad idea--if you're going to do that, melt your regular wax completely, then add crayons for color. And that was our candle adventure!

For the grandmothers' sakes, more pictures of the kids at the playground:(the arms hanging out below the red roof are Sierra's, I took this from across the playground to show how big it is)

And last, but not least...several friends are bugging me for belly pics. So here ya go, the start of a baby belly (at about 18 weeks)