Family Outing

In April we went as a family to Orange Leaf Yogurt. The kids had earned coupons, an ounce for each A they got on their report cards. We had not gone to Orange Leaf before, so it was fun to try a new place. The kids were able to get 3 different flavors in their cup and add some toppings. I loved how fun and colorful the place was and I ended up taking many photos.

February week 2

*Stake Conference last Sunday, I sang in the choir, up on the stand for the whole 2 hours, and Jeremy bravely sat with all six kids. I enjoyed Stake Conference so much!

*I love Henry's red and white candy stripe jammies, too bad he has outgrown them. Henry is 5 1/2 months old. He has fuzzy hair and the cutest smile ever. Lydia described him as "a cute, fluffy puppy"

*I sit in my rocking chair that is in my room to feed Henry. Matthew comes in and sits on the footstool, and gets his finger prints all over the mirror.

*I love the cute crafts that the kids make at school.

*The girls went to play at a friends house and they came home with the most awesome face paint scenery that I have ever seen. Their friends will be greatly disappointed when they come to play at our house, I don't have great fun things that I do when friends come over - I just send everyone to the backyard and let them play.

*Becca had her 100 day at school. To celebrate they had to bring 100 small food items that could go in a class "trail mix". She brought Mike and Ike candies. Becca also decorated a tshirt to wear with 100 stickers. (Although the package said 100 stickers, I think there was only 98, I figured we were close enough and did not go back to the store to buy more.)

We had a multi ward Valentines Dance for the adults. Jeremy was in charge of the table decorations, which really meant that I was in charge of the decorations. Jeremy didn't know how much money he could spend, so I bought stuff at the dollar store to keep it thrifty. Thankfully the dollar store had some great stuff and I think we did a great job.

You can click the pictures if you need a bigger version to see the detail better.

January week 4 and February week 1

Some weeks it seems like not much has happened, but taking time to capture the little moments reminds me that life is in the details. Like the pictures of Henry and Becca reading together. The look on his face as he adores her is priceless. As is the picture of Tom and Matthew eating breakfast together. These photos really highlight the relationship between siblings and how much the little ones look up to the big ones.

The picture of Tom doing a handstand on his bed is random. He came to me and said, "Hey mom, come take a picture" and then he did his trick.

My favorite moment from this week is Jeremy putting in the new furnace. We finally got all the step done, gas line in, gas line turned on, new furnace installed. Making fires in the fireplace was nice, but it didn't really heat the whole house. It is so nice to just set the thermostat and not worry about it and the house is warm. This process of putting in a new furnace has sure made me more grateful for things of convenience such as our furnace and everyday I am so grateful for it.

Jeremy took Charlie and Becca and they went to St. George for a quick weekend trip. Jeremy and Char went skiing at Brianhead with Jeremy's brothers. Becca stayed in St George and played with some cousins. This was Charlie's first time snowboarding.

February is here and it brought snow with it. I was starting to wonder if we were going to get anymore snow this winter. It came all day long on Friday, gently falling, softly, quietly. I love watching the snow fall. I even took a video of it. It's so calming and soothing. The kids had a great time playing in it on Saturday and luckily they took advantage of it,  because by Saturday afternoon it had melted off and instead of a gorgeous white backyard, we had a lake of water.

I loved watching the Winter Olympic opening ceremony. I served a mission in St. Petersburg Russia, so I feel a bit of a kinship towards Russia. I got my kids to watch part of the ceremony, but I was the only one to watch the whole thing. Watching the Olympics is a nostalgic thing for me because I remember watching them when I was a kid. It was a big deal because they didn't come on very often and when the Olympics came on there wasn't much else to watch, with only 3 stations to choose from. Even now, I would spend more time watching the events, but it doesn't seem like they put much of it on network tv, so disappointing. Ice skating is my favorite to watch.

January Week 3

It's been a little bit more like winter around here. Just when I was getting used to the 40 degree weather it turned cold and despite the weather forecast saying it was supposed to warm up into at least the 30's during the day, the past two weeks have been much colder. Last week we had fog every day that left the trees frosted white. It was lovely. 

This week the wind has been blowing and making it feel very chilly. Although this is our second winter in Idaho I still prefer the warmer winter days to the cold snowy ones.

We have been working on getting our furnace replaced, Jeremy has been doing it. Two weeks ago the gas company came and dug to put the gas line to our house. They had to dig up the bushes along the fence line, which we were very happy about because we didn't like those bushes and since they had a backhoe it was quick and easy for them to do.

It's awesome to have a new furnace that works so well. The air pressure with our last furnace was poor and the upstairs bedrooms didn't warm up because the air barely trickled out the vent. It now blows out nicely through all the vents.

Saturday the 25 was a busy Saturday. Charlie had robotic competition at the college all day long. His team did awesome and they got 2nd place, out of the 47 teams that competed.

Tom had Pinewood Derby. He designed his car himself and did much of the work himself. He won first place in two of the rounds, but overall got 4th place.

It's a new year

Welcome to the new year! Life continues on at our house, even if I'm not taking time to share much here. After 3 and half months of quiet I am hoping to come back to semi regular posting.

January has been a pleasant month. It started cold, and then a little snow came-that melted the next day, and then the weather turned rather warm, well winter-warm - in the 40's. It was warm enough that the kids started dressing in shorts and I had to remind them to take a jacket with them.

At the beginning of the month we went to Sun Valley and went ice skating. The kids were awesome skaters, even though that was their first time on ice.
Tom and Charlie have been reading like crazy in the Harry Potter series. Long ago I bought the first five books of the series, but a couple weeks ago had to buy the last 2 books so my little book worms would have them to read. It's amazing to watch them read through such large books - 700 +pages. At school they earn points for reading books and they both have read double the amount of the other kids in their classes.

Henry is so cute. I don't know that any other word can sum it up - CUTE! He is a smiler and smiles all the time. He loves being held, and if he is put down he prefers his bouncer that he is upright in.

Matthew had a birthday and is now 2 years old. He loved blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.

I got a little behind in my project life scrapbook pages, so I haven't printed last years book yet. I'm trying to hurry and finish because I'm excited to look through it and relive last year and read and remember all the little things that elude my memory.

I'm wanting to not get behind in this years project life documentation, so I do "this week's pages" and then do ones from last year that I am missing as I can. That is one reason it is taking me so long to finish last year. It's definitely better to stay current, and, or, keep better notes. November and December's pages aren't going to have as much detail because I didn't keep notes and I don't remember much of the little details.`