Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The rumors are true.....

I know you’re all rolling yours eyes out there, but I’m just posting to confirm the rumors. Yes, we are moving---again. Ben has been interviewing for jobs due to the fact that there have been several rounds of lay-offs at his work in the past year and there will most likely be more in the future. I was trying really hard not to think about the possibility of moving, but when he was offered two jobs a couple of weeks ago (one in Texas and one in Arizona) I had to stop ignoring it and actually start praying about it. I was definitely leaning more towards the job in Texas for JC Penney's corporation and honestly thought that's where we would most likely end up. It just made more sense. However, the Lord obviously has other plans for us. Arizona it is. All we can do now is have faith and move forward.

Crazy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is usually one of my favorite holidays. I love to make heart shaped sugar-cookies, surprise the kids with cute little homeade valentine's and go out to dinner with my sweetheart. Mostly because I was put in charge of a school Valentine's party for 100 3rd graders, this year I was feeling a little too frazzled to enjoy Valentines day as much as I would have liked. And is that wasn't enough, I decided that all of my girls should make homeade Valentine's for their classes along with presents for their teachers and a treats for their friends who aren't in their class. Needless to say, I was a little bit stressed last week and there were no heart-shaped pancakes for my family on Valentine's Day morning. Oh well, can't be a super mom all the time, right?
All in all I think the party was a success and, hopefully, by the time I ever have to do that again, I will have learned the art of delegating. In the meantime, if anyone out there ever needs Valentine's Day party ideas feel free to call me!

Here are the few pictures I managed to take in my scattered state last week:Rachel enjoyed her first school Valentine's party this year even though she missed half of it because I forgot that they had changed the starting time from the normal 11:00 to 10:00 because of the party!
I've seen these all over on-line, maybe you have too. You take all your little broken pieces of crayons and melt them in the oven in a heart mold to make these cute little heart-shaped crayons. It was actually a lot more work that I would have thought it would be because you have to peel all the crayons and then break (or chop) them into really small pieces. I forgot to put the mold on a cookie sheet before putting it in the oven and had crayon wax dripping onto the bottom of my oven, then I tried to pick them up and almost spilled the rest all over. We were able to salvage them in the end, but when I mentioned to Rachel that we might have to try it again she said "I don't want to--it was too hard" to which I responded, "Okay, we'll just have to go buy some Barbie valentine's from the store."Eliza made these cute tootsie pop flowers which she actually wasn't too thrilled about because she really wanted to make these other flower valentine's we saw on-line that used those little flat suckers that they used to give out at the bank drive-through when I was kid. Unfortunately, I couldn't find those suckers at any of the grocery stores around here so she got the tootsie pop flowers instead. She was okay with it in the end.

Emma actually took these pictures (she asked me too, but then took matters into her own hands when she saw that I was busy with one of my many projects) of the hot cocoa valentine's she made for her class. I thought this was a really fun idea and she actually did most of it all by herself which was great for mom. The girls also gave these cute little handprint valentine's to their teachers with a little bottle of lotion inside.

By the time Ben and went out on our for our Valentine's date on Friday night, I was completely exhausted. Then to top it off, I had told him all week that I wanted to go to the Union Grill in Ogden for dinner and we ended up waiting almost an hour to be seated. Next time, I think we'll just go to a burger joint and save the fancy stuff for a weekend other than Valentine's day weekend!

Ben brought me home these beautiful flowers on Saturday. The other part of my present was a Costco membership, which I've been wanting for a long time. Yay!

We also had a really fun family dinner on Valentine's day which I was going to take pictures of, but didn't. We had a really fun time at my parent's house with my sister, brother and one of our favorite friends from college, Clay.

Friday, February 5, 2010

What is this stuff?

Beginning spoon feeding is something that I usually put off as long as possible, but today I decided it was finally time to give Hazel her first taste of solid food. Honestly, I think her sisters and brother were much more thrilled than she was. But how tasty can rice cereal really be?

The 100th day of school

Eliza's grade celebrated the 100th day of school today. She made this lovely necklace with 100 beads.

Fun times with Grandma and Grandpa!

Ben was out of town last weekend so we spent a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa. I love it that my parents are always up for an adventure on a Saturday afternoon--so much more fun than scrubbing toilets!My parents were very sweet and offered to come sit with me during sacrament on Sunday, but I opted just to come over for dinner. I don't seem to cook much when Ben's gone so that was nice. The kids had such a good time Sunday night playing with all of Grandma's instruments and fun dress-up clothes. I couldn't resist taking this video of them marching around the table playing pipe chimes while my mom played the piano. The song is actually one that her grandmother used to play for her children as they marched around the kitchen table.