2012 Blue Jeans Week 7

It has been a pretty good week--lots of love, got a little bit spoiled, (which everyone should every now and then) and we enjoyed some fun family time.  Hope you all had a good week.

Sunday:  Valentine's Dinner is a very special tradition in my family.  It started with my great-grandma.  She was the mother of 5 girls (one of them being my grandma) and for Valentine's Day dinner she would decorate the dining room very fancy, finest china, and then no one was allowed into the room or to see it until dinner.  Everyone had to dress up for dinner.  In the middle of the table was a fancy box with small wrapped gifts.  Each gift had a string attached to it that went out to each place at the table.  When my grandma and her sisters were done eating dinner they were allowed to pull their string and get their small Valentine's present.  My grandma did this for my mom and her siblings when they were growing up.  My mom continued the tradition with me and my siblings.  Now the tradition continues with my kids--4th generation.  We are lucky enough to live by Nana and Grandpa, so I don't have to do the fancy dinner, we just go over to my mom's house :)  Lucky us!  So above is a picture from our Valentine's dinner at my mom's.  We were done eating, so Mr J and Miss E started to pull their strings.  So fun!

Monday:  Can you believe this is our very first snow of the whole winter???  It wasn't much of a snowstorm, and it lasted only one day.  The next day was sunny and 50, and it was all gone, so Mr J, Miss A, and Miss O tried to enjoy the one day of snow they had.

Tuesday:  Valentine's Day.  Tuesdays are usually crazy piano lesson nights, but because of Valentine's we had nothing tonight, so we had a special dinner at home--heart shaped meatloaf and potatoes with heart jello, decorated heart sugar cookies, opened our family Valentine's box, and enjoyed the evening.  Our kids got these cute balloon cars from their Grandpa for Valentine's day, and they had lots of fun racing them.  Thank you Grandpa T!

Wednesday:  Mr J practising his piano.  He takes it very seriously and works very hard at it.  Love my boy!

Thursday:  O happy day!  I got my birthday present today, even though my birthday is not for a month and a half :)  I have wanted a Blendtec blender forever, but they are pretty pricey, and I could never really justify it, but we were up in the city today at Costco.  They had them on sale, plus we had a nice Costco rebate and I begged and pleaded with Ben and told him it would be my early birthday present and maybe Mother's Day too, (but not Christmas :)  if he let me get it.  He is so nice, and said yes.  Boy, does he love me ;)  I am very lucky.  Anyway, we are in smoothie heaven here!  Yeah!  Happy Birthday to me! (a little early)  If you have some favorite recipes, please share!

Friday:  Are you ever too old for a tea party?  Or kool-aid party?   Not at our house.

Saturday:  Snapshot of our lives--cleaning the house day.  Next to our weekly dishes job chart, this is the next most important piece of paper in our house.  We clean the house every Saturday morning, and everyone helps.  The kids rotate jobs.  Having a chart you can easily rotate makes a big difference.  This is just printed off and put in a page protector so we can write and erase it with dry erase markers.

Thanks for visiting!  Come back soon and have a great week!