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!

2012 Blue Jeans Week 6

 Welcome!  Hope you have had a good week!  Here is what we have been up to . . .

Sunday:  For Christmas Miss A got the Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights edition.  It has taken us a while to figure it out and play it.  Today Ben and Miss A were determined to figure out how to play it.   Now they just need to teach everyone else :)

Monday:  A Valentine's tradition at our house is the Family Valentine's box.  Remember making a Valentine's box for school for your friends to put your Valentines in?  Well, we do that as a family on the first Monday in February.  Then everyone makes Valentines for each other and we open the box and distribute the cards on the evening of Valentine's Day.  Everyone gets to decorate a side of the box.  Miss O got to decorate the top this year.  It is a tradition my kids love.

Tuesday:  Snapshot from our lives--our job chart.  This is probably one of the most important pieces of paper in the house.  I had tried several different approaches to dinner dishes and kitchen helping over the years, but 2 years ago we visited my sister-in-law, and she had a system like this--one kid, and one kid only, was in charge of all the dishes for that day--empty dishwasher, set table, clear table, wipe it, sweep floor, and load dirty dishes.  I thought it was a great idea, then there is only one kid in the kitchen, and usually fights about who is supposed to do what do not break out when only one child is responsible and one person in a room.  It took a while for my kids to be converted.  They didn't like having do to everything for the whole day, but I loved no one fighting and complaining about someone else not getting their stuff done so someone else can do their job :)  The care and feeding of our chickens are separate from the dishes.  I have another chart for Saturday house cleaning jobs.  I just printed off the chart and put it in a page protector so we can write and erase it with dry erase markers.

Wednesday:  In case you didn't know, we are getting a new power line installed down our country road.  It has been a mess.  Today I had 7 trucks and about a dozen guys in my front yard trying to get this huge new poll ready to go in the ground.  So glad when this will be over with!

Thursday:  A relaxing evening with nothing scheduled, so we watched  Planet Earth--or at least Ben and Mr J took turns watching as they took turns playing Tiny Towers on Ben's i-touch :)  Boys and their toys.

Friday:  Usually for Valentine's Day at school my kids don't get to make their own boxes--the teacher will have the whole class make the same type of box/bag thing in class, so Mr J and I were excited when his teacher sent home the note that he was supposed to make his own--any way he wanted.  Miss A was such a nice sister and helped him find this cool monster design in an old Family Fun magazine (yes, I keep all my old issues) and they made it together today.

Saturday:  Mr J got his class Valentine's made today.  We went with really traditional ones this year--red and white doilies with another heart glued on top with a mini-candy bar glued on that.  Of course, we had to all try the candy bars to make sure they were good :) 

Thanks for visiting and hope you all have a great Valentine's Day this week!  Share the love!

A Blue Jeans Week 3

What a week!  With the blizzard of 2011 we had 3 snow days, so lots of time at home--maybe too much for some of us :)

Sunday:  We celebrated Kansas Day.  We always make a sunflower cake to celebrate this day, and Saturday was technically Kansas Day, and we did make and decorate the cake then, but we didn't get around to eating it and officially celebrating until Sunday.  Some days are just too crazy.

Monday:  Another tradition we have at our house is our family Valentine's Box.  Ben, Mr J and Miss E work on our box for this year.  We make this as a family usually the first Monday night in February, but did it today on the last day of January.  Each of us takes a side to decorate and then during the days before Valentine's everyone in the family fills it with homemade cards, treats, and/or small prizes for each family member, then we open it together the evening of Valentine's Day.  The kids love this and can be caught often stuffing the cutest items in the box.   One year Miss E made 6 cards for each member of the family.  She was busy that year :)

Tuesday:  Snow Day #1, and Miss E still in her PJ's (which I think she stayed in all day) gets out the binoculars to check out the snowflakes coming down.  "Wow, Mom!  They are all different!"  That is an amazing thing to think about.  

Wednesday:  Snow Day #2.  We got the Valentine's Box all done.  Miss O did this side with Santa and his heart reindeer, and Santa has a balloon speech bubble that says "Happy Valentine's Day to all, and to all a good night!"  Love it! 

Thursday:  Snow Day #3.  Had to get out of the house today, so we made it to the store and bought new winter hats.  They were all on clearance now which is even better, so the kids modeled them on the snow hill in the front yard as they were working on 1 of 3 snow forts they have going on in different parts of the yard. 

Friday:  Finally had school today, but Miss O was home sick!  Not fun, but a routine Friday evening will have Dad reviewing the weeks' worth of papers brought home by 4 kids from school. (Normally about an inch thick of paper here each week!)   Miss E and Miss O watch while Dad reviews their graded papers. 

Saturday:  Time to start the school Valentines!  Mr J decided to do melted heart crayon Valentines.  I saw this in a Family Fun years and years ago, and every year since at least one of my kids has made these.  We never throw away any old or broken crayons here.  We always save them to use for melted heart crayon valentines. 

These are what the melted crayon hearts look like after coming of the the oven and cooling.  We attach them to a cut out red heart piece of paper and write on it "You Color my World" and on the back is where we put the "To" and "From."  So cute and super easy.

Sharing the Love

The kids are all ready for their Valentine's school parties tomorrow. After about a week of work, they finally got their valentines done! Mr J did a melted crayon heart that says "You Color my world." Miss E did an mp3 player, which is a candy heart box wrapped in paper with chocolate kisses earphones. Miss O did a robot with candy bar feet and lifesaver eyes that says "URG8 Valentine!" and Miss A created some cute cupcake ones "You are cute as a. . . cupcake" and the cupcake is hidden in a pocket that you take it out of. Cute stuff!
A picture from earlier in the week with everyone working hard on their Valentines.

I didn't find any hearts to hang at the store, so I just cut some out of heavy card stock to hang up. I am loving my cricut!

So it is the weekend of parties coming up. . . valentine parties at school, Olympic party Friday night, Valentine party at church Saturday, then our family Valentine party/dinner Sunday. Whew! Lots of love to share this weekend! Hope you get lots of love too!