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!

A slight change in the weather

Talk about a slight change in the weather. . .

This was Saturday in our backyard, sunny, 65--beautiful!! 

This is Tuesday--3 days later--same backyard, blizzard, negative 15 with the windchill.  I have no idea what they are doing outside--their awesome Dad is with them, and snow forts obviously take precedence over any weather condition.  I took the picture from inside my 70 degree house with the fireplace roaring while I was drinking my hot chocolate.

 And this is after 3 days of no school because of said blizzard.  I think I am ready for a slight weather change back now :)

Welcome Spring--with a HUGE snow storm!

This was Friday--70 degrees, sunny, and beautiful! The kids had a picnic in the backyard.
This is today!!!! Friday night the winds and snow began. We have about 8-10 inches of snow with huge drifts! We went to some friends to watch the basketball games last night(so sad KU and BYU lost!!) and our road was pretty yucky when we left. When we came home we turned onto our road and went about 100 yards and got suck! There were 2-3 foot snow drifts across the road. We live about 1/2 a mile down the road and we were stuck! We were able to get loose, and backed up to the house on the corner. We left our van in their driveway--this was after 10 p.m. and bundled everyone up--luckily everyone wore their gloves and boots! We hiked through 1/2 mile of deep snow drifts on our road to our house! What an adventure! Thankfully church was canceled today because there was no way I was hiking back to the car with 4 kids in church clothes to make it to church! Luckily the plow just came by--the kids cheered! So Ben and the girls are walking down to get our van. Happy first day of Spring!

Even in the snow the chickens have to be fed! Way to go girls! I am a good cheerleader from inside.

Come on, you can do it!

And boy are they happy they made it! Hope you are enjoying your spring weather!