February 17th, Elisabeth received Patriarchal Blessing.
I love this quote. So true. It reminds me of the scripture, "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." I remind myself of these quotes when I am taking very small steps toward a big goal. With health and fitness: exercise each day and eating whole foods. With my goal to someday publish a book: writing 5 days a week, for a couple of hours each day. For my spiritual health and working on my relationship with the Savior: searching the scriptures and praying each day. For my relationship with Scott and the kids: taking a little time each day to connect with each one, and scheduling dates with Scott each weekend.
So funny story about this dvd. Elisabeth had asked to bring it to Spanish class months ago (Probably September/October) for a project. Fast forward to January when the new Mary Poppins came out to the theater and a friend asked to borrow it. I couldn't find it anywhere and we realized Elisabeth must have not returned it. I asked her about it and she couldn't remember but was sure she must have brought it home. I asked her to check with her spanish teacher. She forgot, and forgot, and forgot, and then in February when she got a phone after finishing personal progress, I messaged her during school saying, "if you can't find it during spanish today, I'm going to have you buy it for me on Amazon this evening and it's about $20". Guess what, she found it and brought it home that night! Okay, maybe not so funny; un poco infuriating :), and classic teen, right?
Annabelle's date month with mom and dad is February (also her birthday month...we plan it that way on purpose and they have two date nights/year.). We surprised her with tickets to see Wizard of Oz at the Hale Center Theater. Afterward they got to meet and take pictures with Lexi Walker, who played Dorothy. Because Hale Theater is expensive, we decided to just make this a daddy/daughter date.
You know how I mentioned in the previous post that we've been getting a lot of snow? Well, one can only handle so much outdoor sledding and snowman building. we've also watched lots of movies and played games on the Wii.
Elisabeth and Nora on the sledding hill.
Skye and Jane playing in the snow.
Have I mentioned before that I belong to two book clubs? The first one, I started attending back in 2007, though I took a two year break when I moved to Colorado (but I also participated in a book club there). I meet with people from my old neighborhood, half of which have moved out of that neighborhood, but still live close enough to get together for book club, monthly. The other book club is made up with people from my current neighborhood. Anyhow, I am hosting book club for the first book club I mentioned, in March (today actually, since this post is late), and I choose our Prophet's biography. It was written when he was an apostle, back in 2004. It is amazing! And it's pretty big. So when my second book club said it was my turn to host in April, I suggested this book, since I had just finished it and because I'm not always the best about reading books from both book clubs each month; I probably get to them both about half the time. I keep notes of my nonfiction books mostly, on my phone, and on my goodreads account, and I had SO many for this book. I loved reading about his formative years, his family life growing up, his wife and their family, his schooling, time in the navy, time as a heart surgeon etc. I am so impressed with how well he uses his time and how disciplined he is in so many areas of his life. What a good example!
Annabelle turned 11 in February and she was so excited to plan a Harry Potter party that I couldn't say 'no', even though this experienced mom-of-five had done this before and knew the work and time and preparation involved....well, I couldn't say 'no' after she promised to help A LOT with the prep work. And she really came through for me. Here are the invitations she printed off and tied up in ribbons a couple of weeks before the party. She found an example of an invitation on Pinterest, and then copied it. We normally don't encourage plagiarizing, unless it's for a really good reason, like a harry potter birthday party :). She had asked to invite 12 girls, since she's almost 12, and I had agreed. Then I thought to ask how many girls there are in her school class and when she said 16, I said, "so we're inviting all but 4 girls?" "yes" came her reply. So we printed off four more invitations and invited all of the girls in the class.
The Saturday before the party Annabelle and I made chocolate frogs. We also shopped for other party supplies.
I took these pictures so we can compare height/growth of these kids over the next few years.
Here Charles is 13. I'm curious to see when he passes me up, and if he passes up dad.
He's getting close to me.
I've mentioned before that Sundays Scott often takes over the kitchen and we often have the kids help as well. I absolutely love this, so of course I take pictures so we can remember it always.
These are lemon ricotta pancakes that we made up and loved.
Not sure why I took a picture of my green smoothie, except maybe just because it looked pretty and very green? I've been drinking green smoothies for breakfast since 2010, that's 9 years now!
The night before Valentine's Day, Scott and I volunteered to clean the Jordan River Temple with about 40 others. We were there from 10pm -1230am which is WAY past our bed time. Needless to say, we slept in Valentine's morning and we were pleased to see our doors had been heart attacked by Annabelle.
I had prepared in advance and made pink pancake batter the day before, and we cooked them into heart shapes that morning for breakfast.
And dinner was simple yet festive. I found these heart shaped cheese ravioli pastas at Costco a couple of weeks before and we had them with dinner, along with a heart shaped Papa Murphy's pizza, and salad, since over half of the children don't like Ravioli.
We have a tradition of pulling the kids out of school for lunch on their birthday (or near their birthday if it falls on a non-school day). Since Annabelle's birthday was on a Saturday this year, the day before her birthday, I picked her up and we ate lunch together at Cafe Rio. She decided to come home and work on some more party preparations since she only had a couple hours left of school, and I thought that sounded like a good idea. No doubt the other kids will request this as well. It's all good, they rarely get sick or miss school for any reason. I think this was her first time missing any classes this year. They're good students.
Annabelle addressed a bunch of envelopes to Harry Potter (cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging...), and we stuck them all over the fireplace.
Then she got to work on blowing up balloons, and making them look like Hedwig. Once Elisabeth got home, she helped as well. What was I doing, you ask? I was making and decorating the elaborate HP cakes she requested.
Jane wanted to make Annabelle a gift and she went on pinterest and found a craft using popsicle sticks to make a dangling earring holder. It was pretty easy and turned out cute...though we've had to reglue it a couple of times.
Annabelle got money from grandparents, Friends Legos, Vans and a shirt.
We had about 14 girls show up for the party. Once they arrived, we sorted them into houses.
Annabelle made labels for all of the food. Some were harry potter themed like the chocolate frogs, the licorice wands, golden snitch (white chocolate truffles) and the Bertie Botts every flavored beans(actually jelly bellies), and then others we couldn't think of creative names so she just labeled them as what they were: chips, Izze drinks, strawberries etc
We had four rotations, so each house started at one, we set a timer for ten minutes, and then rotated. We had wand making (chopsticks and paint),
HP charades, bertie botts bean tasting/guessing (these were the nasty flavored ones) and a game where you tied a black balloon(dementor) around your ankle and tried to pop the others in your group.
Sunday February 17th, Elisabeth received her patriarchal blessing. She went in fasting, and it was beautiful.
Charles and a couple of his neighborhood friends, have been creating youtube videos of random stuff. Since they nearly have 50 subscribers, and since we had leftover birthday cake, they decided to film a 'happy 50 subscribers' celebratory video, where they made a sign and ate cake. They crack me up.
The girls had a midwinter break, an entire week off of school, so we decided to see the new Lego movie on $5 Tuesday. It was pretty cute. They also have discounted pizza on Tuesdays, as well as discounted mini popcorn, so we splurged and got some food to eat while we watched.
These sisters are two years apart, but very close in height. Jane is pretty small, and Nora is pretty average when you're comparing kids their age. They share a bedroom, and sometimes they're great friends, but often they get on each others nerves and fight. Even though we have spare rooms in the house, we make them share. Sometimes, for my sanity, I wish they didn't, but mostly I think it's character building and good for people to learn how to live with a roommate.
love this sign. It was up in Tumbletek's lobby area. And speaking of tumbling, Elisabeth started landing her back tuck in February. She lands it about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, looks a bit more painful. But nothing worth having comes easy.
Back in 2002, we lived in Wymount student family housing, and so did Gina and Ben. Gina was one of my first visiting teachers, and we were stroller walking buddies, once Elisabeth was born. We've stayed in contact over the years and we get together a couple of times during the year. She messaged a few months back and told me Wicked would be in town, and I said Yes!!! I'd never seen it before, though I knew some of the songs. It was fun to be there, the cast did great, and I wished we had better seats, but by the time we signed up, all the closer seats were gone and we had to go on a weeknight. Either way, it was great!
I don't normally buy packaged snack foods for my kids because we have one in particular that goes through them super fast, eating more than her share, and eating nothing else. So they mostly snack on nuts, seeds, fruits and veggies. But my teens had been complaining about our pantry food options, and they prefer going to friends houses, probably to eat their food, so I gave in and picked up some snack foods while at Costco. But I also picked up matching tupperware and labeled them with their names. Then we put the snacks in there that they can eat for that week, and how fast or how slow they decide to eat them, is totally up to them, but once they're gone, they're gone until the next school week. It has worked well so far.
