March 2014

March 1st was Sierra's baptism. She looked so beautiful and was so excited!

Unfortunately, only Christian and I could attend because Faith was at winter overnight Young Women's camp and Tony was at the hospital because Grandma Mitchell was dying and his dad had had a stroke early that morning and was just a few doors down.

The 3rd was Dr. Seuess day, so we made green (deviled) eggs to celebrate. Christian got quite carried away with the green food coloring and had a dinner of green salmon and green lemon angel hair pasta!

On the 5th the kids did something they had been wanting to try for awhile--weightless Wednesday at YogoTogo. They had gift cards that Tammy had given them for Valentine's, and this promotion is where you can have as much as you can fit for $5.

Buddy's started to tip, so it had to be dumped in a second cup!

 Grandma Mitchell ended up passing away, and Tony's work had this bouquet delivered.

Here is some artwork that Buddy did at school:

a log cabin for Presidents' Day,

and a story he wrote.

Here is Marcella's obituary and pictures from her funeral program .

Her services were on March 8th.

It was so cute when the kids and grand kids did a Coke toast because grandma loved her Coca-Cola!

After the funeral luncheon, we went to McKay Dee hospital to visit Larry. The kids each made him pictures to lift his spirits.

He is doing better, but the stroke left him with a lot of muscle weakness, some speech problems, and it made him much more emotional.

Around this time we found out that our new next door neighbor (on our south side) would be a Pittsburgh Steeler!!!!

He is now a free agent, but we are excited to root for him, even if he's picked up by another team ;) His girlfriend who will be living there full time is in reservations training for JetBlue. Small world!

For Pi Day on the 14th, we began the day with (crustless quiche) pie.

For dinner we had shepherd's pie and triple fruit pie for dessert.

On the evening of the 16th, Christian talked me into making green crepes for dinner. I even cut his into a shamrock.

He set up a leprechaun trap, but didn't manage to catch one this year, either!

March 17th, Faith wasn't feeling well, but Buddy did errand with me, all dressed up. We pretended that this was the Blarney Stone :)

Even though the sneaky leprechaun avoided the trap, he left some footprints behind and overturned the chairs.

Christian wanted a funny face picture with this lunch I made him. Just a tuna salad sandwich with cucumber and a cilantro leaf on top.

He still loves crafts, so I had him do a fruit loop rainbow. He even bought a piece of liccorice caramel at the store to make the pot!

Our traditional St. Patty's meal of corned beef, cabbage, roasted vegetables, and this year did Irish soda bread, shamrock shaped garlic breadsticks, and grasshopper Oreo cheesecake pie!

My calendar got mixed up and I thought March 22 was Earth Day instead of April 22. Oh well, we had some great earth pancakes, anyway.

  The 29th was opening day at Lagoon so we got our passes and rode some rides.

February 2014

Skittles gets so excited when the kids get home from school! Here's a little hello to her favorite Buddy on February 1st.

 On the morning of Groundhog Day we celebrated with a little pancake action.

Even Tony was forced to get in on the fun!

That afternoon was the Super Bowl and we brought Sirui, oodles of hot wings and the chocolate fountain over to Joy and Jordon's for a celebration.

 Since we were busy with football and commercials the night before, we had to keep on celebrating the groundhog on the 3rd. For lunch we had hotdog groundhogs coming out of mashed potato mounds, and chocolate pebbles krispy treat groundhogs.

That evening we watched the Groundhog Day movie and I made porcupine meatball groundhogs on green bean almandine mounds for dinner.

Here's the invitation that I made for our "it's great to be eight" baptism preview:

And here we are attending on the 9th. Christian is so excited!

We were a bit late getting them completed, but our pop-up groundhog cookies were EPIC! Totes the bomb.com! The mound is a no bake (chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal) cookie, and the Tootsie Roll groundhogs can hide down in and then pop out with a little help from your finger!!

 I had previously asked a few weeks before if the kids wanted to work on some homemade valentines. There was not much of a response, so I was just going to pick up some store-bought ones. At the last minute, the kids decided they had to have something more creative, and I found an idea on Pinterest for Christian which we copied.

My fingers hurt from tying all of these tiny balloons, but Christian helped assemble them and it only took us most of the night. Here's the picture underneath:

Faith found and implemented her own gum valentine idea, and I only helped with the little bit of the cutting.

If I had known that doing creative Valentines one year would set a precedent for every following year, I would have said it was a "sixth grade only" perk! :) Here is our kitchen at 11:30 that night--

I had signed up to help out with both kids' Valentine's Day parties, and came up with an idea for a treat station which was a little different than the usual cookie or cupcake decorating--I did a "valentine love potion" bar! Each kid got a cup with vanilla ice cream and then they could add their choice of clear, pink or red soda, strawberry syrup, whipped cream, maraschino cherries, sprinkles, and sour powder. Faith loves cute labels so I made up a few to go on some of the items.

It was a big hit! Unfortunately the boys tended to keep adding sour powder until theirs became inedible, and then would dare each other to drink it, but other than that it was a lot of fun.

The room mother for Christian's class had to go out of town and so she put me in charge of his party. I made sure that all of the people who had signed up were ready with their stations, but the day before, found out that the craft mom was leaving town. Not only had she not found a sub, but she didn't even have an idea or supplies for the craft! I ended up cutting a million hearts out of construction paper late that night (till 2 am, then got up for work at 6) and had a sheet of ideas for animals that the kids could create out of them. Everything worked out fine and the craft was fun, but it sure made for a stressful couple of days. Here is my suggestion sheet on the left and the penguin that Christian made at the party.

Christian's class also loved making their potions, and enjoyed the printed activities that I brought (for something to keep them busy while they were eating their treat) more than the sixth-graders did.

That night Tony brought us yummy Mo' Bettah Steaks for dinner and See's chocolate hearts for dessert. Tammy and Lana ding-dong ditched the kids with these cute treats.

I saw this on the Internet the next day and said that Tony should've given it to me for Valentine's Day :)

On the 15th we went to a baby shower for Jason and Athena. The activity was decorating bibs and onesies for baby Riley. I wanted to do something with a "gamer" theme because of their interests, so I made this:

And I found all of these cute ideas online:

The kids each did a super cute job!

January 2014

On the evening of January 1st, my work went "code red" which requires us to do mandatory overtime. I jumped on the phones around 9 pm because, although I had through 11:59 pm 1/2 to complete it, they were paying double time for OT instead of time & a half. 

Because of the system glitch, that cancellation notices were not emailed out as expected and there were so many of us working that we had many minutes between calls. We got silly on our Facebook group page and started posting pictures of ourselves. Here is mine with my work buddy:

Someone even put a whole bunch of our pictures together into this collage!

it was a fun start to the overtime, but over the next few days he got very old and I got very tired with all the extra work and stress of trying to get customers where they need to go when so many flights were canceled.

Here are the photo Christmas cards we received this year:

and I loved Sarah's! On the front was the family picture from their cruise and inside was the picture of their kids' swimming with dolphins adventure.

Some kid art from our wall--Christian made this devil with a sword,

Faith made this great nutcracker at school,

also at school Buddy made this ladybug

and elf.

The second week of January had a few super foggy days. We could hardly even see across our backyard.

Faith made this cool car out of a box for her sixth-grade right of passage "drive in movie" at school. I love the sparkly silver peace sign steering wheel and that the most important features for her were a cup holder, snack tray, and trunk to hold all of her snacks.

Sirui got the news that she had to move in with a different host family on the 21st. We had only signed up to have her for one term and her program encouraged schools to move the volunteers around to experience American life with several different families throughout the year. We were sad to see her go, but it did feel kind of nice to have our house back to ourselves. Tony especially is loving hanging out in his underwear :-)

Skittles had to her old rubber chicken completely apart into two pieces, so we went to PetCo and got her a new one. She loves it!

January 27th was the kids' parent teacher conferences. It's funny that I got the same information about both kids: they are super smart and doing great, but don't turn in their homework!!

In art class at school Faith carved this turtle out of a bar of soap.

And for Chinese new year on the 31st we made sushi for dinner. Christian made this roll all by himself!

Elf on the Shelf

Last year, on super "after Christmas sale" online, I ordered an Elf on the Shelf." Christian hoped he would visit us from the North Pole when the holidays finally rolled around again.

It was a   l - o - n - g , torturous wait (for him), but on December 1st our little guy finally appeared!

Dec. 1st - he was found hanging out in Christian's stocking and had his book in the railing by him. We read that he was here to watch the kids and would report back to Santa. It also said that we got to name him, and the kids agreed that he would be Hermie :)

Dec. 2nd - he toilet papered our family room Christmas tree

Dec. 3rd - he was in the master bathroom where he'd written "Hi" on the mirror with toothpaste

Dec. 4th - he was in the kitchen drinking syrup out of the bottle with a straw

Dec. 5th - he copied himself on our printer!

Dec. 6th - he decorated the Barbie castle with twinkle lights and was lounging on the couch in there

Dec. 7th - he had a fishing pole made out of a chopstick with a paper clip hook, and was "fishing" in our Beta fish Leo's bowl. I'm so sad that I forgot to get a photo of it!

Dec. 8th - he was sitting on the server behind the couch with an X-box controller and games strewn on the floor in front of the TV

Dec. 9th - he was in the freezer, probably because he missed his cold home town. Didn't Christian capture him perfectly in the artwork on the previous post?

Dec. 10th - he mischievously drew all over our family photos with dry erase marker

Dec. 11th - he was hard to find, on his tummy behind a picture on top of Faith's armoire, and he had a stack of cards with silly Christmas jokes on them

Dec. 12th - another day I forgot to snap a picture! This time he was sledding down our railing on a Tupperware lid

Dec. 13th - he was hanging out in the shower with a wash cloth on his head

Dec. 14th - he was riding the pine cone reindeer in my bedroom

Dec. 15th - he was hanging out above the potty in the half bath off the family room. I think Buddy was too embarrassed to use that bathroom on that day!

Dec. 16th - he was in my front room office, embracing the Buddha I inherited from Grandpa Quinn 

Dec. 17th - he was waiting to take a ride in the Jeep Liberty

Dec. 18th - he was on the new credenza in between our entry hall and kitchen, holding the baby Jesus from the olive wood nativity Grandma Tesch had gotten on her trip to the Holy Land

Dec. 19th - he was trying to roast a marshmallow on our electric fireplace

Dec. 20th - he was in our master bedroom blinds

Dec. 21st - he had zip-lined with a mini candy cane down from the loft and into the family room tree

Dec. 22nd - he had apparently been driving around in Buddy's remote control truck

Dec. 23rd - he was hiding in my closet, encircled by glow stick bracelets

Dec. 24th - he was hanging from the chandelier 

That night he left a note (instead of Santa, who usually does it but was running behind and didn't have time to) saying that the kids could do better at minding us and not throwing fits, but were still good enough to get their gifts.

Good-bye, Hermie! We loved your magical visit this year and look forward to your return.