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!