February 2015

In February I downloaded the pictures from Faith's phone. She still loves to take selfies! Here are two from awhile back:

February 1st was Super Bowl and we went to Joy and Jordon's house to party it up.

Tony made hot wings in regular, mango habanero and super ultra hot! I brought Samoa brownie bars. My favorite part was Katie Perry's halftime show and hanging out with fun peeps.

Sarah had said that all she wanted for her birthday was me to Photoshop some valentines for her youngest kids this year. I followed through and made the one where you add pink water balloons blown up as bubbles for Alaura,

and are you add pixie sticks or glow sticks as the light sabers for Noah. I was so excited that they turned out well and the kids loved them!

Here's Buddy on the 4th making crêpes. He's getting pretty good at it!

The 5th was his Chinese Bew Year program at school. They explained a bunch of things about the celebration and Christians part was, "why red envelopes?"

I just love this quote and wanted to include it. I "pin" things like this to my Pinterest board.

On the 8th The kids wanted to ride bikes

and Tony tried and tried to work with Christian, but he just wasn't getting it.

On the 9th I volunteered at the school helping with the book fair. Christian bought this toy were you built electric circuit projects.

February 13th was a Friday, so Bud had his Valentine's Day class party at school. He wanted his valentines to have dinosaur toys instead of candy, so I made these up on the computer and Christian hot glued dinosaurs to them.

Faith stayed up late the night before helping to make his valentine box. Christian requested a toilet!

Here are fakes plans before she made it, with Christian adding in injured people for some reason. I love how Christian drew in and labeled "butt." Apparently that didn't happen in the completed project.

They received cards and money from grandma Peterson and grandma Braegger and Tammy doorbell ditched them, but they what weren't originally home! Tony had taken them to boondocks and left me home as my valentine gift ;)

Wanted to get a picture of how dusty looks shaved. He's actually much happier without all the long fur.

He's actually just meowing and wanting me to pet him in this picture, but I love how vicious he looks!

And Skittles just looking like a cutie patootie.

The 16th was Presidents' Day and I had Christian do an experiment to see what cleans a penny better – – water, water with dish soap, or vinegar & salt. We only left them in one day and none of them did a great job, but the vinegar and salt did the best.

On the 19th it was Blue and Gold dinner for Cub Scouts. There was a pirate theme and Christian got to be part of a skit.

After the skits and awards, there were some games and mustache face painting.

February 21st we decided to tackle the DIY project of installing wood floors in the family room. We got at it early, moving furniture, removing the carpet and then spending the next couple of hours pulling up the pad and staples. The kids were huge help with this.

Tony started to lay the floor and I was assisting with marking the cuts around the heater vents, but when he got to the long stretches the kids joined in and we got that floor slapped down in nothin' flat!

We went to Home Depot to buy the edge trim and to mom and dad's to borrow the nail gun for the baseboards. The entire thing was finished before 11 pm. We love it!

January 2015

Just something I found on Pinterest that made me smile :)

On January 5th, Christian needed to get a tooth filled at the dentist. He still clubs to go and watch movies while wearing the "pig nose."

Gas prices have been amazing! It's been near four dollars and I never thought we'd see it go below two dollars again.

After Christmas but before New Year's faith started feeling sick again. This time it wasn't only her stomach, but she was extremely tired.  She couldn't go back to school after Christmas break and we took her back to the doctor. She missed church on the 11th and our sweet home teacher, Rick Decker, brought these smiley face brownies and card to help her feel better.

when the tests came back, we found that she had mono. She ended up not being able to go back to school until the end of February!

Even though mornings were awful and she never had any energy, we did get her out a few times in the afternoons. On the 17th we visited Krispy Kreme to get her out of the house.

January 19th we made racial unity French toast breakfast, learned more about Martin Luther King Jr., read the Sneetches to remind us not to discriminate against anyone who is different from ourselves, Buddy made an MLK suncatcher out of crayon shavings & waxed paper, and I worked these Samoa brownies into the day's theme by saying they had many different skin tone colors (a stretch, I know).

Our Groundhog day celebration sucked this year because of my lack of planning and all we did was watch the movie, so I was glad we made this a fun holiday!

Tammy knew that we like these puzzles and gave us one she'd picked up on a trip awhile back. The kids put it together on the 25th.

I picked up some kippers at the store remembering that my dad and I sometimes shared some when I was young. Christian dared to give it a try it and said it wasn't as bad as he expected, but had a cat food aftertaste!

Due to Faith's illness, we didn't do a whole lot in January this year :(

Elf on the Shelf 2014

We had lots of fun with Hermie, our Elf on the shelf, again this year. The kids came home to find that he was delivered in a package and had busted out of the box! He also enjoyed some popcorn, hung around in the kids bathroom and worked out a bit.

He checked up on baby Jesus, made snow angels in flour and cuddled up to his good buddy by the front door.

Christian had a hard time finding him being crazy in a pair of underwear stuck to the play room ceiling fan! The silverware drawer and master bathroom cabinet were both good hiding places, too.

He cut some snowflakes, waved goodbye to us but then showed up in California! Love that he put that free shower to good use :)

We didn't see him when we left our hotel room on the 19th, but he made it home to hide in the master bedroom tree and then ride a pterodactyl in Buddy's room.

He was pretty sneaky when he dressed up as a shepherd and goofy in faith's room wearing a knee-high sock.

We knew he would head back to the north pole and not be there on Christmas morning, but Christian and Faith woke up to a great surprise – – Hermie had taken selfies and added them as wallpaper to their phones!

Rest of December 2014

In December I made ornaments for our primary teachers with pictures of their class in them. I have one year in as primary secretary and I'm still enjoying it :)

On the 23rd we went to Lee's Mongolian (where we were reprimanded for taking home second bowls which we always used to do 😡), then went to the Ogden lights.

I put together these friend & neighbor gifts this year which I thought turned out really cute.

The kids were upset that we didn't make a zillion cookies and treats, but I couldn't find the time after practically living in California all month, ha!

On Christmas Eve we went to my mom & dad's where Skittles showed off her new haircut.

We ate appetizers and meatballs, the played some games.

Christmas morning the kids found that Santa had brought a new Disney Infinity, arrows and Faith got this backpack which she'd seen at Disneyland.

The kids got each other some small gifts.

Skittles got some bully sticks.

We actually got a white Christmas!

We were spoiled by my parents, as usual.

This was the cutest gift from my mom and dad:

We were spoiled again at Braegger's!

This was a game that projects ghosts on the walls and you have to shoot them with a laser gun!

After a day of too much excitement, the kids crashed.

It was mainly because they got up at like five in the morning and had to wait until I got off work at 6:00 to open gifts.

Christian was ecstatic that Chili's ribs returned to Tammy's New Year's Eve party this year!

We had a fun night of eating and playing games, and then noisily ring in the new year!!