I {heart} Valentine's hair-dos

Valentines

The kids will be out of school on Valentine's Day (due to parent-teacher conferences).  So their parties will be tomorrow.  So fun and exciting.  Here are the kids' Valentines we made:

 Lucy, being a fourth child, though not in school child, still has to make Valentines.  We'll pass hers out at gymnastics tomorrow.  She had fun painting and gluing on the eyes.  (Here's the link/source.)

 I saw this on Pinterest and loved it - so did Emmy.  Cute and fun to make.

 Jonas almost did a Harry Potter one that I thought was pretty great.  But then he decided on the airplanes.  Very cool.  His card attached to the end says, "You are plane awesome.  Happy Valentine's Day.  Love, Jonas."

 All the kids in Miles' class know that Miles is an "origami master," as one kid said to me this past Monday.  Awesome.  So it was only fitting for him to make origami hearts, right?  I had seen this one on Pinterest, but it didn't quite work with our lollipops, so we modified it a bit.

I love them all - the Valentines and the kids.  :)

The Ice Rink is Alive and Well - sometimes

In terms of having a backyard ice-rink, January wasn't the greatest of months.  Too warm.  Too many days of upper 30s and even lower 40s.  Luckily, though, the nights were still cold - usually in the teens.  What that meant was that the ice rink was frozen in the morning and late evening.  It also meant that it wasn't frozen between about 2pm-7ish.  So there wasn't tons of after-school skating going on.  But we have managed to play and skate on many Saturday mornings, including two times that our friends came over to join us.  We just played last night, too, for our FHE activity.  It's just so fun.  I've never played hockey before this whole ice-rink thing, but it's great!  In a couple more years I'll be the worse player in the family, I'm sure.  Even Emmy is getting a little in to it - although as she says, "I hate hockey.  But it's kind of fun."  Girls.

Ben has been able to have 3 Mens' Hockey nights (on Fridays), plus a couple of Monday morning games with the Elders.  The Elders have probably used it at least three other times without us - we've been out of town, unavailable, etc.  We always tell them they are welcomed to come in our gate and skate.  The missionaries just love it.  The Young Men have come over twice for their activity night.  So, really, I think we've gotten great use out of our rink.

 Here is Ben with the latest group of missionaries.  I don't know their names (two new missionaries just arrived and the other two serve in a different ward) - except for Elder Jacobson (back row, black shirt). My girls LOVE him - almost (as much?) as Elder Koyle.

Lucy loved watching them play for a bit.

February is looking pretty good so far for the rink.  :)

A Snowy Day

On Friday we got about 7 inches of wet, wet snow - it was great!  We had gone over a month (maybe almost 2) since we had last gotten snow.  If it's winter and cold, it might as well snow - right?!  Lucy and I didn't play too much in it in the morning - we drove in it to Mostly Music.  Oh, and I shoveled in the morning when we had gotten back from taking the kids to school - Lucy, towards the end, started complaining of her toes being cold.  So I told her to go inside.  She refused.  Well when I was done we went in together and I took her boots off (not snow-boots, mind you, because she had refused them) and I discovered she had no socks on.  Nice.

Anyways, when we got the kids home from school and had snack, we all went out to play.  Snowmen were made, sidewalks were shoveled again, and snowballs were formed.  It was great fun.  Here are a few pictures, mostly of our snowball fights:

 The battleground.

 A hit!

 But she is not down - take that!  :)

 Jonas loved it.

When Ben came home I had to go inside and get dinner started.  So Ben went out to play.  Well, really what he did was throw snowballs - "about 300" according to Ben.  (His arm paid for it the next day.  :)  He ended up getting their shields and the boys LOVED it.  Ben would throw, the boys would block.

 Awesome!

The next day the boys went out again - after awhile, finally demanding Ben to come out and lob snowballs at them.  So he did for a little bit.  Then Jonas or Miles said to Ben, "Hey Dad, someone is throwing snowballs at YOU."  He was right - our neighbor, Bob, started chucking some across the street at them.  :)  Ben went in but told Bob he was welcomed to throw snowballs at our boys:

Oh they all loved it!  Bob's wife Carman came out and got some pictures that she later posted on facebook.  She said the cars that would pass would all smile and laugh.

What a snowy, fun time!

January Happenings

Since I don't have a "hard copy" of our family's calendar, I thought I would try and take a picture of our wall calendar at the end of each month.  We'll see if I remember to do this more than once . . .

Just because . . .

I think she's totally adorable:

She was having a fun time making jewelry!

Miles the Artist

Miles' Great-Grandpa was named Miles.  Thus Ben's middle name and our son's first name.  Great-Grandpa Miles was an artist - by profession.  His artwork supported he, his wife (Great-Grandma Dee), and their four children.  We were given a book entitled, "The Art of Miles Erwin Foresman."  It's really impressive - the book itself, as well as Miles' artwork.

Anyways, I think Miles Jr. has inherited some of his Great-grandpa's artistic talent.  He is quite detailed with most of his artwork and really creative as well.  He just brought this picture home yesterday, something he had done in art.  Ben and I really love it.  Miles - he is bothered by the fact that the tree is skinny on the lower half and bigger up above.  :)

Rewind to Jonas' party invites

I know this isn't a big deal, but I still wanted to post the cute invites we did for Jonas' Harry Potter party:

Just in case you don't know, the owls are what deliver the mail in the books.  So we made some invites, made them look old, and tied them up to owl balloons.  Fun stuff.

Rewind to New Year's Eve, 2013

Traditionally we break down and eat our gingerbread houses on New Year's Day.  But since we'd be heading out in the early morning and driving to Utah, we decided to do this on New Year's Eve.  So we did:

We are good gingerbread house demolishers.

We finished up the evening with having everyone watch It's A Wonderful Life.  So super great.

I'm not sure if Ben and I made it to midnight.  Who cares, is how I feel.  But I'm old now.

Out of the Mouth of Lucy

As we were making bagels and Lucy was pouring in the honey, I asked:  "Where does honey come from?"  Lucy didn't quite reply and so I said, "What animals make honey?"

Lucy said, "Rats."



Later on in the day Lucy was asking for milk.  I told her "not right now."  She then said to me, "If you don't get me milk, I won't play with you!"  "Okay!" I replied.  (I was tired of playing dolls . . .)  She then told me that she was just teasing.  Darn it.  :)