Valentine Dinner

My mother always managed to go 'hog wild' when decorating for holidays, even minor ones.  So this year we tried to make our dining area as festive as possible.  William, Rachel and I went to the zoo for a while, then we shopped for balloons and such before putting it all up.  It was very fun in the end and the girls and dad were quite surprised to come home to it all.

Valentine Boxes

Out here in Utah women seem to compete to see who is the most creative.  That means of course that your child's Valentine box cannot just be an ordinary shoe box covered with pretty paper and decorated with stickers.  Oh no!  here they turn them into insane works of art.  I didn't want to get into it but Esther insisted that she would be too humiliated to show up with a plane old box and she must and would have a castle.  Emily wasn't quite so concerned but she decided to go for a 3Dish sort of touch.  It took us a couple of hours but I felt pretty clever when done. 

The draw bridge on Esther's castle actually lowers and that is where to stuff the valentines.

Emily wanted dolphins and we printed these ones that look very sweet.

Of course William and Rachel just had to get in on one picture.

Aviary

In another attempt to call spring to us we spent an afternoon at Tracy Aviary.  Quite a few birds were in hiding since a cold wind was blowing.  My kids didn't care though.  The sun was shining and we were in fresh air.  Can't ask for much more in early February.

Ducks at the Park

In an effort to pretend that spring truly is on the way we headed to the park one morning after dropping Emily and Esther at school.  It was  a sunny day and we spent an hour or so soaking it up.  I love that even though William and Rachel are separated by gender and three years in age they are the best of buddies. 

Ouch!

I don't even know how it happened but one day William tripped on my feet when we were running up to his preschool and he, Rachel and I all fell into one tangled heep on the sidewalk.  Rachel was frightened but unhurt, my left knee was scraped and gouged hideously, and William's lip was split and mangled.  It really was awful and took weeks for both of us to heal.  No pictures of my heroics but here is one of poor Bub.

Father/Daughter Dance

Every February the city of South Salt Lake puts on a father/daughter dance at the Columbus Center.  It is more of a time for games and fun than dancing but they told me this year they had a live band and some dads were even brave enough to take their daughters onto the dance floor.  They had a blast!

New Friends

Shortly after Christmas poor Rhino-Hamster disappeared.  William had gotten up in the middle of the night when he heard him running on his wheel, opened up the cage to pet him and then forgot to close it.  I was so mad at first but William was heart broken and is only 5 after all.  So James bought new hamsters and we gave William a very long and miserable lecture on being sure that our pets are safe.  Now he pulls the cage door every time he closes it to be sure it is latched tight.

Our new little guys are Peter (the golden one) and Liam (the greyish one).  They are cute and very active.

Third Grade Program

The 3rd grade program was early morning on January 27th.  It was a series of operas written and performed by the students of each class and then a medley of songs that everyone sang together.  Emily was one of the main dancer's in her class' opera.  It was so cute to see her doing a 50s style jitter bug wearing a bright green poodle skirt.  I just love my girl!



You can't see it really well in this picture but here she was spun around and then sat on Andrew's knee for the finale of the song.  She was a little embarassed about it but also thought it was great fun since she has a crush on Andy.



Family Week at Bonneville

Family week at Bonneville Elementary gives a lot of fun activities that the whole family can participate in at school.  They show movies after school in the gym, have donut read-a-thons in the library, and one day in the week families are invited to eat lunch with the students.  James was working but William, Rachel and I all showed up and had a fun afternoon with the girls.

Welcome 2011

Every one of us stayed up past midnight watching movies and eating treats.  When the countdown came we sprayed each other with silly string and popped the toy poppers.  It was a lot of fun to make the mess but not so much to clean it up!

Christmas Day

I took a picture of the tree around 1 AM when I was finally finished wrapping presents.  It was a wonderful morning and the children were squeeling and giggling with excitement.  Christmas is so special.

And this is what the living room looked like by the time we were done.