Valentines Day Fun

I don't have very many Valentine's decorations, so I thought I would get the kids help in making some. They always love to do crafts.  So, I found this one where you take coffee filters, cut them out into heart shapes, then let the kids color on them with markers.  Then you get them wet with a dropper or some sort of sprayer and then the markers bleed making really neat designs.  We made lots and hung them in front of the windows.  

This is how some of them turned out.  

My mom usually sends a little package for the kids for every holiday.  In this one for Valentines, she had little water bottles full of candy and little toys.  Noah loved his and carried around the water bottle, the cars and the mickey mouse figure everywhere he went.  These pictures are for you mom!  You did good. 

More crafts...this time I only had Paige and Noah home, so we painted some grocery sacks and then cut out hearts to make a banner that I hung in front of our mantel.  

This is the banner...I thought it turned out cute. 

Valentines Day

I always try to do some fun things on Valentine's day to make it a bit more special.  This year I had a ton of ideas that I wanted to do, but didn't get to half of them.  Oh well.  This was our breakfast table.  I bought balloons for each kid, and bought chocolate donuts with sprinkles on them so they could eat after their cereal.  

I found this cute idea to make heart shaped ice cubes out of milk mixed with food coloring.  

Noah loved the idea of having "cake" for breakfast.  

This was Noah and Bella's lunch.  Heart shaped PBJ sandwiches, strawberries, bananas, yogurt with pink sprinkles, kisses and apple juice.  Bella loved it so much that she wanted the exact same thing for lunch the next day.  

I added some last minute decorations for our dinner/party that night.  

For dinner, we had our traditional heart shaped pizzas from Papa Johns and a green salad.  I also love how Garrett brings home roses for the girls and asks them to be his Valentine.  They get to keep the flowers in their rooms.  They love it too.  

Then we played Bingo.

After that, I had found a bunch of fun "Minute to Win it" type Valentines games.  So, our first one was supposed to be tossing marshmallows into a cup.  But, Garrett changed it to an all out marshmallow war before we could get started.  I love that he always makes things silly and fun. 

The kids loved it and I think was a highlight of the night. 

Noah getting hit with a marshmallow.  I love his expression!

We finally got to the marshmallow toss and it was kind of boring after the marshmallow war.  Noah loves to throw anything, so he enjoyed it.  

Look at his form, this kid could end up being a pitcher.  :)

Our next game was to see who could stack the most conversation hearts without it toppling over.  I think Lydia or Garrett got to 23.  They found that if they licked them, they stuck together better.  It was pretty tricky though...Bella got to 12 and that was my highest.  

Love this girl.

Then we got out some candy corns for another game, but it was a dud, so Garrett being the big kid he is, started using the candy corn as teeth.  He also thought he'd be funny and put them in his ears as ear plugs because everyone was really loud.  When he tried to take them out later, the tips on both broke off and got stuck in his ears.  It freaked me out, but he eventually got them out after squirting some water in his ears.  I thought for sure we were going to end up in the ER. 

The next game was to fan a tissue paper heart across the floor and see who could do it fastest.  It was fun, but a little tricky for the smaller kids.  

Our last game was a mummy wrap using crepe paper.  Garrett wrapped Paige and had her just spin while he held the roll of crepe paper.  This was her after she collapsed from being so dizzy.  

And we ended the night with fondue!  Yummy!!

It was a fun Valentines Day with my sweet Valentines!

Random things from January and February

So, I thought I'd post some random things from the last month and a half that don't have to do with birthdays or holidays.  It's crazy how busy things have been.  You think that after Christmas and the other holidays, that things will slow down.  But, they never seem to.  With church and callings, school, dance and now basketball, it seems we hardly have any free evenings.  We still manage to squeeze in some fun now and then though.

I was up doing laundry the other day and passed by Bella's room to see these two sitting on her bed.  She was reading him books.  It was so cute...especially since she can't read yet and she was telling the story in her own words. 

Maggie snapped this cute picture on her phone one day.

Garrett signed us up for free Intel tickets to go see Phineas and Ferb Live in one of Intel's suites.  It was cute, but I was glad we got the tickets for free because it wasn't really worth however much tickets are going for.  The kids liked it, so that's all that matters.  This was the only picture I got.  

Garrett also got us tickets to go see a Portland Winterhawk's Hockey game through Intel.  It came with free food vouchers, too, so that was nice.  I had never been to a hockey game, so I quite enjoyed it.  There was a great fight that we got to see, too.  :)  

At one point, the Intel bunnies (people in that work in the fabs) came out and were dancing around the stadium and then at the "half" they came out riding in a zamboni.

 Lydia and Maggie started basketball in January.  Lydia plays for an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This is her first year and she is really liking it.  Luckily, she has a few girls on her team that she knows from school and one from church.  Their team name is "Bobcats" and she is number 8. 

 Jim and Georgia came over for dinner on Tuesday and then went with us to watch Lydia's game.  I think they got a kick out of it.  Jim's a really big basketball fan and used to play a lot of basketball when he was younger.  

 This is Maggie's second year of playing.  She LOVED it at the end of last year.  This year, she wasn't very excited to start playing.  Mostly because she found out that her practices/games were on Wed. nights and Saturdays.  Wednesday nights are our mutual nights, so she was going to be missing young women's activities for awhile and then she'd have to spend part of her Saturdays, not lounging around the house.  She really wanted to quit, but we wouldn't let her.  And, now she loves it again.  Go figure. 

Her team name is "Pink Pride" and she is number 1.  

 I also took some pictures of some family home evening lessons that we've had recently.  Paige taught one at the beginning of the year and I can't remember what is was about.  She did a great job though, I just have a bad memory.  Lydia taught one awhile back about Joseph Smith and the restoration for her Faith in God.  She did a great job too.  I didn't get any pictures of either of those though.  Maggie taught her lesson about prayer for her personal progress.  I took some pictures because I thought it was cute how they were helping her.  

When the girls teach their lessons, we've been trying to teach them that at the end of their lesson, it's really effective for them to bear their testimonies at the end.  For some reason, they really have a hard time with this.  They are getting better, though. 

 Then, last Sunday I taught the lesson on Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem.  I used little people to help the little kids visualize what was going on.  (I found the idea online.)  This is Lehi and his family (in the castle) telling the people of Jerusalem to repent or be destroyed.  

 This is Lehi and his family setting up their tents as they are camping in the wilderness.  

 I asked them how they would react if dad came home one day and told them that they had to pack some clothes and food and leave behind their toys and clothes and their home to go live in the wilderness and never come back.  We talked about how hard it would be and how we might complain some.  I tried to emphasize how Laman and Lemuel complained and didn't believe their dad.  But, Nephi obeyed first and then tried to find out through prayer, whether or not what his father said was true.  I thought it was a good lesson, and I think it really made them stop and think.  For our treats, we roasted marshmallows over the stove and made s'mores, like we were camping in the wilderness.  

Garrett's parents sold their house and just got back from packing up the rest of their house in Ohio.  So, Garrett helped them unload their moving truck on Friday and Saturday.  So, they are here for good now and working on getting completely settled.  It's nice to have them back.