Quiet Time

So, we have been working on phasing out TV... One day I realized how much TV I was letting them watch. 1-2 hours of cartoons in the morning, plus a movie after lunch, another hour and a half. That's up to 3 1/2 hours a day, sometimes more, times 7 days a week! That's almost 25 hours of TV a week! What a waste of time! So over the last few months we have been really cutting out a ton of TV. At first we were having major TV withdrawals... but after a couple of weeks, the TV has really been forgotten! It's been awesome. So, now watching TV is a real treat... and a reward instead of a daily occurrence.


Anyways, to the point of this post... since watching TV and movies has become such a treat, here is a picture of the kids watching a movie at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Not only did they get to watch a movie, but they got to watch a movie all cozied up in bed!

Just Dance

This is Jorgan playing Just Dance on the Wii with Aunt Whitney. He is holding a controller, but just for show! We thought he was cute, just shakin' it!

Jorgan's Worm

So, it snowed again at the end of February... on Jorgan's birthday actually. We had planned his birthday party for the next weekend, in Ellensburg, but still wanted to give him a gift on his birthday. (When discussing what to get him for his birthday, we couldn't decide between a $50 big wheel, or a small $60 bike, or a $35 Buzz Lightyear... so when we saw this scoot along worm on Clearance at Walmart for $15, we finally agreed!) And he loves it! It's only slightly too big for him, but he can still get on and off himself and scoot along himself. He's got such short legs... which is a big problem for a little guy that wants to do everything his sisters can do! Anyways, so these are just pictures of us playing in the snow again and Jorgan riding his worm even though it's snowing and slippery!




oh, and this is, "I do NOT want to go inside yet!"

President's Day

On President's Day, we had some extra friends over to play, all day! Since I was going to have 6 kids and one me, I knew I had to plan some things for us to do. So I found online an idea for making log cabins (Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin that makes log cabins a president's day activity!). So, the idea was to use peanut Butter on the sides of a small milk carton and then put pretzels up the sides to look like logs.


I couldn't find the small milk cartons (individual size that you get from the school cafeteria) but I did find pint size cartons full of Chocolate milk.


So the most difficult part of our craft was each having to drink a pint of Chocolate milk :o) No one complained... I don't know why!

Grandpa

My dad had to spend a week in Kent for a conference for work. So, since he was on this side of the mountain, he drove an hour and a half in rush hour traffic, to come and have dinner with us! We loved having him here, and the kids loved having Grandpa all to themselves. So, at bedtime, Grandpa was giving the kids horsey rides! If we can't have daddy, at least Grandpa was here!

Valentine's Day

Instead of buying a box of Valentines for Elizabeth to take to school, we decided to make homemade Valentines... 25 home made Valentines is rough work... Just writing each kid's name on the envelope took us 3 days!! But Elizabeth did do them all herself! Then it took another 2 days to put the cards together... What an adventure!
Then we made a Valentine's card for daddy! That was really fun... and then hiding it was even more fun... and then keeping it a secret was the best!


We don't spend much money on Valentine's day, so Josh and I each made one another a card and the kids made their card for daddy. Then I came home to a surprise! Roses! Except that Rachel told me on the way home that her and daddy had bought me flowers and put them on the table for a surprise for me... Oh, well! It was still a surprise because I wasn't expecting it!

8 Years!!

On January 2 we celebrated our 8th Anniversary! We bought a Groupon earlier last year for an awesome deal on a hotel and dinner in Seattle. So we picked a weekend in January that Whitney, Emily, and Caitlin could come over and enjoyed a couple of days alone together! We went to the Seattle Temple, then to Archie McPhee (a ridiculously crazy store, a tourist spot in Seattle, that sells completely silly and random items), checked in at The Roosevelt, walked down to Pike's Market (Josh bought me flowers and doughnuts for breakfast the next morning), bought Josh a new pair of shoes for work at The Walking Company (hopefully they'll last a while), and had dinner at Il Fornaio in the Pacific Place Mall. The next day was Sunday, luckily we have 1pm church, so we headed home and took everyone to church. Unfortunately, this is the only picture we took the entire time... we'll have to do better the next time!