Happy Love Day '11

Every year for Valentine's Day we set up candy trails form everyones bedrooms to their gifts & this year was no exception.

Phoebe was the first to emerge out of her room at 6am.  She was way excited to finally get the candy gummy hearts that she had picked out from the store a couple days earlier.  Phoebe followed her trail only to find she didn't approve of what books went to what person so she switched them all around for us. 

Cami and Josh were up only minutes after Phoebe and they were excited to see their animal cookie trails & books.

For breakfast I made "heart" pink pancakes, however, Phoebe insisted they were bunnies.

For lunch Cory and I went out together as always. This year we went to Applebee's because thanks to my brother for Christmas we had a gift card to use. After lunch things got a bit crazy for Cory and I which included looking at a model home and even putting earnest money down for one, but to only cancel it the next day. We still love the home, but the timing just isn't right for us...maybe next year. After all of our house craziness we discided to postpone our Valentine's  Day evening plans for the family until the next night.

V-DAY PT 2:

I had fixed a fancy dinner for us to eat on Monday, but we weren't hungry so I reheated it all and on Tuesday we enjoyed our fancy Valentine's dinner as a family; Phoebe was especially thrilled about the Martenelli's we drank. For our FHE lesson we talked about loving our family and how we all can show love for one another.  It surprisingly was one of our most successful lessons to date.  

For our treat I made pink pudding, however as I beat it more and it sat up it turned orange...oh well, it was still fancy enough for us and everyone LOVED it.

V-Day Countdown 2011

Once again Cory and I did our V-day countdown, a little something we started last year that makes the holiday a bit more fun.  This year I changed out some of the events we didn't enjoy doing so much last year and found fun new activities, such as making our own malt shop.

Another new activity was to take a photo for each other that shows your love and exchange them. Cory was cute and creative with love mice that live in the kiddos play kitchen.

I, of course, always tend to chose projects that are too ambitious and turn out to be a bit disastrous. I had the idea that each kid would hold a sign with a word and I would take the picture and then Photoshop together for one cute pic.  Simple right... wrong here is a taste of how the photo shoot went.

To compound the problem I quickly remembered then too I am out of practice with Photoshop and that is a hard program to use for the unskilled so I tried one last time to get a cute photo of all the kids at once, but after another failed cute photo-

This was Cory's final V-day picture:

Oh well, the pictures are a bit humorous to look back at now and next year I will take a note from my creative husband and keep it simple and cute.  

One successful valentine I made for Cory this year was this candy gram. In case you can't see it all too well it's a shovel in PB M&Ms and a card that reads I really dig you. I was happy with how cute/delicious it turned out!

Where Are My Babies?

For the past couple of weeks I have struggled with giving in to the fact my babies are growing up and time is running out before Sophie Marie joins us. I know I need to take one wall of their cribs off so they can adjust to normal beds, before being thrown into the mix of having bunk beds and Phoebe joining their room next month, but then I come in and see Cami jumping up and down and andacting so cute so I will lift her out and  once again I want to shy away from doing the inevitable bed changes.

The twins are so eager to begin doing all the things that they see Phoebe do that Cami often believes she needs to sit at/on the table to eat her meals instead of her highchair.

Where  are my babies? I don't know... all I seem to find these days are these three toddlers, who all weigh, play and act out the same.

 Side note: Yesterday morning at the breakfast table I asked Phoebe, "What do you want to do today?" and she answered. "I would like to want to know the scriptures are true."  I am not quite sure what to do with that, but unfortunately we were never able to find out because she spent most of the day in timeout. At the end of the day I had to ask, " Phoebe why can't you mind at all today?" to which she replied, "because minding makes me sad." Oh kids, how can they be so frustrating and make you want to lash out violently one second and then laugh the next.

Today I am trying a new approach... the spray bottle, it worked for our animals growing up & then again for Cami and her insensate need to play in the trash can so today maybe it will work for non minders and naughty boys who climb on tables and sit on computers alike. 

Grandma's Cookie Party Fun

Every year at Valentines Grandma Fergy has a cookie party for all the grandkids. There they decorate to their hearts content cookies and cupcakes with candies and sprinkles. This year was the craziest "fun" yet with the 6 older kids super excited to decorate treats and then the 5 babes just ready to eat and get messy.

Phoebe is a cautious child  when it comes to decorating. She doesn't add much to her cookies, in fact the only reason this heart got as much as it did is because I added to it. On another note Phoebe is my MOST frustrating picture taker EVER she doesn't understand looking at the camera for a picture, so you either get a far distant look to only heaven knows where or you get after much yelling to look at the camera and hold your cookie up, cookie face girl.UGHHHH!

By know it is a widely known fact Phoebe is a non eater.  She only tends eat when she is in a social situation, which is why she took ONE bite of her beloved cookie. The rest of the cookie came home with us and has been given many times as a dessert, but she only ever eats a bit of it at a time...the cookie finally got so hard we had to toss out the rest of it & yes 2 wks later thoes cupcakes of her still have not been eaten. 

Though the twins are normally big eaters they just didn't understand the whole cookie thing so they mainly sat there and held their coolie and waved around their spoon of frosting until their cousins eventually stole what was left of their trays.

Cousin Zach got really into the decorating, but he would only use the manly color green to adorn his creations.

He had made such a widespread disaster with his sprinkles that he felt he could only begin to clean up the mess by wetting his hands continually and licking them up, unfortunately this gave Phoebe an idea of what to do with pink sprinkles. 

After all was said and done the twins maintained their nearly perfectly clean staus compared to the rest of the babes.  I think they would have been more into it if they were both teething at the time.

Until all the yummy fun again next year including another baby in the mix,  this picture of brother will have to tide us over.