He's 17!

Our boy turned 17 on Thursday. Wowza!

For the first time ever, he got a snow day for his birthday. He was stoked! Since he wasn't at seminary to get his birthday breakfast from sis Krugman, I made him his choice of chocolate chip pancakes. And just like I did when they were wee ones, I made it in his initial. I'll be doing that till I leave this green earth, rest assured. (;

It snowed steadily all morning and we got a few inches of flaky prettiness. No complaints here!

Since Matt left for work early and Chris went to shovel someone else's driveway, I thought I'd have to shovel, but these two took care of it for me. Seriously, they walked all over it and made it all slushy and it was perfect by the time we left. Add to that an awesome neighbor with a snow machine thingy and I was in luck!

The snow day worked out swimmingly because we took advantage of okadas lunch prices for our traditional birthday hibachi. 

We.love.it. 

Of course, brenna joined us. (:

The girls use chopsticks. Sort of. 

Frankie and Delaney only wigged once when our fire flamed high, and D once when our companions across from us did. That's pretty good for us!

We killed it in the shrimp catching. Chris, brenna, Addie, Matt and I caught at least one shrimp and Frankie was close. Laney the wet blanket declined the privilege of trying. 

LOVE Frankie's face there! 

So ready!

Happy birthday, baby boy!!!

We got him a new phone. Easy present. 

Brennas grandparents are so sweet and gave him a gas card. Perfect gift for little cheapie who tries to make his gas last each week till cheap gas Thursday at Shell. (;

I am happy to report that Frankie has finally been forgiven for magics untimely demise. (:

We had "better than shopping cake" and gave bubba his gifts. 

I let the girls pick $1 gifts for him since he'd gotten his big gift of a phone. 

He was so sweet and acted totally stoked with each little gift. 

The girls had wrapped them themselves, so they loved it. I'm glad when they enjoy giving to others. 

C&b enjoyed some grey's anatomy and then he took her home. It was a fun day and I'm pretty sure he had a happy day. 2/6 of my birthday crunch down!

Week in review

After Gymnatsics on Tuesday the girls followed Joseph's lead and climbed some snow banks. 

We've still got lots of these around town. Wednesday is supposed to be 60 degrees though, so maybe not for long. 

We did some COH and birthday shopping. Frankie looked like such a big girl pushing the little Michaels cart. (:

She's been having "bad dweams" lately and come into our room twice. One night she slept between mom and dad. She was actually very good and not very wiggly, so that was nice. The next night we made her a bed on the floor. (:

I picked up the girls coats from the dry cleaner downtown L-town yesterday. It had started snowing and this gorgeous little church's bells were chiming and it was so idyllic. I love where we live. (: (ps - dumb power lines)

This week has been busy, busy getting ready for my trip, planning COH stuff, activity days, dealing with yet ANOTHER case of credit card fraud, a birthday, and the normal day to day. 

Today Frankie had her second to last soccer game. She was excited when I told her she only had one more game. Needless to say, we won't be playing soccer again any time soon. 

Our little goalie stands firm. 

Now I sit at the airport heading to Las Vegas to celebrate henna's 40th birthday. 5 days alone with one of my favorites, I am so excited. The only dark cloud is this dark cloud. Since when does it rain all week in Vegas? Whatever, I lived in Seattle for 3 years and it's a warm rain, I can still dig it. 

Found

On my phone. I don't know how he does it, but he found my phone and snapped pics several times. 

We got to have Joseph stay with us monday-Wednesday. 

It was so fun, we seriously had a blast. 

We watched some of our auto-tune favs, including Sweet Brown, momma I love you, and, of course, run and tell that. 

Love this crazy boy. And of course this crazy girl. 

ho hum

yesterday was a day'o'friends. ellie came to spend the day. emma came for a little while, and then alecia and sweet baby b stayed for a little visit. joseph came to stay for a few days while the gang picks the sister up from her mission (exciting!), and jodie came to vt.

it was a good and productive day because we finally, after months of trying to figure out a way to hopefully make money, then to hopefully not have to spend money, got rid of our boat. boat ownership has been a frustratingly painful experience and one that we're glad to put behind us. live and learn, ya'll. live and learn.

because matt was handling the boat, i was handling the gymnastics. we made a new gym buddy to be our new carpool buddy and it was a fun gym day. :) good day all around! i think we've got a coh program, and we finalized the coh invites. we've got coh on the brain and it's coming together!

today we had gymnastics. it was the last class (but not really because next week we will make up last week and that will be the real *last* class) so we got to play on both sides of the gym. always a fav! the girls played on the giant snow piles that are still all around town.

monkey see, monkey do.

 

we did a poor mans chicfila, which entails eating lunch before you get there and then splitting a large fry. there was an early release so franks didn't have school and we have very few local options for places to play. wish there were more options!

tonight i had a good mommy moment. those can seem few and far between sometimes, (i'm sure i'm just being hard on myself... probably) so i'm recording it. matt's been taking a few days a week to swim after work since he has a navy pt test coming up, which means he's not home till around 6:30. so. we ate dinner (bubba made it!) and of course lanes and frank were not done eating, but addie needed piano help because apparently she's forgotten which hand plays what and what any of the keys are. just a little frustrating. anyhow, while i was helping addie, (frustratingly) f&l decided to throw rice all over the dining room. awesome.

i put the little girls in time out, gave addie something easy to play to warm up, and went downstairs for some cleansing breaths. aaaaand, it worked. i was able to come back to addie and help her remember finger position and middle c, and then calmly talk to the girls about why we don't throw food and have them clean up. hooray for small victories!

we finished our 5th little house book (by the shores of silver lake) and are excited to start book 6. after i finished reading, matt took over the bedtime fun, and i was able to finish my g-work. chris and joseph went to the combined activity which was "ok" and "lame," respectively. then they told me all about it for the next 15 minutes, so i think that's a success. we're gearing up for the boys 17th and my fun trip this weekend. good days. :)

a very birthday weekend

our saturday started off with a brisk soccer game. each game, the refs ask kids to stand in the 3 doorways of the gym to block the doorway so the balls don't get past. this saturday was the first time they'd asked addie to do it, and she was so excited to be a big girl helper!

the games are only 20 minutes, but there she is in the far right door back there, so far away from mama. this game was more of the same for our little soccer player. she sat out until she was put in as goalie, and then she played part of the game. we are happy she keeps trying!

after the game we headed to bj's to try out our super new bj's membership. so far, so fun.

saturday afternoon brought with it an ice storm. we braved the ice though, because one of our favorite 5-year-olds had a birthday party in waldorf. curtis had his party at pump it up and it was so fun! so fun that i didn't think to take any pictures till we were lining up to eat birthday brownies. the grown ups played and jumped and raced as much as the kids did. it was great!

and so was the celebration!

yummmmm!

 

the 6-year-old (learning to smile for pictures) agrees!

they had an inflatable thrown for curtis to sit on while he opened his presents. after he finished with the thrown, laney and kale had to try it out.

yup, it's good.

after the party this whole crew invaded the cafe rio. it was delicious, but i couldn't help feeling bad for the workers. that's a whole lot of kids to clean up after, and they were trying to close early because of the bad weather. oh well, i've been there and cleaned up after my fair share of kids, it happens. we drove home slow and easy and it was a great and fun day. :)

sunday morning was icy too, but we got to church safely and it was nice to be with my little class again. we had stake conference, an early church dismissal because of a gas smell, and then two sick weeks, so i haven't seen my class in a long time.

after church we went over to robin's house for roni's party. all these babies that we've known since birth are all turning 5 and it's so fun! they had some celebrities there! they rented these two from a superheros group that volunteers and performs for the fee of a donation to a childrens hospital. i love that! our elsa was only 13 too, i love that too. and olaf was her dad. :)

laney was noooot feeling the olaf. she's mad dogging him here. (and i love christian's face!)

the girls had fun playing games and visiting.

frankie wasn't feeling the olaf either.

even when he asked her for a warm hug.

addie took him up on the invitation though!

so then frankie decided it was okay.
as soon as she hugged him she came to me and said "he's not real!" not sure what gave it away, but nothing gets past frankie. ;)

laney was so funny. she's just (generally) friendly and talkative. she loved sammy (the dog) and sat talking to robin for a very long time. "do you have a mommy dog too? i don't have a mommy dog or a baby dog. but i have a guinea pig! do you have a guinea pig? i do, and his name is pipsqueak! we had another one, but he died. his name was magic. you have brown eyes, just like me! and my mommy has blue eyes. but you and me have brown eyes. i like your bracelet. i don't have a bracelet..." and on, and on, and on. girlfriend has the gift of gab!

silly 6-year-olds think it's funny to pin olaf's nose as far away from the real nose as she can. :)

and then frankie pinned it right on his nose. i'm thinking they could see. :)

 group pictures!
 
and silly faces! we used to see robin every day, and now we haven't seen her for months, so it was nice to catch up with her.
 
after the party we came home and christian ironed his scout shirt, searched for a neckerchief, didn't find one, sent out some texts, picked one up from our awesome neighbors, and we took some eagle coh invitation pics. we'll be sending these out soon, so this is the only sneak peek i'll post for now.

matt bathed the girls and made dinner! early in our marriage we decided daddy would make sunday dinner. and then... it just never really happened. not because of matt, or me, it just never materialized. i am looking forward to that finally happening! after we got the girls to bed we sat on the couch and ate a whole box of girl scout cookies (we shared with chris) and watched the beginning of the oscars (which matt and chris both bet me are not the same thing as the academy awards. silly boys!) it was a perfect night!

and on my way up to bed i always check the girls and snap them when they are in weird positions. i loooove sleeping babies. :)