Valentine's Party

This year we had two of our favorite families over for dinner and games. It was a great quiet night of fun. Ethan really looks forward to the Valentine's Party each year and I am just always happy if he has a great time.

They played a game where you had to move as many conversation hearts from one bowl to the other in 20 seconds using only a straw. Ethan got 14 on his first try.

GO CARLIE GO CARLIE

I love Ethan! He has the greatest enthusiasm!

Now it is serious, the dads are getting involved in the game.

Cute Emily and Ethan

LOVE Pizza

What They Wore - Valentine's Addition

The school Valentine's Day Party was today and Ethan & Ollie looked so darn cute.

Have a great Valentine's Weekend!

Ethan's Valentine's Castle

At the children's school all 2nd graders have a prince/princess unit and it ends around Valentine's Day. The big project is to make and name a castle that they use to get and give valentines. We got the paper about the assignment about a month in advance, and Ethan asked if he could make his a gingerbread castle. I wasn't sure what to say, so I told him I would ask Jenn (who has made them before) if she thought it was realistic. She of course was confident we could do it so I told him yes! I have to be honest and say I regretted saying yes to this project at least 100 times during the process, but it was worth every second in the end.

It was a ton of work, but turned out awesome! He was so proud of all his hard work, and that he had the biggest, coolest castle of all!

Spray Painting is grey was a last minute decision by the castle creator.

Off to School in the Snow

I seriously love those sweet babies!

Super Bowl XVL

It has been super bowl mania here. To say people here LOVE the Steelers would be the understatement of the century. I spent an entire day last week driving around to 6 different stores before I found jerseys for the children, because they really wanted them to wear to school on Friday.

Well unfortunately the Steelers lost to the Packers tonight, but at least we had fun with the Steiny's. I really wish we would have gotten a family picture!

Headed to Ohio

We recently got our Temple switched from the D.C. Temple to the Columbus, OH Temple. The drive to D.C. is about 4 1/2 hours, and Columbus is about 3 1/2 hours. The Youth had their assignment Saturday morning at 9:30 so we decided to just make a weekend of it. We left right after the kids got home from school. I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wanted but it was a great weekend. Right when we got to the Hotel the kids got their swimsuits on and were headed to the pool. The water was FREEZING but that didn't stop us from having fun.

I really wanted to get some pictures of the kids out front of the Temple, but it was so cold outside and snowing very hard. So hopefully I will get some next time.

I did get this picture of Luke waiting to leave. He was ready to go a good 20 minutes before I was. I think he was getting a little annoyed me me!

Snow

It has snowed almost everyday since the middle of December, and I love it! It is so beautiful and makes all the trees surrounding the house look amazing. This is our first real winter here and I sure hope the rest are just like this. I think my favorite thing has to be all the delayed starts the kids have from school. I officially think that school should always start at 11:00 am. Also, the city is so good about getting it off the roads so you almost never have to drive in it. We even have plows down our side street. We do have to shovel the driveway and sidewalks everyday sometimes twice, but that is a small price to pay.

All this snow is just pure bliss!