Snow for My Birthday!

Sure enough, the snow started to come on Wednesday. just in time for my birthday. The boys also had their early release and Alice had a dentist appointment. I only drove when I had to and normally the girls ride the bus home but to make sure they would get home in time to go to Alice's appointment, I picked them up that day. I wasn't sure if the bus would get slowed down by the snow. I actually do not remember how much snow we got on Wednesday, but I know it was enough to be a little slippery and slushy.

The first half of my birthday was actually pretty boring and uneventful. Curtis and the girls remembered it was my birthday and said something before going to work and school, but of course the boys forgot and didn't say anything. The most that happened during the day was picking up the boys from school early and then reading birthday wishes on Facebook. We hadn't even talked about my birthday and if/when we would celebrate it. Since it landed on a Wednesday, I just assumed we wouldn't do anything because the boys go to mutual. When I left to go get the girls, someone had brought over a round loaf of bread (I think it is artisan) and Garrett didn't know who it was that dropped it off and there was no card or anything. I didn't know who to thank for it, but it was yummy! I'm pretty sure it was someone from church but just not sure who.

I then took Alice to her dentist appointment to get a couple more fillings done. Once again, she was a star patient and the type every doctor wishes to have. We still have one more appointment to finish up getting her cavities filled.

Chilling out watching Bluey again.

After we got home, I was trying to decide which meal to do for dinner but then Curtis called and said he wanted to take me out for a bite to eat that night. He would skip mutual, but the boys could still go while the girls and we would go to dinner. I also got a surprise delivery of Crumbl Cookies from my in-laws again. They did that last year. I told the kids we would wait until after we went to dinner and after the boys got back from mutual before eating them. The funny thing is, my mother-in-law is also doing the biggest loser challenge with us, and we joked that she is trying to sabotage us so that she can win. I talked about freezing them for later but of course I did not. I wanted them and of course I ate more than I should have. The sabotage worked! lol 😂 Over the next couple of days I kept telling myself that I could because it's my birthday. 

It so happened that the girls' school was doing a fundraiser with a restaurant that night at a nicer burger place called Hops N Drops so that's where I decided we should go. Because it was our first visit to their restaurant, they gave us a free basket of potato chips with dip. They were so good that I asked for the chips as my side and so did Alice.

Charlotte is trying to eat healthier also, so she ordered fruit instead of fries or chips to go with her chicken strips. Curtis had a bunless burger and salad.

I ate a buffalo chicken wrap and chips. They were good! I had to stop myself after eating one of the halves. I had the 2nd half the next day for lunch. Alice had a corndog and chips.

Since the boys weren't there with us, we told them we would pick them up a burger and fries on the way home. This restaurant was a bit expensive, so we got their food at McDonald's. They didn't complain. They also got a soda with it. We then sang happy birthday without candles and ate some cookies. Curtis wasn't ready to celebrate officially since my gifts hadn't arrived yet from Amazon. The weather must be delaying them. So eventually we'll celebrate it officially but at least we had a little celebration already.

The girls also took time to make me some cute cards for my birthday. I love how they want to do things like this.

The card on the left is from Alice, the one on the right is from Charlotte. My favorite colors right now are yellow and purple, so they both made cards with those colors.

Here's the insides of the cards.

And the backs of the cards. Charlotte was so nice to add pictures of herself and Alice.

This is another one that Alice made.

This is the back of that one. She found this picture in the garbage at church a few weeks ago. I'm glad she saved it and used it!

Charlotte made this yellow snowflake.

Charlotte took my picture and wrote on it. I have never actually done that before, so it was cool that she figured it out on her own.

The first half of my birthday was not so good, but the 2nd half made up for it with all of the surprises and I'm glad I didn't have to cook on my birthday. I also had a phone call from one of my best friends, Monica Wilmot. We try to call each other every year on our birthdays. It was actually her call that boosted my spirits before Curtis had called. So, it still ended up being a good birthday. How am I 41 years old already?!

Friends, Food and Activity Days

One of our goals this year is to go out on more double dates with friends so that we can get to know them better. With that in mind, we made plans to go to dinner with Bronson and Wendy Brown from our ward. I specifically wanted to go to Applebee's this time because it was close to my birthday, and I wanted the Sizzlin Butter Pecan Blondie.  It's a blonde brownie that comes out on a hot plate with ice cream and pecans on top. It was so good! I was willing to share but Wendy and Curtis only took one bite each and Bronson declined, so I got the rest. Happy early birthday to me! I did really good on my eating that day so that I could have my dessert. 

Wendy and Bronson Brown. He is a counselor in our bishopric. They are also one of the of the people who gave us a boat ride last summer. Super nice people!

One nice thing about having a glass screen door on our front door is that even on super cold days, we can open our front door but leave the glass door closed when the sun is directly coming through the glass, and it will help warm our house up. The girls, Sage and Milo all hung out on the stairs after we got home from church last Sunday. 

Reading their new books that someone gave away at church.

Milo loves to sit on the stairs even when there's no sun.

Monday was my first official day as an activity day leader. There are now 3 leaders which is great because there are so many girls! We have 15 on the list and most of them came on Monday. A few of them brought friends, so we had our hands full, but it was fun. Since no one had school because of the holiday we made it an hour longer because they never seem to have time to finish everything they try to do. We started this activity out with the girls painting their own picture frames where they will hang little affirmation notes. On the back they attached an envelope with more notes so they can switch them out. While the frames were drying, we played a game. Curtis helped me make a "Get to Know You Bingo" game. They had to go around the room and ask the other girls if they did something that was written on the Bingo card and then write their name down for whoever has. After they got a Bingo and got at least 5 different names on the paper they won a treat. When the game was done, we all went to the kitchen to have a snack and then I grabbed one of the Bingo sheets and just went over each one on the paper to see who had done each thing by raise of hand. We had some extra time, so the girls went back to the gym to play some other games.

Here's Alice with her frame.

And Charlotte with her frame.

I'm not sure what we're going to do for our next activity but that will be a week from tomorrow. I'm sure Sister Gale has ideas already and I'll have to ask her. 

Tuesday the kids were back to school, and I saw in the forecast that we would be getting snow, possibly 5-8 inches by the weekend. The first snow was supposed to arrive on Wednesday, so I decided I better get a dinner menu made and go shopping. I was able to go after the boys got home and before it got dark. I went to Costco first and then to WinCo. It feels so much better when I have a dinner menu made and shopped for instead of winging it all of the time. And I feel better to have food ready for when the weather gets bad, and I don't want to drive in it.

Winter is Here!

The new year has started off good. Our church time switched to 9am. While we enjoyed sleeping in last year, we both actually like having 9am church. We feel like we have so much more time afterwards to do things. We just have to make sure we get to bed early enough the night before. I decided that since we had so much time, I was going to do some baking for neighbors and friends since I didn't get to do it before Christmas. I haven't done this in years, so I decided to do the mini loaves of bread as gifts this year. Everyone loved that idea, even our Indian neighbor friends. We are going to get together with them soon hopefully. They are actually from India and their names are Harish and Rijuta. They live right across the street from us in the newer neighborhood and are super nice people. I made a dozen loaves but gave some families two because one just wouldn't be enough! I also made some big loaves for our family. I am enjoying baking again!

Sunday was a nice day. The sun was shining, and we took Milo on a long walk and stopped at the school track for a bit. I got a couple of cute pictures of him.

Curtis doing some training with him.

Charlotte and Alice did lots of reading in the Book of Mormon on their own Sunday afternoon. They must have been motivated by their teachers at church. Charlotte also drew a picture that she was quite proud of.

I finally got a picture of Alice wearing her other new outfit and had her wear it to school on Monday.

My mom (Marsha) said that she has been reading a really good book by Gordon B. Hinckley called "Standing for Something". I have heard of it before but never read it. I love Gordon B. Hinckley and decided I wanted to read it also. Walmart.com had a used copy that I got for $4 and it has a hard cover. I have been wanting to read something but most of our books are still boxed up in the garage because we don't have a bookshelf for them yet. We left the old bookshelf in our house we sold because we wanted a different one. So now I get to read this!

Wednesday morning, we woke up to snow and messages on our phones that school was going to have a two-hour delayed start. I think that was a good idea. The roads were a lot better waiting two hours. However, the boys were disappointed because their early release got canceled. They get out at 10:30 on early release days (usually once or twice a month). Because of the delayed start, they changed it to a regular school day. I let the kids sleep longer since the girls have been fighting coughs. They got bundled up before school and played in the snow with Milo. Curtis was awesome and shoveled the driveway and sidewalks before he went to work. It would have just melted off later but I was glad he did it since he usually doesn't because he's usually in such a hurry to get to work. The snow was mostly gone by the end of the day.

It looked like we got about 1-2 inches.

One bonus of living by a school is they scrape and sand the road in front of our house.

Playing in the backyard.

Now in the front yard while waiting for the bus.

Milo loves playing in and eating the snow! He found a stick and loved that too.

I have been going up and down on my diet and weight loss. Sometimes I do a good job at watching what I'm eating and then sometimes I don't. There are times I just need to force myself to eat healthy and then I'm glad I did. The other day I made a nice salad and even boiled some eggs to go on top and had a side of celery and peanut butter. I had planned to eat some leftover soup also but was full after the salad, so I stopped! One of my problems in the past is not stopping when I know I'm already full or satisfied. We only have a couple of weeks left in our weight loss group challenge, so Curtis and I are trying really hard now to be good so that we can reach our goals. We're both so close now. 

The temperatures did a crazy drop of over 20 degrees in one night on Thursday night. It was really windy on Thursday and then Friday started the freezing temps where the high was around 18 degrees! Today it was 0 degrees when I first woke up and I've only seen it get up to 10 degrees. Brrrrrrrr!!!!! It is so cold I have to wear lots of layers when going outside, which isn't unless I have to. And I had to make sure the girls dressed warm enough for school. I warned the boys but it's up to them how warm they dress. They don't go outside much at school. Thankfully, the school doesn't let kids go out to play if it's 20 degrees or less.

I was so stressed out all week because we had been planning to go to Nampa to attend Blake and Ellie's double wedding reception and we weren't sure what the weather was going to do. I kept looking at the traffic cameras on I-84 and the forecast. Some days the roads would look fine and other days it wouldn't. After hearing of another storm coming through over the weekend, I was really nervous about traveling. Curtis wasn't nervous and thought we'd be fine. I told him I didn't think we were prepared for winter driving, even in his 4-wheel drive truck. To ease my mind, he finally went and bought chains Wednesday night. We were planning to leave Thursday after school and then come home Saturday morning because we had other commitments here at home. Well, after seeing the news reports on the weather channel about this next winter storm coming through over the weekend and seeing the low temps predicted, we finally decided to pull the plug on this trip. It was a very difficult decision to make and I am so sad that we missed both of the weddings and now the reception. That's a new challenge with living in Washington, being farther away from Idaho and Utah family. I was relieved that we made this decision though and feel vindicated by seeing how the roads looked Thursday night and Friday. Also, Nampa got dumped with snow as well. I'm so glad we did not take the risk! 

Today, Curtis decided it was time to try out our fireplace downstairs because even though the temp is comfortable upstairs, it was still feeling a bit cold downstairs. I was nervous because I wasn't sure what to expect, hoping the fireplace was still in good use. So far, so good and we love the smell of burning wood! I haven't had a fire burning in a fireplace at home since I was a kid. It's kind of fun! We saw smoke coming out of our neighbor's chimney as well. Curtis says we still need to get an insert for the one upstairs.

Curtis also has been working on caulking the bathroom tub and finished up today. We're so glad to have that finished finally! He's been wanting to work on little things here and there and I just haven't felt that urge again yet. Maybe I'll get the urge to paint or something in the next month.

I was also officially sustained on Sunday to be an activity day leader for the girls. I will be helping Sister Gale. The girls are so excited that I'm one of their leaders, especially since Alice gets to join this year. The year the girls turn 8 is when they start. Her birthday is not until December but she still turns 8 this year. She's so happy she doesn't have to wait. Our first activity will be on Monday. 

New Year's Weekend

I just wanted to start out with this super cute picture of Milo after we gave him a bath on Thursday. I had been wanting to give him a bath before Christmas, but there just wasn't time. I finally did it with the help of Charlotte. He stayed really calm for this bath as Charlotte kept feeding him treats while I wet him down and scrubbed him. After we got him out to dry him off, Charlotte wrapped one of the towels around him and he looked so cute!

We decided this year that we wanted to invite some friends over to play games and eat snacks on New Year's Eve. We started asking around and several already had plans but we did have two families over that we have been wanting to hang out with for a long time, the Benedicts and the McShanes. Of course everyone went to church first and they had a linger longer for the 2nd hour. We brought a bunch of chocolate dipped pretzels that I made the night before while watching Encanto with Curtis and the girls. There were enough left over that we had some for our New Years' party as well. Our friends came over around 6pm. Curtis made 3 flavors of chicken wings and jalapeno poppers. I made Quiche Triangles and a veggie tray. I also cut up a pineapple and peeled some mandarin oranges. The Benedicts brought cake and the McShanes brought their veggie tray leftover from the linger longer plus some spring rolls. We had a lot of good food to eat! 

I didn't get a lot of pictures because I was so busy having fun but we played a few games that we haven't played in years, starting with Pig Spoons. That game was temporarily interrupted by some of the group going to watch fireworks over at the Carousel. Curtis and I stayed here with some of the boys and watched from the window of our house. There was fog but we could still see them from here. Our girls rode over with the McShanes because their girls were going. We played SkyJo while we waited for the group to come back. The fireworks went off at 9:00pm for about 10 minutes. I guess it lines up with the East Coast ringing in the new year. After they got back, we finished the Spoons game and then moved to our front room to play Signs. We haven't played this in years but it's always so fun. Everyone picks their own sign and they have to pass it around to different people without the person in the middle seeing. If they catch you, then you switch places. 

Playing "Signs".

The McShanes have 5 kids like us. Three are teenage boys (Garrett and Jack are friends with the oldest one, Dallin). The Benedicts brought their 3 younger kids. They have an older son who is not at home right now. I think he's serving in the military overseas right now. Anyway, between those two families and ours, we had a house full. It got a bit crazy sometimes but it was fun. Even Charlotte and her friend played Signs with us. The last game we played was Catch Phrase and they played that one also. Alice and her friend were busy playing downstairs.

Playing "Catch Phrase".

We had no idea how long we were going to go but we ended up having so much fun playing the games that we made it to midnight. I last minute found a count down on my phone but I made the BIG mistake of not telling Alice that we were counting down. The two girls (Alice and Laila) came up after we had counted down and shouted "Happy New Year!" and Alice was not happy that she missed out. We did another count down but she was still disappointed. I will make sure I do not make that mistake again next year. Poor girl. Other than that, everyone had a blast!

The only time we saw Garrett was when we started eating. He disappeared to his room most of the night. It may have been too many people for him. I think we could have gotten him out of his room if we had invited a family who had teenage girls. Maybe next time 😉

It was two late nights in a row since Jack had gone to the New Year's Eve dance Saturday night with Morgan and Eli. We were the drivers. So, we all slept in New Year's Day and didn't do a whole lot. Curtis did do a few small things around the house like hanging our vanity lights in the bathroom downstairs. The box has been sitting there for a couple of months. Curtis went back to work on Tuesday.

The kids are back to school today and so it was nice to get back on a schedule. We have been doing the Biggest Loser weight loss challenge with family members, but I haven't been exercising yet. I saw Curtis using an exercising app last week and so I downloaded the same app to do exercising at home. I just started that this morning. I don't want to just lose weight. I want to get in shape and have more energy. So far, the exercises are pretty short. After I warmed myself up by jogging up and down the stairs 10 times and doing some other cardio, the workout on the phone took about 3 minutes and was mostly push-ups. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet, but we'll see how it goes and if they change it up every day or what. 

I also sat down to read my scriptures this morning and look at the Come Follow Me book. We did not do very good with that as a family last year nor did I do very good personally. I have a goal to do better this year. I have been listening to the Book of Mormon this past year on my phone sometimes and only have a few chapters left to finish but I found I have a more difficult time paying attention and focusing, so I plan to read my paper scriptures this year, unless I'm out of town, then I'll use my phone.  Anyway, my main goals for this year are to get to my weight loss goal, I have 7 lbs to go. Then to get in shape and read my scriptures every day and do better at Come Follow Me Lessons with the kids. Happy New Year!!