Love Love Love

We love baby Parker! Born in time for Valentines Day!

Miriam Loves How to Cake It...she nailed another mega cake. 

Chocolate chip cookie theme this go around.  That "Cookie Butter Butter Cream" is to die for!!

February is always so crazy busy for us!!! Added to that, an awful LONG cold that ran through our family (Darin and I are still getting over it).  I store bought the boys valentines without hesitation and thanked our lucky stars that there were no valentines boxes to be made this year. 

The kiddos got out, set up, and organized our annual Secret Valentine exchange.  It wasn't high on my priority list but the kids...especially Byron were SO DANG EXCITED about it!
They made it happen. 

It was so cute again this year! Everyone was sneaky and so sweet.  Byron made such a cute scavenger hunt for me, of course he gave me chocolate because he knows me, but he also gave me service coupons AND a never ending Hug coupon. It was adorable, and I know he agonized over what to do for me.  I know full well that the kids dread pulling my name out of the hat, gifts for moms are hard.

Miriam got up extra early on Valentines Day to make pink heart pancakes for her brothers. She loves her brothers...and they love her.

Small all girls ski group this week. 

Love that ski group.

Byron Loves Chess Club enough to spend an entire Saturday at a tournament.

Although he was disappointed in the outcome (we were totally happy he won 2/5 games) he still enjoys chess.

13!!

Initially M's birthday was looking a bit melancholy. Her friend/locker partner's family left for Hawaii on her birthday,  as happy as M was for her friend she had anticipated having a decorated locker, and then spending time celebrating together.  Plus, she had to go to school,  I couldn't bring her a special lunch or take her out because of my new job, she has a cold, AND she had to go to piano that evening. 

M, braced herself for a disappointing day. That was probably why the day turned out so great.

All her friends came through! V showed up at our house at 6:30 am (waking up and running down by herself in the dark...a huge thing because V is not an early riser). She brought mint chocolate treats and did Miriam's hair as well as brought her birthday gift.

She had also decorated the inside of M's locker the afternoon before, and then other friends decorated the front.  I had sent her with a treat to share with all the girls she sits with at lunch. 

Side note: It was the 100th day of school that day. My class celebrated by making 100 trail mix...so cute and surprisingly good.
(everyone brought 100 of something trail mix compatible)

We didn't have time to go out to eat or make anything special because of piano so we had M's favorite Papa Murphy's pizza, ran to piano and then stopped by Kneader's for a birthday treat. 

Friday was too busy.... Ballroom, Karate, then M babysat for a neighbor the rest of the night....no room for a celebration there.

No ski group on Saturday either because the kids had a piano recital. Kind of a bummer for the birthday girl.  No skiing with friends, spend the morning worrying about a performance instead.

It turned out well, both the kids did a great job. 

Finally, the birthday girl got to pick out where to eat after the recital.

Chicken and waffles birthday dinner! This girl may be Southern at heart...

M thought that was all the celebrating we were going to do but......

her cute friend's who now attend different Jr. High's put together a surprise party!!

13 pretty fabulous things M has done this year....

1. She started tutoring a 1st grader in reading to pay for voice lessons.

2. She is killing this Jr. High thing....managing all her teachers expectations without my assistance.

3. Started a new ballroom team.

4. She gets up on her own to practice the piano in the morning.

5. Ski Group...even though she is always worried about the kids wanting to do courses that scare her.

6. Loves her point class, would love to take ballet more than once a week.
7. Because of that wish, she often puts on her toe shoes and practices on the hardwood floor in the entry in her free time.

8. Gave her first talk in church.

9. Earned and saved her own money ($150!) to pay for a zip line tour in Hawaii.

10. Also used her hard earned money to buy gifts for so many friends...she is pretty generous!
11. She is becoming a hiking pro.
12. She keeps developing her kind and thoughtful heart, taking new Beehives under her wing, being kind to kids at school.
13. She has mastered cream puffs, Italian meringue butter cream, can make mega naked cakes, and makes a hot breakfast for her brothers a lot of the time.

Blue and Gold

We were asked to make a cake that represented our family.  

We could have gone a couple different directions but there were lots of easy-looking Lego inspirations on Pinterest so we went that direction.  It fits -  we are Danish, we all love Legos, we find inspiration in the Lego story, we have great family memories of going to Legoland and it's on my bucket list to take my kids to Denmark, where we would of course go to Legoland.

It's lucky to have a pastry loving big sister in these cases.  If it were up to me it would have been a box cake with sprinkles on top, but with Miriam in charge I bought all the ingredients and let her and B take over.

Byron got his Bear Award! 

January

I can't believe people are already complaining about the snow...are all you complainers new here to Utah?  Snow = no inversion, and water here in the 2nd driest state.  We have been so lucky this year.

I am still loving it!  

Bring on the snow...pile it on until March, THEN we can collectively groan about it together. We can unpack our cuss words in April and shake our heads in disbelief when it snows on our tulips in May, but for now I say bring it on.

This was my classes bulletin board another one of the teachers put together for January.  So cute, and my boss added the Chinese lanterns to help decorate for the school Chinese New Year celebration.

Which was CRAZY BUSY! In the past the celebration has been just for the immersion kids, but the school is really trying to bridge the distance between immersion and English only.  We all became closer...as in wall to wall...body to body closer.  It was fun for Soren though, he got to be a part of the dragon dance and made an abacus. 

We ate Chinese food together. They ran out of food 3X so we were lucky.

Twin day at the Jr. High!

Miriam had another ski group day at Snowbasin, while she was gone I took the boys sledding.

Snow gear makes them look so little!! 

February begins tomorrow!

A Short Weekend

After our 4 day weekend last week, this regular ol' 2 day-er was just too short, too packed, and this Sunday has not been the day of rest and rejuvenation it should be.  It's only 3:08 pm, and Darin has taken the kiddos on an adventure so perhaps the evening will be better.  Maybe the confrontations I want to have with people but won't actually have will now stop swirling around in my head, maybe my headache will go away, maybe I will be able to let go of the things that pricked me today. Maybe. Actually, I am going to be optimistic and say probably.  Things are already looking up.  I am alone, I am going to turn on some music, clean up the kitchen, and make soup.  

Saturday was my turn to drive ski group. We woke up to fresh powder and snow coming down all day. 

The boys all had Klondike, and the other 3 girls decided they wanted to sleep in so it was a small group.  One of the other dads decided to grab a ride, and another neighborhood teenager hitched a ride back home so we were full by the time the day ended.

These girls braved the snowy conditions and were rewarded with perfect Utah powder but thats not all, a very nice man who shared our table, gave them his giant chocolate chip cookie.

We came home to find the boys out enjoying the cold stuff too!

Darin had shoveled twice during the day.

That evening Miriam had ballroom performance at the Winter Homeschooling Conference Ball at Weber State.  So, we attended our second holiday ball of the year.  Soren and I learned the 2 step during the teaching portion and then we enjoyed all the ballroom dances again.  No photos...not sure what my problem is but I forgot to take photos! 

We are going into a full the the brim week which includes a huge Lion King meeting, and 2 days of all-day training for me. Just going to take it one day at a time. 

The Long Weekend

Play hard, work hard, that was the motto this weekend.  

Saturday was Miriam's first ski group trip.  She was nervous; worried about keeping up, worried about the other kids wanting to go on runs she wasn't ready for.  We got a text from her later that day that said "I remember why I love skiing!" Nice when you do a bit of mom nudging and things go well...

While M was gone we used the boys "hard work" free bowling certificates at Boondocks.  A round of free bowling and then like 7 games on the air hockey table that was either broken or some kid had swiped their game card 7 times without knowing how to play.  It would have been a totally free fun day but we stopped by Dairy Queen to pick up a gift certificate for a friend's 70th birthday party, and we just couldn't walk out of there empty handed or empty stomached. 

We attended the birthday party, and then watched Tron.  Soren said it was "the worst ending ever!!" I have to agree, I don't like AI/human relationships, they are creepy. 

We got through our first official "Sunday Unplugged".  We have been wishy washy about Sundays and technology, but this was a very spirit of the law approach.  For instance, we can watch a movie, but we all need to agree on one, and watch it together.  I loved it. It's amazing how everyone is so much more enthusiastic about going for a walk, doing yoga, or playing a game when youtube and video games aren't an option. I read more on Sunday than I have in months! I want it to be a permanent thing but this isn't my first parenting rodeo...I know I can't be the big enforcer on this, it will have to be a decision together. Hopefully I can keep everyone on board.

Monday, we worked.  Homework, emails, cleaning, laundry, then the kids played with friends for the remainder of the day.  I felt happier working, knowing we had Tuesday to play.  

Tuesday was our first official "Year of Family Fun" outing.  For our family Christmas gift we bought the Salt Lake Connect Pass.  Since we knew we weren't doing a big vacation this year we decided to go on one or two family outings a month.  We loved our first stop....the Museum of Natural Curiosity.  The kids used some of their Christmas $ to try out the ropes course, a first for Soren.  The museum was a bit young for Miriam, but we are lucky that she has a fun-loving spirit.  She isn't "too cool" for fun and I appreciate that because neither am I...I still love a good rope swing in a tree fort.

Overwhelmed...

That's been a running theme throughout the week...being overwhelmed.

It's my own fault because I am a do-er more than a think-er so in the moment I feel pressure to go as quickly as possible from one task to another, when I should stop and make a plan. 

I have had a few irons in the fire simmering during the Christmas Break...they all heated up in the same week right after Christmas.  Extra meetings, and deadlines to the building pressure of getting Christmas down, going over the budget, and then those pesky details like....grocery shopping, dinners, lunches, getting exercise in. That last one right there is another issue.  When I don't exercise I become more anxious, which makes it harder to sleep at night, which makes it harder to wake up and get that exercise in.  The vicious cycle could go forever unless I put a stop to it.

After this weekend I feel better, more able to handle life.  I brain dumped everything I had going on. Darin and the kids stepped up to help take down Christmas, and the best part...church was cancelled so I had a FREE Sunday to get things crossed off my brain dump list. I am determined to get some yoga time in this week. I haven't officially thought of any New Years resolutions, or come up with a focus for the year but I have a vague idea of what I need to improve on.  Something having to do with intentional living.  Still mulling over a plan.

This weekend was Miriam's Ballroom Holiday Ball.
My mom and dad came all the way up from Price, and then had to rush back the next morning because of the forecasted freezing rain (which so far has been a bust...not that I am complaining!)

Miriam's group performed a polka and it was so fun! Afterwards we had some social dance instruction...Soren and I participated in that, and then a dance.  A formal dance with parents hanging out, and refreshments, and kids doing the Rumba or Fox Trot to contemporary music.  It was like nothing I have ever experienced before but my Mom said it was similar to what "Gold and Green Balls" use to be. It was fun to watch Miriam dance around with her friend Amber, just like Anne Shirley and Diana Berry.  M even got asked to dance by a boy, but she says it doesn't really count because he is her partner in class. Still fun for us to watch though.

The boys hung in there and were rewarded with Cutler's Cookies.

New Years

See that?!

No me either...thats my phone photo skills for ya.  I was trying to take a picture of a bald eagle we saw on our way in to Scofield.  

It was amazing, just trust me.

Photos of these hooligans were easier to capture.

So much snow play.

Mostly sledding, but some snowmobiling, and imaginary wolf game along with fort building.

Esme wowed us with her adventurous spirit.

She was freezing all weekend long but she tried everything!

Little Hazel was adorable, as always.

Mark and Esme introduced us to Korean Ramen and we are hooked. Now we need to make a trip to the Korean market!  

Darin and I snuck away for 2 very long snowshoe adventures.  It was a workout to get to the top but so much fun glissading straight down!

Snowshoeing day #2 we stole the last 2 Korean cream cakes to eat at the top of the mountain. 

Love being in nature, with my love. 

Christmas Eve Fondue Party!

Everyone loves this part of the weekend.  We dip and dip until we are sick of cheese and chocolate!

No wontons this year, none of us wanted to stand around frying anything.  Just goes to show how amazing my mom has been all these years...and how lazy we are!

We played rounds and rounds of Werewolf...a family favorite,  Forbidden Island, and Wits and Wagers (all the kids had to have a grown up partner for this one).  Tons of laughs, but the most hilarious game playing occurred among the adults when the the kids were asleep.  

Between Jared's fireworks, and the haul we had won from our ward auction we had a pretty fantastic areal display.  We decided we'd better shoot them off at the lake just to make sure they didn't hit a cabin.  We work hard for our fun....17 people hauled down to the lake on snowmobiles, in below freezing temps and 11:30 pm!  

Worth it.

So fun to be directly underneath fireworks.....and they were not your ordinary fireworks! We got some bonus exciting moments when one bundle fell over shooting fireballs sideways, then when I biffed it face first in the snow after lighting the finale. Oh it's a good thing I know how to laugh at myself.

We ignored our freezing toes and fingers to light some sparklers before hauling everyone back up the hill to the cabin.

Mark and Esme stayed with us the night before flying home.  So fun to have them all to ourselves for one evening.  We gave them a Twig's send off.

Tuesday hit hard and fast.  The boys had Lion King practice at 7:30 am so they didn't really have time to be sad but, I feel like I am living in a state of chaos! So hoping for a snow day tomorrow!!