A Valentine President's Weekend

February 13: 

 Valentine's Day being on a weekend this year made it perfect for taking a romantic Saturday night to celebrate.   A dinner and movie.   Or a nighttime walk on the town.   Or a show downtown.   

Alas, we did none of those things! 

  First off, Glen was out of town on a business trip, which made anything resembling romantic downright impossible.  However, even if he had been home,  we would have had no time to wist ourselves away on any outings, yet alone a romantic one.  Even the evening got sucked up, because it was our ward's turn to host the Valentine's stake youth dance.   So we ran all day and I ended the night with these lovely ladies as chaperons/food preparers!  All night long we kept about 300-youth fed and happy by cooking up frozen snack foods, decorating cookies, and refilling the water and food trays,  etc.  By the end I was completely exhausted and had a newfound appreciation for waitresses, nurses, and others that spend hours on their feet helping others.   

It was all worth it, though,  for these sweethearts and the rest of the 295 or so teenagers there that night. 

February 14: 

We got to celebrate a modified version of  Valentine's Day (on Valentine's Day) by Glen coming home from a week long trip to India!  He brought us these Viennese chocolates which sent us all into peals of laughter.     

February 15: 

We woke up on President's Day to a few inches of snow and a surprise visit from the cousins!  We were all very much still in our pajamas, but loved the spontaneous chance to talk and play together !  

 

We also had to laugh at their "Wiener chocolate" gift to go with our Viennese chocolate!  

 We had an absolutely lovely (and by lovely, I mean lazy) day "snowed in" together and all in all it was a good Valentine President's weekend!   

I Spy...

February 12: 

I spy four lies and a truth...

My sister, Kristina,  is pregnant. 

My brother, Nate, is buying a house. 

My mom is retiring. 

 I love dieting. 

My tire is flat.  

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Puppy Love

February 11:   

If you were to randomly take a look at my phone and scroll through the camera roll, you'd almost certainly come across a spate of pictures that looks about like this:  

It's a certain little 10-year-old in the house that really, really loves our sweet pug/beagle mix, Rocky!

 He barks too much, gets into the trash, chews holes in our socks, and tries to steal the people food, but he's also gentle, snuggly, and very patient with our bustling houseful.   We've had him for more than six years now and the kids still love him as much today as the day we got him.   The kids love when it's their turn for him to sleep in their bed he gets to sleep in and at this point  I only have to bug them occasionally about taking care of his daily needs.  

I am totally not a pet person, but he's definitely grown on me over the years and I am to the point where I would even consider getting another dog someday in the future.   The kids have stuck true to their word that I would never clean up his messes, although I do have to remind of them of that promise sometimes.    I still mostly keep my distance from him, but I don't mind a good Rocky snuggle if we're sitting down to watch a movie or something.  

Here are some interesting facts about Rocky:  

1.  He had just been dropped off  at the pound, when a friend called to tell us about him

2. We adopted him when he was about 1 year old and we were his third owners.

3. His original name was Oliver

4. Spence and Cami chose the name, Rocky

5. He's about seven years old, which in dog years makes him the oldest member of our household. 

6.  I think his crazy loud door greetings are a strong deterrent from friends coming in our house all the way when they drop by unexpectedly. 

If you live close by and ever want to come by and get your fill of puppy love without actually owning one yourself, give me a call!   We love to share! 

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LATE ADDITION (added Friday morning 2/12/16): 

These are the cute little Valentines that Ellie helped me design this morning.   They fit so well with the blogpost, I figured this was as good a place as any to add it in.  :) 

A Golden Oldie

February 10: 

What does it say about me that when someone sends me a text saying that they just went to Westminster Abbey and the Tower of Big Ben...

that this song released before I was even born instantly starts running through my head?
   

Of course I then couldn't help myself from asking them if they'd also seen the "rosy red cheeks of the little children." 

Weirdly, they thought my question a little strange. 

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The Legend of the Qingaio

  

February 9:  

Have you ever heard of the legend of Qingaio bird?  

No?   

Well, let me tell you a little about it.  

This elusive bird lives only deep in the Tian Shan Mountains of Kyrgyzstan.    It looks very similar to the American roadrunner, except for its brightly colored plumage, excessively large size,  and razor sharp talons.   The legend says that when the Qingaio is captured, the captor will be visited by an invisible llama bearing 12 bags of gold and a set of steak knives as a reward.   

Sounds crazy, no? 

Well, my sister swears she saw one on her walk the other day, perhaps on its legendary round-the-world migratory route from the North side of the Tian Shan mountains to the South side.  

My mom says it was just a roadrunner.   

But then my brother sent us this photograph that he captured while traveling in Europe last year and we knew without a doubt that the legend is true. 

An actual picture of the Qingaio bird

  

Please let me know if you see it, because I could really use some new steak knives! 

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NOTE:   I am merely sharing the story of the Legend of the Qingaio and will not be held responsible for any injuries that may occur while trying to capture this beautiful, but elusive bird.  Additionally, it has been made known to me that the invisible llama has the right to make changes and/or substitutions to the prizes at any time.  Also, this story may or may not have been entirely contrived from the contents of a recent group text message amongst my siblings.

I'm Sorry.

February 8:  

While we were cleaning up from dinner tonight, Spencer, Adam, Emma, and I were having an animated conversation about a variety of topics from the Super Bowl to religion to politics.    

We were working and chattering along when in the middle of the conversation, we were surprised when suddenly my phone spoke loudly from my pocket saying, "I'm sorry." 

I looked down to see why my phone was randomly apologizing to me and realized that I had accidentally summoned Siri while I was doing dishes and she was madly trying to interpret our conversation.    

Here's the screenshot:  

1.) I swear our conversation was way more coherent than that. 

2.) But since that was all my phone could hear from the confines of the pocket of my fleece vest, I can totally understand  the confusion.   

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Dark and Hairy

February 7:  It's a rare day that I spend more than 5 minutes on my hair care routine, I go to a salon once or twice a year at most, and I've kept my hair long most of my life.   

In other words,  I am extremely low maintenance in the hair department, which is why I've been dyeing my hair lighter and lighter over the last few years.    My hair is almost exclusively gray now (thank you, Spencer) and lighter hair means that my roots won't show as much.   

Today, I decided to dye my hair before church and came across a box of my old darker color dye.   I waffled for a bit, but in a fit of nostalgia for my old more youthful brunette complexion I decided to go for the change.   

And I'm rather loving the result!    

And in other hair news....Glen is growing a beard.    

He's got a small part in a play in March and was asked to grow a beard.   He feels a little out of his element growing it and gets a little defensive if anyone says anything even remotely resembling judgmental about it, but I'm coming around on it and rather like it.  

After church we rushed over to a friend's house and went to cheer on Glen's hometown Denver Broncos!    It was a great night with fun friends and delicious food (which I totally cheated and ate freely)!    

...and the Broncos won, so there's always that excitement too! 

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Where's the Beef?

February 6:  

 Where's the beef?    

In Switzerland or Iceland?  

 In Italy or France?  

 No, silly!   Those are just the kids' (and my) geography projects for this week.  

The beef was right there on the counter and it caused a great deal of confusion at our house. 

Emma didn't know how to cook it and Ellie didn't even know what it was. 

  

Apparently my dislike of beef has made it a rare menu item in our dinners, but what do you do when you're avoiding grains and dairy (amongst other things) for an entire month?     

You search for ways to mix up the things you can eat in hopes that pure novelty will make it taste better.   

<Sigh>

It didn't work.  

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Almost 4-Years!

February 5:   

It's been 3 years and 8 months since Spencer was officially released from the hospital and declared in remission from Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).   Today Spence went in for his first LONG-TERM follow-up appointment at the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders.  It was a long appointment where in addition to the normal check-up procedures they do,  he also met with a social worker, had his heart function tested, and had a myriad of extra blood tests taken.   He was a little grumpy about having to fast for some of the testing, but I'll let you judge based on our faces at the end (shown in the picture below) what the result was...

Next appointment.... IN A WHOLE YEAR!!!

Walking and Robots

February 4:  

Yes, yes.   I may or may not desperately need to re-dye my roots, but hair ugliness and all, I love this picture of Emma and I on a walk this afternoon.  

We walked while Ellie and Adam created a voice controlled robot with the S family.   I love their robotics "class".  

How do you like the daily recaps and blogposts?  They're less time consuming than the blogging I was doing before, but certainly not as interesting or fun to write.     I do like the fact that it's capturing more of a glimpse of our day-to-day happenings and not just the bigger events, but I'm still not sure I've found my groove.

We will see.... 

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Rain, Rain, Rain

February 3:  Today it rained and rained and rained all day long.  


So I skipped my normal walk while the kids were at music lessons and read a book instead.

For some reason the heavy rain fascinated me while I was driving and I had Emma do a time lapse video on part of our drive from the kids' math classes.     

It looks like I was going about 1,000 mph, which oddly is about how quickly I feel life is going most of the time.

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Small Things

February 2:  It was a day of small things.   

 Normally it's a small, insignificant thing we never think of, but today started off with the happy news that the garbage finally got picked up!  Because of all the snow, it had been a full two weeks since the last pick-up and it was definitely starting to become a problem!  

Later another small thing became a reason to smile when I went to buy gas and realized that the price per gallon was the cheapest I'd seen in well over a decade! 

   

We also went to a science co-op, went to Oliverio at the Kennedy Center, the groundhog didn't see his shadow (which was a little weird since it was bright and sunny today),  and we made dinner for a friend, which brought us to the last and best small thing of the day!   

Sweet little Paisley Jane.  

She was tiny and perfect, and Ellie and I loved having the chance to snuggle her!   

It all reminded me of this scripture from the Book of Mormon, where an ancient prophet stated that:  

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Whole30

February 1:   Glen and I started a new cleansing diet called Whole30 today.   It's basically not eating any grains, sugars, legumes (beans), artificial flavors/colors, or dairy for an entire month.   I've been really hesitant starting a new eating plan that I fully acknowledge is not maintainable, but we needed something structured for us to break the cycle of unhealthy eating habits and this diet seemed as good as any to get us on a better path.   

Here's our first day of food:    

Lunch--Fried egg over sweet potatoes.   

Dinner--Turkey burger with homemade guacamole and sautéed mushrooms.  

More pictures and updates to come.  

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A Quick Little Jaunt in the Snow

January 31:  Growing up in Minnesota meant that snow and cold were pretty run of the mill for me and my siblings.  We liked to play in the snow as much as the next kids, but because we knew the snow wasn't going anywhere for several months, we knew we could play in it whenever we wanted.   My kids, however, know that snow never lasts very long around here, usually only a day or two, so they have to get their fill when they have the chance.   Of course the 2+ feet of snow we just got is lasting a little longer than the average snowfall, but it's melting fast and my kids are sensing that their opportunity for fun in the snow is quickly coming to an end.   

So when the temperature was 55º when we got home from church on Sunday, I had to laugh a little when Ellie just couldn't resist taking a quick sled run down the hill in her church clothes.  I had to suppress my motherly instinct to demand that she at least put on long pants, a jacket, and boots before endeavoring out into the snow, but, hey,  it was warm, she's 10,  and it did make for a sweet picture!    

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