Dinner Guests

For my brothers' birthdays this year, I decided to have them over for dinner for my present to them. After all, I know the way to their hearts is through food, so why bother with T-shirts, books or other things that will just sit on a shelf? It also makes for good memories with them. After we ate, Sammy had fun playing with the girls and my girls talked for days about how funny Sam is.

The big kids played Wii and Guitar Hero.

Nat, Ang and Sam played a game where I was the "scary lady" and every time I appeared in the hallway, they ran for their lives. Apparently, this was a super fun game because they did it about a hundred times (or so it seemed to me). I guess I make a pretty darn good "scary lady".

Spring Snow!

Doesn't it look like Twilight LOVES romping around in the snow? (O:

Right when I was getting the itch to pack away all our snow gear and really starting to get spring fever, we got a big snow storm. I should know better, it was still February and we are in Utah for heaven's sake. (o: The kids were thrilled to have another day to perfect their snowman building skills and played all afternoon in the snow.





No carrots in the fridge - so our snowmen had "fluffy" celery noses.

A Day Trip Down Memory Lane

President's Day - we decided to use the day off to go on a fun day trip to the beginnings of our little family so many years ago. We headed down to Provo to relive our college days.

I can't believe this place is still standing. It was kinda dumpy back when we lived here! (o: Our humble beginnings at "The Manor House". Such a fancy sounding name for this cinder block structure. We had good times here though in our cute, little studio apartment. And the not so good times are funny to us now. Like the night after our neighbors moved and we smelled cigarette smoke coming from next door in the vacant apartment. We called the police and they found a homeless man in the closet right on the other side of the wall from our bed. Yikes! Good Times! (o: I prefer to recall the fun times trying to figure out how to cook dinners, keeping our little house, having my little sis visit for sleepovers, staying up all night playing King's Quest VII The Princeless Bride when we bought our very first computer and then Heroes of Might and Magic. It was good therapy after long nights studying!

One of my old places of employment. I didn't get a picture of Franklin Elementary where I worked most of my years down at BYU. My last year, before we moved to Oregon, I worked here for the Utah County Visitor's Center. I was so blessed to have such great jobs while we were going to school. I worked with great people and got to go visit so many fun places (while getting paid) so I could recommend places for people to visit. I have great memories of going with co-workers Kristy and April to various museums, the preview of Thanksgiving Point's gardens, hotel tours and even skiing at Sundance! I also got to take pictures for the Utah County Visitor's Guide. So I can say I've been published. (O:

We took the girls to Los Hermanos - one of our favorite restaurants to go to for special dates back in our old college days. It's in a new location now, but has the same feel.

After lunch we headed to the Bean Life Science Museum on BYU campus. Natalie did not like the 8 foot tall scary bear as you can see by the look on her face.

But this butterfly exhibit was pretty amazing to look at!





Sarah enjoyed watching a real live paleontologist at the museum of Paleontology.

... until she ran into this guy.

We finished off the day at Cabella's and let the girls try their hand at the fun shooting gallery. What a fun day!!

Science!

I was so excited to find out our new elementary school has a Science Club put on by the PTO. Of course, I jumped right in to help and have my girls attend. When it was my week to help, I don't think I realized just what I got myself into! There are a LOT of kids that go to science club. I think I had about 15 kids per group and we rotated about 4 times. I was kind of ambitious and did a fun "Mystery Powders" lab for the kids. We had about 8 different powders including things like Alka Seltzer, laundry detergent, sugar, etc. The kids had to first put a few drops of vinegar in each of their samples and note whether it bubbled or not. Then in a second set of samples, they dropped in some purple cabbage indicator (super easy to make - just boil purple cabbage and save the water - it really cool stuff to use as a pH indicator). The Arm and Hammer laundry detergent was my favorite. It turned bright green. I know, I am kind of a nerd. I love science! The kids then had to use my little solutions page to figure out which powder was which using these two tests. I don't think most of the kids cared to figure this out, they just had fun watching things turn colors and bubble.

Later that night, we used up the rest of my materials from science club and I let the girls mix everything together. They love watching things "explode". (o:

Kindness Art

I love my girls adorable artwork. This was Angela's cute picture at one of our Sunday Stations where the girls had to draw a picture of them helping someone. Pretty darn good for a five year old, I think. But I am a little biased. (O:

Antiques (o:

Okay, these really aren't antiques, yet, but they could probably make some pretty good money on EBay if there was any desire for Bert* to sell his beloved micro machines. I must admit, the night he brought these home from his parents' house, we all had a lot of fun with them! Our whole table became a mini city with these cute little cars. Too bad they don't make these anymore.

How cute is this? My favorites were the little cars that had a tiny window on top and if you looked through it and held it to the light you could see a little "scene" of what was inside the car. What a cool idea!