Friday night we headed to the Fort Zumwalt West Varsity girls basketball game. It was their last home game before districts.  Some of JJ's seminary students play on the team and we have been wanting to go see them play.  Another one of his students was going to be dressed like the jaguar mascot, she was so excited!  Lucy enjoyed watching the girls play.  We let each of the kids buy a thing of candy from the concession stand which was the highlight of the night for the boys.  The game was so close the whole time.  They lost the game in the last few seconds by 2 points. 

 Saturday Lucy had a basketball game. She was excited JJ would be able to make it.  It was so sweet, the girls we went to watch the night before came to watch Lucy's game along with their mom.  Lucy was really touched!  We planned a movie night that evening and Garrett was so excited.  A movie night is his favorite thing.  I picked up pizza for dinner along with ice cream and Oreo's for a treat.  Garrett worked hard getting the basement all set up for movie night, without even asking him he cleaned up all the toys.  He set up a pretend movie theater and even had JJ help him make movie tickets.  He had a basket of blankets you could check out along with a movie buddy which was a stuffed animal.  He was so cute and excited about it.  We watched "A Bugs Life" together and had a fun evening relaxing. We love movie nights and we should do them more often.  

 

New Begninnings

This past week for mutual we had our New Beginning's activity.  We have a lot of girls who will be turning 12 this year and it was fun to get to know them better and welcome them into Young Women's.  Our theme for the night was paint the world.  We had girls display and talk about values they have completed or are working on currently.  It is neat to hear the different things the girls do for their projects.  To go along with our theme we had the girls each paint with a value color onto a canvas.  The idea was we are all different and unique but when we come together we create something beautiful, like the painting.  There are several brush strokes in a painting and together it creates something beautiful.  I was in charge of the food along with the personal progress specialist.  We had fun coming up with fun colorful food.  We decided to keep it simple and buy cupcakes with colorful frosting, make rice krispie treats with fruity pebbles and so simple fruit skewers.  We shopped together and then I offered to put everything together.  It didn't take long to make everything and everyone enjoyed it.  Nolan ended up suddenly getting sick that morning and it made for a hectic day for me but everything came together and worked out.

 

 

 

Daddy Daughter Dance

Saturday night our stake had a daddy/daughter dance.  Lucy was so excited to go and looked forward to it for days.  We looked on Pinterest together for a fun new hairstyle.  She picked out a cute one that was suppose to look like a heart.  I tried my best but her hair is fine and slippery and it kinda looked liked a heart.  She loved it and I could tell she was happy with how she looked.  As much as she loves her comfort I could tell she enjoyed getting dressed up.  She picked out pretty jewelry to wear and I let her wear some of my perfume.  They had a fun time together at the dance.  They had some fun treats for them to snack on and Lucy said her favorite was the chocolate fountain.  After the dance they went with the McCain's to Fazolis, it has kind of become a tradition maybe.  I am glad they had a fun time together.  I had fun with the boys at home.  We popped popcorn and had a movie night watching "A Bee Movie".  It was nice and relaxing.  

Blue and Gold Banquet

 Friday evening Garrett had his blue and gold banquet for cub scouts.  We had so many things fall on that evening but we knew we needed to be there with Garrett to support him.  He was really looking forward to going.  Lucy also had a birthday party that evening.  We dropped her off just before heading to Garrett's banquet, which worked out really well.  The banquet was really nice and they had the Pasta House do the food, it was yummy.  The cake was so cute and Garrett liked the little fish swimming in the water. 

 

They had a small program and called up each boy to recognize the awards they had received so far. 

 Here is Garrett receiving his latest belt loop, I laugh at this picture because Nolan wanted to come be on stage with Garrett so bad.  Nolan like always was a handful but it went ok, there were lots of other families with small children there. 

 Garrett was excited to be recognized and has had some great accomplishments and has had fun learning.

 Garrett is a wolf, there are two dens.  He likes that there are a lot of friends from school in his group.

After the program they had a magician come do a magic show.  He was really entertaining!  JJ left with Nolan to pick Lucy up from her party but came back  for the end of the magician's show.  Garrett liked that the magician showed them how to do a few magic tricks.  He gave them the things they needed to do them on their own for their friends.  Garrett had a fun evening and we are happy we could be there for him.  He is such a happy kid and we love him lots! 

Nolan Bike Riding

We are loving this warm weather we have been having.  It is great to be able to get outside and play.  We got Nolan a new bike helmet and he has been riding his bike more.  His favorite is the little pedal bike we got for Christmas.  The kids all love to be outside playing and after school want to hurry to go play with their friends.  There are some girls at the end of the street Lucy likes to play with.  Garrett has a friend down on that end of the street too, they sit together on the bus.  Its nice to let them use up energy and get some exercise.  I have a feeling this spring like weather isn't here to stay but we sure are enjoying it while we can.

Valentines Day

Valentines was a pretty typical Tuesday for us.  Since JJ and I had already gone out we tried to make the holiday fun for the kids.  Lucy had her school party on Monday and Garrett had his on Tuesday.  They both looked forward to them and had a lot of fun.  They love to look at all the fun valentines they get from their friends.  JJ came home for lunch and brought me some flowers and some perfume.  We exchanged cards but didn't do anything big for each other.  I always enjoy having pretty flowers in the kitchen.  I had put together some Valentines for the kids and Nolan helped me make some homemade cards for each kid.  We picked up some balloons from the dollar store after the gym and Nolan was so excited about them.  While Nolan was napping I put together a scavenger hunt for them to do all together when Lucy and Garrett got home from school. They were excited to do the scavenger hunt together.  I had to keep reminding Garrett to wait and stay by us.  Nolan loved participating and loved the excitement of everything.  At the end of the scavenger hunt they found their balloons and Valentines.  Their bags were filled with candy and their own small box of chocolates.  Nothing fancy but they love it each year and its fun to do for them.  Even as they get older they still think its so fun.  

For dinner we made our traditional heart shaped pizzas.  They each made their own little one and we made one big one.  Its funny how things become traditions and then each year the kids look forward to simple things like pizza.  We hurried and ate our pizza dinner together and headed off to piano.  After piano JJ and I enjoyed sitting down and watching our show on TV together.  It was a nice relaxing holiday and I am glad we were able to help make it fun for the kids.   

Valentines Cookies

Monday night we made heart shape sugar cookies.  It was going to be hard to cram everything into Valentines day so it was fun to spread things out.  Plus, I was making some for JJ to take to his seminary class.  He made each student a valentine and they really liked the cookies.  The kids enjoyed decorating them and or course eating them.  They took some to school the next day in their lunch.  Sugar cookies are one of our favorite cookies! 

Rubik Cube Box

Lucy had to decorate a valentines day box for her class party.  It was a competition so we had to do something more then some stickers on a shoe box.  We looked at some ideas on Pinterest and decided to do a Rubik's cube.  Thankfully we had some nice weather so we spray painted the box outside.  Lucy helped me cut all the papers squares and glue them to the box.  The hardest part was trying to find a box shaped like a cube, we did the best we could.  Lucy didn't win but her good friend did and Lucy said he box was really good.  It was a dog and had yarn all over for hair.  I am glad Lucy decided on something simple and it turned out really fun.   

Valentines Day Activity

In my efforts to do more with Nolan I signed us up for a Valentines Day activity.  We participate in the parents as teachers program and every month they have little activities you can sign up for.  This was our first time coming to one of their activities.  They had so many cute little activities for the kids to do.  Nolan has almost no attention span so we went from activity to activity pretty quick.  Some stations he didn't even want to do.  We did a painting project with cookie cutters, color matched hearts and he liked the cute sensory bin they had out.  He kept trying to eat the conversation hearts at the matching activity.  His favorite thing to do was go across the balance beam toy.   

He did really enjoy going and I'm glad we went.  I made the mistake of telling him that morning that we were going to a valentines day party.  He kept saying something about cake while we were there and I didn't put it together until the end.  We were walking out and he said "now we can go to the party and have cake?"  I should have just called it an activity.  All these birthday celebrations has cake on his mind. We signed up for another one in March and I will not make the mistake of calling it a party.

Happy Birthday Lauren

Lauren and her family came into town Sunday for a quick visit.  They had been in Kansas City for Braden to attend a conference.  Her birthday was on Saturday so it worked out well to celebrate with her a day late.  We hurried over as soon as we finished with church so we could all have dinner together.  It was so fun to see them and cute Addie and Griffin, he is getting so big.     

 My Mom made a 4 layer chocolate cake, the only way to serve it was with the big BBQ spatula.  It was such a good cake!