Yay It's Friday

Owen this morning playing with marker lids on his fingers.

I have a picture like this of Joseph when he was a toddler.

I admit, it's pretty fun to have those lids make you have long fingers.

Almost as good as much fun as a little girl playing with fake fingernails.

Tonight we took Sophi out for her birthday dinner date with Mom and Dad. We went to Mimi's cafe. Corey and I both got a muffin with our entrees, and those were served before the entrees were. And Sophi didn't have one. She didn't necessarily want one, but she did want something. She felt quite irritated with the restaurant that the didn't bring her something when they brought us something!

It was not fair, but she didn't want a bite of mine. And it was taking soooooo long.

Daniel Tiger to the rescue. I remembered the Waiting song! "When you wait, you can play, sing or imagine anything!" In that episode he is at a restaurant with his parents, had a hard time waiting, so they play a game of putting objects on their placemat, then closing his eyes while his mom takes away one of the objects and he has to remember which one is missing. We played that for like 10 minutes. Then our food finally came.

We talked about it afterward - it's hard for it to feel like a date for us and for us to talk and connect with each other if we've got a kid with us, or if we're on a double date with friends. So I think we might make it a birthday lunch date in the future, cause we need our Friday nights for our sanity. We'll do one more date with Mel (it's her 18th birthday and last date with us before graduation and leaving our home to go live her life, so we're going to The Roof!) So yeah, new birthday date tradition starting next year.

One last picture: this is Lily's bedroom wall tonight as I tucked her in ~

She's got drawings taped all over the wall that she's done of her lego elves and dragons

I'm not quite sure how she sleeps up there when it doubles as a desk and art studio. But she says it's not a problem.

I made her clean it up today and she had a whole garbage bag full of crumpled paper there on her bed with her! She's a serious artist, she eats, sleeps and dreams those illustrations!

Roof Restaurant & First Big Snow Storm

Tonight we took Joseph out for his belated birthday dinner. This is a tradition we started last year. Last year we took Ethan to the Roof for his date, and it was there that we set up the policy that each kid would be able to go to the Roof Restaurant one time during their life at home with us and on our dime. Joseph didn't go to the Roof Restaurant for this birthday dinner date last year, and since this is Joseph's last birthday with us, this was his last chance to go.

We enjoyed a lovely meal and Corey and I shared about how proud we are of Joseph and everything he's done. There's not much left for us to teach him, so we know that means it's about time for him to fly the nest and launch into his bright future. We're excited for ya Joseph! Here was my view during our dinner, I love these two.

Their view of me, I had the better view with the windows outside, they just had the pictures on the wall.

Time for the traditional photo with the temple behind us.

That beautiful temple is where Joseph's story began, cause that's where Corey and I got married. Here we are almost 19 year later (Yes, he was born before our first anniversary... and life haven't slowed down since!) Seems like just yesterday. Same with memories of our little Joseph. Can't believe he's 18!

Well, that dinner tonight was definitely the highlight of the day. The other kinda big news is that we finally got snow. This morning I was able to look out over our little balcony to see how much snow there was, always a nice feature.

This balcony railing measurement lets me know if I need to get up and shovel before Mel goes to GMS or not. She wanted to take the car today, but we said not if it snows. But this snow means that I still need to get out of bed and clear the driveway so I can take her to the bus. Since I was up and awake, I decided to test the roads and try to go to the temple. I went to the Draper temple, which is up on a hill with some steep roads, or they seemed pretty steep in the snow. It hadn't been plowed, I almost thought I wouldn't make it, but I did. Not many other people did though, it was pretty quiet. I just did initiatories and had the booth and the workers to myself. I was grateful to see the roads had been plowed by the time I was done. That made it much better to drive in. The kids had fun sledding. Finally they can go sledding in the tree farm! Abi wore a hat, but her hair wasn't tucked in her coat, so she had nice balls of snow stuck in it. She came in to tell us she was back, and we both laughed and I told her to turn around.

Her shirt was totally drenched too.

I am not a skier, or atleast don't have/make the time to be a skier yet (I will someday) so I don't mind these snow sparce winters and clear roads, I think it's been nice. But I'm glad for these kids that they finally have some snow to work in.

They had a lot of wet fun outside. It was a good Saturday.

Gingerbread Houses

Yesterday at church Sister Christofferson invited us bring our kiddos over to her house to see the gingerbread houses she made this year.  This one has a super festive smell with the cinnamon gum all over the roof - I love holiday aromas!

Sometimes their schedule is too busy to make it happen so she might skip a year here and there, but almost every year she makes gingerbread houses around Christmas time.  Usually she donates them to the Festival of Trees for Primary Children's Hospital or toward some other charitable cause. This year instead of making one large one, she's made/making 4 small ones for Christmas for her kids.

This one below is a replica of the actual home of one of her kids, if you look at the bottom left picture of the photographs on that paper to the right of the gingerbread house (she said the roof was super tricky on this one):

That one above she is going to very carefully package and reinforce and then mail to Arkansas - sending it off with a "good luck" prayer hoping it arrives in one piece! (Her first time mailing a gingerbread house...) Pretty impressive how much work goes into these - all the planning and measuring left us in awe, it's like a real architect blue print for a home, just on a smaller scale and with no plumbing, just a little electrical work - each of the butterscotch glass windows has an individual light put up to it on a strong wire - those are put up first after much planning and then the house is built around it.  Here she is explaining some of the details to us on the last house she's doing:

Pretty amazing talent, and what a fun tradition!  It's a special treat for our family to be invited to go see her houses each year (thank you!)