February Happenings

Our random happenings this month include Bree, wearing what I thought was a hijab.  Then she informed me that she is an astronaut.  Ha!  

She also cleaned Bryan's bathroom sink and then she was sure to leave a note telling him it was squeaky clean!  ("Sqeecee cleen sic!")

Bree likes to take my phone into her room and take selfies with her cute stuffed animals.  I love to find them on my phone.  I especially love when she does videos and I can really see the world from her perspective.  I forget what it's like to be so little.  She walks around the house eye-level to our table and countertops and the back of the couch, etc.  It's nice to be reminded to see the world through the eyes of a child.

Our sweet neighbor always gives us hand-me-downs, which we LOVE!  This giant red knit hat came in the last bag and Bree really loves it. And I really love to watch her wear it.  It kind of cracks me up!  She reminds me of Paddington Bear.  (or is it someone else?  Who has a big floofy hat like that?)

Oh, the weather has gotten so beautiful at the end of this month!  Warm and lovely!  On Sunday afternoons Bryan and I like to take naps and the kids just play or watch TV.  The other day we peeked out the blinds of our bedroom window and caught this scene.  It made us smile...all 3 kids jumping on the trampoline, happily, while the dog and the cat sit and enjoy the sunshine.  Aaahhh, I hope Spring will be here soon!

Basketball

Miles is doing basketball again this winter.  It's my favorite sport to watch.  His team improved a lot this year and won several games.  I happened to catch pictures (well, they are actually still-shots from videos) two different times when he made a basket.  

This one was a foul shot.  He got to try 2 shots and he made the first one.  He got around 6 points per game and I'm really proud of him.

Snow-skiing

Tess has the 6th grade SkiUtah ski passport and Bryan has loved going with her!  Miles went with them also on the day they did SnowBasin.  There has certainly been lots and lots of great snow this year.  Bryan says they are both improving a lot.  He also discovered that he's not 20 years old anymore and that those double-black-diamond runs aren't quite as easy and they used to be for him.  (haha!)  He said he just might stick to black diamonds as his limit for now.  

Blue & Gold Banquet

February means "Blue & Gold Banquet" time for Cub Scouts.  I am one of the Bear Den leaders, and I am lucky enough to have Miles in my den.  It's a lot of fun.  Our theme for the banquet was Star Wars, and the planning committee did a great job.  Here is our Jedi Master (our Cub master, Sean Peterson) handing out awards after dinner.  (We had Han-burgers, Princess Lays potato chips, and Jabba the Hut-dogs, with Luke Sky-water to drink.   Ha!)

A ward member happened to have full-on Darth Vader costume, and his wife dressed as Princess Leia. She led the boys (the padawans) on a quest around the church, doing different obstacles, all while using their light sabers (and hitting each other a whole, whole bunch!).  The boys had a great time.

Miles can't ever make a serious face in pictures anymore!  He cracks me up!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had such a fun Valentine's Day this year!  Our Stake had a "Sweetie Pie" dance, which Bryan and I went to with a group of friends from our ward.  We all went to dinner first and then came and had pie and danced.  Yes, Bryan even danced with me!  It's definitely not his favorite thing, but we all had fun anyway.

On Valentine's Day at school, I wanted Bree to have some festive "heart hair."  So we did 2 pigtails on the sides shaped like hearts.  I saw a friend post a Facebook picture that night with heart hair on her daughter and she had sprayed the heart part bright pink--super cute!  I'll have to try to remember that for next year.

I was asked to plan the 6th Grade Valentine's Day Dance at the school.  Luckily, there were so many wonderful moms willing to help and it turned out great!  Here are some of our decorations.  Thankfully I have a fabulous friend who goes "all out" with decorating and she was generous enough to loan me all of her Valentine's Day decor.  Almost every single thing in the pictures came from her.  I am very grateful, because I don't do much decorating around my house--so her stuff was a life-saver!

This is our photo backdrop and on the table there are a bunch of fun props for the kids to wear during pictures.

This was the refreshment station.

On each of those colorful hearts on the wall was the name of one of our awesome Freedom 6th Graders.  Here is Tess's heart.

Here is Tess with her friends KayLynn and Mari, having fun with the photo props...

...and with her friend Kimberly...

...and dear old Mom.  (I am so grateful that Tess doesn't seem embarrassed by me yet.  I even got out and danced a few of the line dances with my mom friends and I wondered if she would be mortified, but she actually came over and danced by me.  She's a sweetie!)

The 6th grade teachers plan the dance out really well--there are 6 dances that the kids have to do with a dance partner (4 are line dances, and 2 are slow dances). Every girl had to ask 3 boys and every boy had to ask 3 girls.  They fill out dance cards with their 6 partner dances.  The teachers spent a few months teaching several line dances to the students (probably 6-8 line dances?), and they also taught them how to slow dance.  Here is Tess doing a slow dance with the boy she asked...   (the kids were super cute, all dressed up, and many of the girls were taller than their dance partners.  Tess probably won't ever have that problem though...she's one of the shorter ones.)

Here is Tess, slow dancing with the boy who asked her.  He was pretty embarrassed to see me taking their picture.  (But I was one among probably 50 parents there, taking pictures.)

And here is Tess doing one of her line dances with a boy who asked her, who is a friend of ours (we used to do "Tot Swap" --a babysitting exchange--with his parents so he's played at our house a lot.)

And did you know Miles joined the 6th grade for the dance?  Just kidding, it's not Miles, but he sure looks like him!  Every time I saw this boy on the dance floor, I had to do a double-take because he looks so much like Miles to me!