Happy Valentines Day

We took a bold and daring step this year ~ and updated one of our family traditions!

For the past many years we have enjoyed a "Family Valentine's Celebration" (usually just before Valentine's Day) which has always consisted of the same menu: heart shaped meatloaf, pink milk, pink mashed potatoes (or heart shaped pasta), pink heart shaped biscuits, red grapes . . . I don't need to go on, but you see a theme here!

In the past year or two the kids have come to the conclusion that they really don't care for meatloaf - at all. They have, however, always loved fondue! So, we said goodbye to our cute little individual heart-shaped meatloaves and said hello to another occasion for fondue! It's such a fun, leisurely meal and everyone loves it.

I even tried my hand at making a candy bar bouquet and it turned out fairly cute! (can something involving chocolate really ever turn out otherwise?!) The kids enjoyed opening their little treat bags of Valentine goodies and toasting one another with the sparkling cider that Taylor and Kelsey sent ~ fun times!

And as an added bonus . . . the kids happened to have AWANAs on the evening of the 14th, so Kevin and I had built in childcare for a dinner out by ourselves. Anna had fun helping me make pink chocolate chip waffles on the 14th also -- she's such a fun little kitchen helper!

4H Creative Cooks Contest

Emily and her friend Sydney competed in the 4-H "Creative Cooks" contest this weekend. They will be going on to the CO State Fair in August with their "Purple Pizzazz" party!

Emily prepared shell pasta with a purple cream garlic sauce and Sydney made scrumptious purple raspberry cupcakes from scratch. Their table and place settings were adorned with purple and they even served the judges while wearing purple gloves! They really (really!) enjoyed the competition and are looking forward to the State Fair.

February Snowstorm!

We had a nice, big, fat snowstorm last week! For over 24 hours it snowed non-stop, dumping about two feet of snow all around our house. The kids enjoyed a "semi-snow day" (a little less school and a lot more play than usual). We put soup in the crock pot & bread in the bread machine and rejoiced in not having to venture out of the house.

As the snow continued to fall into the evening, we enjoyed a family game night in the basement ~ foosball, ping pong, air hockey, darts . . . and of course American Girl dolls (and Levi and Suki taking turns serenading us on the keyboard!)

The following day found us sledding, digging, shoveling and even building a fairly "unique" snowman!

Sledding and such

We were able to sneak in a visit with our favorite goats and some sledding this past weekend. We even figured out how to create a sled contraption for five!

New Year's Eve

Our tradition for the past 8 years or so has been to spend New Year's Eve having a "family camp out" by the Christmas tree ~ with movies, popcorn, sparkling cider & goodies at midnight. Last year my sister and her family joined us and we decided it was super fun ~ so they came back this year, too! We watched movies, ate lots of fun food and played a couple of games . . . and stayed up entirely too late! (we were in the middle of a really good movie at midnight and couldn't just turn it off and go to bed!)

We loved having my sister's family here, but didn't get to have our traditional camp out by the tree . . . so we ended up doing that a few days later (before taking down our Christmas decorations). Not the best night's sleep, but sweet memories!

"Helping Ham" continues . . .

The morning of New Years Eve, we enjoyed repeating something our children dubbed "Helping Ham" last year. This time, we invited friends to join us for a "packaging party". We set up an assembly line at our dining room table and packed 35 lunch sacks full of sandwiches, cookies, fruit, other treats & notes from the kids. We finished in record time ~ Emily commented several times that she couldn't believe we made 70 sandwiches that fast! Then we headed downtown to distribute them to the homeless. It was cold and blustery (Samuel nearly blew away!). We were thankful that we had a warm car to get back into when we were finished.

The Great Sledding Incident!

I still can't believe I didn't take a picture of one of our greatest adventures of the past week. In our family, the running joke is that if there wasn't a picture, then "it didn't really happen"! Unfortunately, photo or not, it really happened and I'll try to paint you a picture of the scene.

We were invited by some friends to go sledding at a nearby campground (Jellystone Larkspur) and to visit the goats that we've become involved with over the past few months. It has snowed several times throughout the Christmas break and there is still a lot of snow everywhere. When we arrived at the campground, we decided we would head up to the barn to see the goats first and then go sledding. We were almost to the barn when my car (with brand new tires, but WITHOUT four wheel drive) decided it didn't really like the snow packed road I was driving on and started sliding backward. It came to a stop fairly quickly . . . in a snow bank!

We had quite an adventure attempting to get the car "un-stuck". I called the roadside assistance service (that is included in our car insurance policy) and they sent a very large tow truck to assist me. Things looked promising. The driver, however, could not get permission from his boss to take the very large tow truck up the road where my car was (b/c his boss was concerned that he would himself become stuck). He was very kind and tried determinedly to push me out. He made limited progress, but was unsuccessful in getting me back on the road (fortunately the service is included in our policy and didn't cost anything extra!).

Darkness fell, the temperature dropped and my little mini-van remained stuck!

On the other side of the campground, the kids (and my niece ~ who had come with us) had a fabulous time sledding and snowboarding and enjoying a campfire. As it grew dark, they put out the campfire and proceeded to have a most memorable time huddling in the nearby bathhouse for almost 30 minutes (attempting to stay warm) until I returned for them!

Several hours after our adventure had begun, the wonderful campground owner and his son teamed up and managed to pull me out . . . the kids were all rescued from the bathhouse and we were even able to visit our beloved goats before heading home!