Father Daughter Dance 2012!

Emily and Anna enjoyed sweeping Kevin off to another Father Daughter Dance tonight. The dance was a "masquerade ball" theme and they had a terrific time! What lucky (and abundantly blessed) girls to have those memories with their wonderful daddy! Anna was especially delighted to discover that her new very (VERY!) favorite friend from enrichment was at the dance - she was in "Bella heaven"!

Red Rocks & Dinosaur Ridge

I got to sneak away for the morning last week and spend some time with my dad and my sister. We enjoyed a short (emphasis on short!) hike in the Dinosaur Ridge/Red Rocks area and then had lunch at a fun little spot in downtown Morrison.

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.