I am thankful for...

My home.

As the wind blew and the rain came down in sheets which then turned to snow, I reflected on the blessing of a home. It was extremely windy last night, and rained all night long, in torrents that could be heard throughout the house. Whenever I woke up, I sent up a little prayer of gratitude for our home.

I realize this is a picture of palm trees, which are not indigenous to our area, but you get the point.

When we have extreme weather, I always think of the pioneers, suffering the whims of mother nature without shelter.

Or homeless people without protection.

Or even those people who have some sort of shelter, but it isn't sufficent.

I am thankful for our home, our warm, sturdy, safe, comfortable home that protects my family from the elements.

Laser Tag

Has anyone played laser tag before? We went with Brian and Lisa last night and it was SO MUCH FUN! We were all on a team against 5 teenagers, and we lost horribly. We had so much fun it didn't matter though.
We were all sweating by the end of our 30 minutes of play time, with good reason. We were up and down the ramps, ducking, running (even though your not supposed to do that) crouching, reaching, and moving quickly the whole time.
I have terrible aim, by the way.
There was one teen boy who I shot and chased, then the next round he did it to me, and we were both laughing hysterically. Ok, I was, and he was chuckeling, but you get the idea.
I laughed at myself so much that I was very glad for the bathroom trip I took before we started.
I highly reccomend everyone go do this. Do it with other adults or teenagers, and do it with your little kids. (they have to be 8)
It is a little spendy, $10 per person for 30 minutes, but so worth it. I will be keeping my eye out for coupons.
Because we are definetely going again.
So go try it!
Oh, and don't wear white like I did. Maybe thats why I got hit so much.

Water Fun

On Monday, we took the kids to swim at the Blackfoot pool. It has taken me a while to get these pictures on here because they are from my cell phone and I didn't know how to use the extremely small photo card. (Seriously, the thing is smaller than my thumbnail, technology, for heaven's sake.) But now I know, so here they are!

We had a lot of fun at the pool. I was worried the baby wouldn't like it and one of us would be sitting out with her, but she loved it.

My cell phone doesn't take great action shots, so you'll have to believe me when I tell you that this is Payden,

and this is Michaela.

Here they are clowning around, having a grand time. My girls are fish and love the water. They are both very good swimmers.

Here they are jumping off the diving board. This is Payden jumping off,

and this is Michaela diving off.

We have this little floatie that has a seat in it, and that is how Corrine rolled at the pool. She LOVED it. She really liked this ball, as well.

Ava used her little frog life jacket thing, and once she was confident she wouldn't sink, swam all around the pool on her own! We stayed right with her, but she loved not having to hold on to someone.

Corrine kept trying to drink the water, so I had to hold her up a bit so she couldn't reach it. It was pretty funny.


Here is Ava in her little frog thing. We got this at Walmart, and if you have pre swimmers you have to get this. Way better than water wings, Ava is so skinny they would have floated off. This thing is all one piece, and worked like a charm.

We will surely do this more often. Way fun!

Girls Spa Night

Last night we had a fun night just for the girls. We made homemade spa treatments and gave each other the royal treatment! The girls were a little skeptical about putting egg in their hair and pumpkin on their faces, but were excited non the less. We also had chocolate to eat and listened to soft music.

Michaela was the first to get the hair care. She was slightly grossed out by the egg mixture, but it smelled good so it was ok.

Then Payden was next, but somehow I lost that picture.

Ava was next, and she liked being pampered, even though she was getting tired!

Michaela did my hair, but didn't like putting her hands in the egg! We all got drips on our faces from time to time! I really liked getting this done, it felt so good having my head massaged while Michaela rubbed the stuff in.

The next treatment was pumpkin on our faces! We made a mask and slathered it on, complete with cooled cucumber slices for our eyes. AHHHHHHHHHHHH

Payden next!

Ava was a little hesitant, but didn't want to be left out. So she agreed!


Payden did my face last.

Then we painted our nails, hands and toes, after we did a treatment to exfoiliate our hands. It was a fun night with my girls, and we all have super soft hair and skin today!

Our house won't work!

Yesterday the power went out due to a very wet snow storm we had(on the first day of spring break!) We had been at the mall shopping, and came home to have lunch.
Cooking a meal without power is difficult.
Ava was concerned with the lack of electricity, and was going around trying things and proclaiming things like " the fan won't work either!"
After a trying a few things, she says to me:
"Mom, our house won't work!"
I explained that the power was out, that it would come back on, and please stop turning everything on because we had to leave soon and I didn't want everything turned on if the power came back on when we were gone. The power came back on while we were eating lunch. Ava hopped down from her seat, and went happily around the house turning every single light in the house on. This appeared to be very comforting to her; our house worked again!

WARNING:

The reckless celebration of St. Patricks Day may cause slight discoloration of certain bodily excretions.












Not the least of which is breastmilk.

Go Green!

No, I don't mean low flow toilets and solar panels, I'm talking about St.Patricks Day! This is a fun holiday, for some very silly reasons. I love to make green meals, and seeing everyone wearing green clothing. There is something strangely unifiying in seeing complete strangers all decked out in green. Today was no exception. I got to pinch both Michaela and Payden because they forgot and came upstairs without green on. They each took turns "pinching" the baby.

I saw some very cute leprechaun templates on a cool cooking blog, which I used throughout the day to make meal time fun. They made an appearance at every meal all day.

For breakfast, it hung out on a cereal box. At this point, the girls just thought it was odd, and looked at me funny for putting it there.

Then for the girls' lunches, I made cucumber and cream cheese sandwhiches, with green cream cheese. I stuck a leprechaun on the sandwhich bag.

For me and Ava's lunch, we had green cream cheese and avacado, ham and spinach sammies. Yum! And green apples. I stuck the little guy in Ava's sandwhich. This mostly just confused her, she didn't know what leprechauns are. Have you ever tried to explain what one is to a four year old who has never heard of it before? Yeah, that was fun.

For snack, green cream cheese in celery sticks. The girls were starting to get it by now, and were commenting on where else they may see the green man.

Then for dinner, we had green pasta (normal pasta boiled in water with green food coloring) with pesto sauce and spinach. I shaped it into four leaf clovers, and stuck the stingy midget in there.

And since the girls were getting sure they knew what I was doing with the lepreachaun, I changed it up a bit. On the bottom of their glasses of green milk, I taped the face of the leprechaun.

A fun green day, for sure!