Being President's Day on Monday it was a holiday for everyone. When I mean everyone I mean that the boys didn't have school and Justin didn't have to work and I was lucky enough to have the night off before. So, we headed up to the charming town of Midway to see the ice castles.

We stopped and ate at the Dairy Keen in Heber before we began our adventure. I love the Dairy Keen. I have been super good about fried foods and fatty burgers and rarely consume them but I went all out. I totally recommend the Train Burger when you go...a delicious fatty burger topped with TWO kinds of cheese, thinly sliced ham, and the right amount of sauce. Add deliciously perfectly cooked fries dunked in fry sauce and a cherry diet coke and you have officially created a homage to the food gods.

There was a house right next door to this lovely establishment and Luke told me he thought it would be cool to live there so we could come to the Dairy Keen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I guess that would be okay until you needed a lift to get me out of my cut out front door when I am featured on that show the 600 pound woman. But I think, maybe, it would be worth it.

Then...off to our destination.




The ice castles were beautiful! It was pretty amazing to see these structures made entirely of ice. At one turn there was a stunning large open area and I commented to Justin that I felt like an ice princess. Justin replied with "You didn't just say that" and then I was teased by him and Nicholas the rest of the time there. Hey, a girl can dream right?

We had fun exploring and the weather made it especially enjoyable. We almost went up on Saturday but it was a blizzard so I am glad that it worked out that we could go another time when the weather was more cooperative. As if to add to the beauty of it all, little light snowflakes were falling as we were walking around.



Luke liked looking at the deep recesses of the castles and seeing this blue color.







We ran into one of my darling high school friends up there and she snapped this cute photo of our family.


If you want more information, go here. They originally were just going to be open through the 28th but it looks like the date is extended to March 5. It is worth the trip!

stuffing

I have never had a child who has loved stuffed animals. Or even liked for that matter. No one would even give them a second glance. Until Liam.

He has become quite obsessed with them and finally received his beloved pillow pet dog for Christmas. Then came a little beanie baby kitty and then a dog star pet thingy. I then made the mistake of mentioning the mecca of all things stuffed animal related. Build a Bear Workshop.

It was probably one of the stupidest things I have ever done. I heard about how he wanted to go to Build a Bear about 1000 times a day.

So for Valentine's day we gave him a gift card to take a special trip to build his very own friend. When he opened the card he hugged it and said "This is SO cool!" over and over.

Geez...if opening the card was this awesome, I couldn't wait for the acutal day to come. Luckily, it was just the next morning and holy cow--10 a.m. could not come fast enough. I had high hopes that this would rock Liam's world. I am not going to lie...it totally did.

He was the only one there so he had extra special attention from the cute employee there. She was adorable and Liam grinned from ear to ear the whole time.

I think seeing all of the stuffed animals all flat and looking more like a skinned animal than a huggable friend made him a little nervous. Once he got over it though, he picked out his buddy. His name is Tootsie. Which is also the name of his pillow pet.

Putting in the heart and making a wish...

...helping put in the stuffing so it was just right...

...and giving his new friend a bath. He took this very seriously.

Voila! His very manly Tootsie bear who plays football. He called everyone he knew to let them know about his new friend.

As we left the store he told me that he thought it was real. I love his little imagination and had so much fun being a part of his little world for a morning.

It was SO cool.

random thoughts by liam

I picked up Liam from preschool on Wednesday and he handed me a heart that said he had counted to 109. He was so proud of himself and we got buckled in and started heading toward the aquarium to spend the afternoon.

After a minute he announced that he didn't have to swallow spit or even breathe.

I was a little bewildered and asked him to repeat that.

He said: "I didn't even have to breathe or swallow spit when I counted."

He then asked if swordfish had to be careful in the ocean. I realized he was worried that the swordfish would spear an unassuming fish and hurt it--which in reality is probably what happens. I told him that the swordfish swims slowly and tries not to bump into the other fish. He replied with a very serious tone that every fish in the sea was probably the swordfish's best buddy.

A few minutes later he sighed and said that he wished he could have a baby beluga.

I don't think our bathtub is big enough.

v day

Although I do think that Valentine's day is a little overhyped and just another day created by businesses to increase their sales--I mean, really, do you have to have a day set aside for love to let your loved ones know how you feel about them?--I really look forward to the visit from the Cupid.

I love decorating in red and pink, I love hearts, I love all the little valentines that get handed out in class. I just think it is a fun day.

Last year when I was helping out with Luke's valentine party I realized that I was a slacker. Everyone had these cute boxes and all Luke had was a plain white sack with his name on it. In my defense, the boys' school is weird when it comes to holidays. They can't bring treats on their birthdays, no costumes on Halloween, and I just assumed that bringing anything cute and fun on Valentine's day would be frowned upon. So this year was going to be different.

I went out and bought decorations: glitter, stickers, pom poms, buttons, jewels, the list was pretty long. I also had construction paper ready and enough glue for each of the boys. I was set.

The decorating of the boxes took all of 10 minutes. There was a drawing made of a transformer, a few sprinkles of glitter on the box, Nick actually did cover his box in pink paper but it didn't even go to the top so you could still see much of the Cheerios box underneath. So much for having cute boxes to show off at school but at least they did them with their own individuality.

But they did have fun decorating themselves.

It all started with this:




and then this:






and then things got a little crazy...







Needless to say, I have plenty of leftover decorations for next year.

The actual day was low key but fun. The boys had their parties and then off to the various activities after school. For dinner I made a new recipe which was absolutely delicious and I also made the rice that is paired with it and asparagus. We had virgin pina coladas in clear cups with cute grey and white striped straws, ate off white plates, with cute heart napkins and fresh purple tulips on the table. Then we had fondue for desert. I splurged and bought the "good" chocolate from Orson Gygis and it was worth it. Nicholas actually let out a sigh of contentment. It is hard to get these boys full and I think I accomplished it this night.

I love my boys (all 5 of them) so much and it was so nice to have a fun night together.

An absolutely perfect Valentine's day.

mishmash

Playing catchup over the last month.

Here goes:

I had a fun farewell lunch with some of the gals from IMC. They were so nice to plan it for me. We ate at the Olive Garden and I downed diet cokes and breadsticks like they were going out of style.


maren. me. suzi. stephanie. kim

heather. libbey. melanie. laura. traci.

angelise. donna. aimee. reg. wendy. laura. melanie. lisa

Although IMC was not the perfect fit for me, I learned a lot about myself there and met some amazing people. I will miss these girls!

Luke played another season for the Jr Jazz.





To be honest, I am amazed that kid still has his tounge.

Nick and Andrew had their Suzuki graduation for the year. Nick graduated from Book 3 and Andrew from Book 2.



And we celebrated Chinese new year. It is the year of the rabbit. I was born in the year of the rabbit and I am the most fortunate of all the animals! In our home we also have two tigers, a horse, a rooster, and a dragon. I loved learning about all the traditions that go along with this holiday so I think next year I will kick our celebrations up a notch to incorporate more of them in. This year it was pretty low key (and seeing how I really didn't research the holiday much until the day of) we just learned about our animal we were born under, the story of how the Chinese zodiac came to be, ate stirfry, and watched The Karate Kid.



Other random happenings:

-Liam can do the chinese splits. All the way to the ground.
-Andrew passed off his divide by 11s.
-Luke wrote the most absolutely cutest valentines. I will save them for the next post.
-I need to read up on my space trivia. Liam asks some pretty hard questions. He also told me the other day that Neptune was grumpy. I asked him why and he replied "Because he is always so cold and not close to the sun."
-Nick asked to sit by his teacher so he wouldn't get distracted by the other kids in his class. He is quite the social butterfly and was getting in trouble quite a bit and this was a good move on his part.
-I have a new favorite word that Luke says: scorch.
-Andrew went snowshoeing on a fieldtrip.
-We are getting excited about our trip coming up in July going back to Cooperstown. It will be here before we know it.

Have a happy love day!

balance

Whoa, it has been awhile.

For the past couple months I have been thinking about what my word for the year could be. It was pretty evident what it needed to be as I was going from one task to another and not really seeing the big picture of where I am headed in my life.

I was overwhelmed and depressed and concluded that I needed a major life overhaul.

According to the dictionary, one of the definitions of BALANCE is "to arrange, adjust, or proportion the parts of symmetrically."

Now as my life is starting to settle down after some of the changes I have made, I am ready to emerge again in the blogging world with a renewed sense of not only what and where I need to be now but the direction of the path should be taken for the future and dang...it looks bright.

I realized that every activity, every minute of every day was directed by work. Do I work this night, will I be too tired to participate, are we ever going to be able to do anything fun? So, I changed jobs and cut down my hours. I went back home to the University Hospital and I will never, ever have the reception that I received anywhere else in my life when I walked back on that unit until I am reunited with loved ones up in heaven. I felt like a celebrity. It was so fun to see all my friends and in a weird way, it was like I never left. Although I had to readjust my work flow due to the differences between IMC and the U, I felt like I was right where I needed to be and could jump right back in. I will miss my friends at IMC but I know that this was a good move and working less and being with my peeps at the U has improved my mood significantly.

A few months ago I also started making changes in our financial accounts and we are really trying to save money, we ask ourselves if we really need this or that, I started couponing, and I feel like I am pretty good at finding a deal now. I am hoping that we can start having more excursions and doing fun things together as a family with cutting down at work and putting our money to good use. I want to have fun in this life...not have it be a platform for how much we can work.

I also realized that I was making excuses of why I was not doing the things that I needed to be doing in my life because I was so tired from working so much. I wasn't saying my prayers or reading my scriptures on a regular basis. I wasn't going to the temple. I would be grumbly about helping my kids out or wouldn't be on top of things and we would be scrambling to get projects done. I didn't feel like I was there for my boys and I felt empty because my cup definately was not running over. It was pretty much empty. We are working on bringing the Spirit back into our home and working together as a family to pray more and study more and become a stronger family.

Exercise is also something I am trying to work on since it is pretty non existent in my life. I want to live for a long, long time and I know that I need to start doing it to increase my health and also feel better about the way my tummy looks. I am thinking about cutting back on my diet coke intake but one thing at a time, right?

Both Justin and I have grown in the last year and feel blessed and grateful for where we are right now. I am excited about the future and am happy that just little changes have brought such peace into my life.

I needed it.

Love

This year I was having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit. I was totally feeling it around the end of October when most of my shopping was done but I think I peaked too early and fizzled out sometime around Thanksgiving. I wanted to feel all warm and spiritual and loving but I was frazzled and stressed and trying to do way too many things that I thought would put me in the holiday mood but it did quite the opposite.

I was thinking that if I got my shopping done early that I would have more time. I thought that with the more time I could do more things. And by doing more things it totally backfired on me and I was feeling like the Grinch with my heart 3 sizes too small. I just needed to slow down and let the spirit of the season ooze into my soul and I needed to delight in all of the magic that was already around me. Having children around at Christmas is my favorite thing ever. I love that they make projects at school to bring home and hang on the fridge. I love that they are humming or singing Christmas songs. I love that their little minds are always buzzing with excitement at what the present with their name on it under the tree might hold. I love that they think of others more, help each other more, and love each other more.

When I stopped to think about this and was being Santa's helper on Christmas Eve it finally sunk in. I hope I can remember that it is not all that we can squeeze into the Christmas season that makes it special, but how we spend it as a family. This realization came not a moment too soon.

Christmas morning came with these smiling faces and their eager anticipation while dad goes to check if Santa truly came.



I feel very blessed that Santa does come to visit my boys. I think that even though they are your typical boy that likes to fart, tease, giggle at potty talk, and get dirty, they are such good boys that also like to help, laugh, and love.

I also love the expressions on their faces when they get that special present that they asked for. Over and over and over.

I was very excited about Justin's present. I made him a University of Utah t shirt blanket. I got the idea from my sister who made her husband one for his birthday and I knew that Justin had to have one. Although my mom helped quite a bit I still feel I contributed enough to say that I made it. I was very proud of myself and Justin loved it.

The rest of the day was fantastic. It was laid back and spent with family and toys were played with. Time was also taken to remember our dear Savior. I am so grateful for Him and all he did for me. I have a long way to go before I will feel that I am worthy to see Him again but I am trying everyday. I hope I can slow down not just at Christmas time but throughout the year to remember him and be more like him. Then maybe next Christmas, it will mean even more.