February 2014

It's been a busy month and when that happens it seems my posts get farther apart. So I'll just go with it and recap the whole month Reader's Digest version.

 

A few highlights...

 

This is a Sunday afternoon the kids discovered instead of sitting around a quiet house being bored it would be more fun to sit across the street with the dogs and some friends.

 

 

 

Notice Jacob doesn't care that he's in pajamas still.

 

 

 

 

This pig pillow was the brainchild of Ashley. Taylor's friend Priscilla turned 18 and was having a party and invited the kids. She likes pigs so Ashley thought a 3d pig pillow would be a good idea. She picked the fabric and knew what she wanted, I helped her engineer it and she did the sewing.

 

 

 

 

 

Priscilla loved it. Jacob and Ashley had fun at the party but Taylor couldn't stay...

 

 

 

He had a date to go to Midwinter with Kelzie and friends. This was his first school dance that he's been to. Here they are putting on their flowers...

 

 

I ordered them through a friend at the school's mom who does flowers. This is as good as they looked because the flowers started falling off before Kelzie even got in the car.

 

 

They ended up going with a group of 17 people (a lot of then went without dates) and met up for a potluck for dinner and then drove in a limo to the dance.

 

 

They had a lot of fun.

 

 

 

The next weekend Jeff and I headed out to Palm Springs for his annual awards dinner.

 

 

 

I remember going to these when he was first in the business and he wouldn't ever get any awards and I remember thinking "some day he will" Well now he walks away with 4 or 5 every year. Way to go Jeff! So proud of you.

 

This year we had fun hanging out with friends old and new...

 

 

 

 

including the Kline's. We've been sitting next to them for years at these award dinners. It's always great to catch up with them.

 

 

 

We spent the night and went to the Living Dessert Zoo the next day. This was an exhibit with Australian birds that you could feed.

 

 

 

 

 

For a couple of bucks you bought a stick with their food on it and they would fly over and use it like a perch and eat out of your hand. Pretty much we were just a perch because they would fight over it and land all over you. We had birds on our head, arms my purse and even Jeff's pockets.

 

 

 

 

It was fun at first but some of them kept biting you, not hard enough to hurt just enough to annoy. After awhile Jeff said "OK I've had enough" and we moved on.

 

 

The day was beautiful and warm. It was a gorgeous day but we could imagine how hot an unbearable it would be in the summer here.

 

 

We enjoyed the animals and the walk through their gardens. These guys seemed right at home in their enclosure. A lot of the animals were awake and active since the weather wasn't too hot.

 

 

At the very end we walked through an area where they had elaborate and intricate model trains running through a landscape that looked like it took a long time to build. After we were done we raced home because...

 

 

 

 

There was another dance this weekend.

 

 

 

Taylor and Kelzie were now going to Mormal (Mormon formal) with friends.

 

 

They were fed dinner at the institute building and their leader rented a limo for them to get to the dance. Again they had fun.

 

Ashley is now old enough to go to mutual. She's been to baptisms at the temple, she's done a spa night, service projects and got to go to the ice skating rink and play broom hockey.

 

 

It was a group activity and they rented the ice rink and were out there in their shoes skating around.

 

 

 

I heard they had a good time and only fell once or twice each ;)

 

 

They had quite a group there.

 

 

 

Oh a couple of weeks ago Taylor got a flat tire. I was at the school and he texted me "By the way I got a flat today" I was going to text him the details for calling out AAA but he said him and his friends already had the spare on. They were in the school parking lot and they changed it there.

 

Awhile ago Taylor's cousin Jared had a flat tire and had Taylor help him change it. He has the same kind of truck as Taylor so Taylor know where the spare was and how to get it. Way to go boys.

 

 

 

My last fundraising effort for the elementary school ever was the Valentine candy grams...whoo hoo. Simone helped do the bulk of the work for this one. I sold in the mornings and got all the candy ready and she got volunteers and sold in the afternoons and sorted and delivered all the grams (huge job). We are both glad to be done. We've been occupied since last year at this time either selling something, planning to sell something or planning and putting on some school wide event for hundreds of people.  

 

In two weeks I'll go with Ashley to the actual camp. I'm looking forward to it.

 

 

 

 

 

Valentines Day Jacob got this big card for a friend. He went and saw Frozen with her and they exchanged valentines but I could tell he was a little disappointed when he got home because she didn't really talk to him or anything. So he went to Frozen with a different group of friends the next day and had more fun. Crazy.

 

 

 

Last year on Valentine's Day Jeff was out of town. After seeing all the facebook posts of everyone's gifts and lovey dovey sentiments I started to feel sorry for myself. Then I started thinking of all those people that are single or have lost their spouses or had hard things going on. How much harder would the day be for them.

 

So this year I made treats and along with delivering to my visiting teaching people we delivered them to other people that I just thought might like it. I got feedback from some of the people who were having a hard day that day and appreciated the treats. I was happy that it was just something little that brightened their day. I'll have to remember that next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the past few weeks we've been fundraising and collecting supplies for Jacob's eagle project. He was putting together 300 first aid kits for the missionaries in the Riverside mission.

 

 

Finally the day had arrived that we were going to put them together. He was doing it in conjunction with the Stake Women's Conference (that we've been planning for months). We offered it as one of the service projects.

 

 

Taylor, Jacob and Jeff came out to help. Taylor commented after it was all done that there were a lot of older ladies there...yeah it was a women's conference...somehow he thought youth would be there too, ha ha. The first two sessions of the conference we only had a few volunteers. I was resigning to the fact that we would have to finish at home, but then the last session we got a lot of volunteers and we finished it up.

 

 

Jacob was very happy with all the support.

 

 

 

 

As for the rest of the women's conference I heard it was good. I got to enjoy lunch but I didn't get to go to any of the classes.

 

It is nice to be part of a presidency that are doers, work well together and enjoy our callings. I feel blessed to be working with a great group of women!

 

 

 After those big events were done I have been happy to have things calm down a bit.

 

 

So this week the most exciting things that happened were we had the big tree in our front yard taken out...(Ashley was sad at first)

 

 

 

 

and I got to sub Ashley's class for a day. This was the stacks of papers that we were sorting at the end of the day. Since it was a short day sometimes the teachers will give you something to work on after school is out. This was sorting all his inbox by assignment in student number order. Of course only like 5 of the kids write their number on the top of the paper so I had to look at a key and figure out what their number was.

 

Ashley kept asking "How much longer?" I told her if she helped me we could leave faster. Finally when she was bored enough she came and helped me and we got done faster. Ha ha.