February

Since Youth Conference fell on Valentine's Day it was celebrated a week late in our house. 

For mutual Adell Lingenfelter (who works at Albertson's bakery) came and taught a cake decorating class. It was a big hit with the girls!

She had individual decorating kits and they all had their own cakes. 

Even though I didn't have my own cake I helped make roses for a couple of girls that asked for help (as a result I learned how to make them ;)

Here are some of the results.

All the girls enjoyed the activity. 

This is Ashley and Kate on their minimum day. Ashley likes her short day but pretty much when she walks in the door she complains about being bored. This day I took the girls to Sky Zone. I've resigned myself to the fact that I will probably have to always have something in mind for her to do on those short days ;)

Ashley got an award for being in the honor roll lately. I was able to go and cheer her on along with lots of her friends. 

Great job guys!

So Jeff and I celebrated Valentine's Day by going to his work awards dinner and then staying the night in Redlands. This is before the dinner...we meant to ask someone to take our picture but we forgot so all I have is this selfie.

Jeff getting his awards. He was #3 in the office again. Great job honey!

So this was hilarious. The entertainment that night was a hypnotist. I was impressed that the hypnotist was able to hypnotize and entertain us with this group of straight laced, formally dressed participants. Here they are acting like they are chickens. 

The next morning we at breakfast at our hotel (which was also hosting a biker convention) and then headed up to Oak Glen. I used to take the kids up there when they were younger but it had been awhile since I had been up there. 

We went to the little zoo where Jeff made a few new friends. 

For a dollar you could buy a cup of corn and all the animals loved it. 

You can see the goat hoof prints on Jeff's shirt...thats how much they loved it. I laughed when a boy came in with his food and as soon as the goats approached him, he threw the food on the ground. 

We went into a nature center. 

Then we drove down the road and went inside to see the original one room school house that educated the children in Oak Glen. 

I loved the artifacts, rules for teachers and students and old newpaper clippings of the area. I'd love to go back with the kids. 

For lunch we went to Riley's farm and ate in the Hawk's Head public house. Homemade, tasty everything. We shared this pot pie, homemade bread and seasoned green beans. When we were packing up the leftovers it looked like we hadn't even touched it there was so much food!

On our way home we stopped by the A.K. Smiley library. 

I admired the old library when I used to work in Redlands. Our favorite was the stained glass windows in the children's room. We were looking for the Lincoln memorial that we had heard about.

We found out that it was a separate building out behind the library. This library/museum holds the most artifacts on Abraham Lincoln west of the Mississippi river. 

I can't believe I never realized it was even here. There was artwork, old journals and artifacts not only from Lincoln but from the Civil War. We enjoyed it.

We came back to our real life after that. Here is Ashley's picture the next morning of the boys at church.

And her picture of her and the dog.

Last Tuesday we fulfilled our assignment to teach the youth how to index. 

We focused on showing them how to index the names on the graves from the billiongraves.com website where we had uploaded the pictures from the national cemetery during Youth Conference.

Some of the youth were more into it than others but I was proud of all of them for trying hard. (It didn't help that computers would freeze)

We also gave them snacks and they played a bingo game while they were indexing for candy prizes.

The bingo squares had them look out for people that had served in a certain branch of the military, someone who had the same name as their family member, someone with their same birthday and so on.

This last Saturday was Mormal!! Jacob had a new suit and shirt straight from the tailors, he had his matching bow tie, a fresh haircut and fresh flowers. He was ready to go. 

Since Jeff was out of town in Utah (on a business trip he forgot he booked until the day before) and I was taking youth to the temple the Wolslegger family came and picked Jacob up on the way to meet their daughter for pictures.

Her dad told Jacob he had something to show him in the back of the car.

A little reminder for Jacob to remember to treat his daughter right. 

Which of course he did ;)   They had fun going in a big group all together in a stretch Hummer limo.  I'm waiting for Nicole's (his date) family to share their pictures with me so I can see how they looked together. 

While Jacob was at the dance. I was with the youth at the temple. This was Kate's first time going. 

Only two girls could make it  but they had a good time. 

It was a couple of the boy's first time going as well. It helps that we get In-n-Out on the way home ;)

It was a nice evening and I was happy to have Jeff back safe and sound that night.