Queen of Hearts

Happy Valentines Day!

Today was a heart-filled day.  I love valentines day!  I don't think it is a day made for Hallmark or anything along those lines.  I think valentines day is a great day to do to celebrate love and show it differently than you do all year long.  

So, today I showed the men in my life a little love with...

Pancakes!

Pink, heart Pancakes says I love you like nothing else on V-Day!!

Couldn't do it without my trusty pancake pen!! 

So, what do you do all day on Feb. 14?  Well my boy wanted to go visit their grammy!  While we were there they wanted to play in the water!?!?!?! I know it was warm mid/low 70ish but, the water was cold!  It did not stop them from playing in it for an entire hour!  They are crazy!

We eventually put the slide in the little pool and even the big boys joined in on that fun.  I however tried to stay as far away as possible because I did not want to get wet!

For the past two weeks we have been preparing for Valentines day by making lots of Valentines (the homemade kind and store bought) as well as making valentines treats and playing heart attack on almost a daily basis.  A heart attack for those of you who don't know is when you cut out LOTS of hearts and you stick them everywhere at someones house.  I however took that idea and made heart attacks a hide and seek game.  I would hide hearts everywhere while the kids were playing in another room and then they would get to find as many hearts as possible.  They LOVE this game!  But on Valentines day, we decided we wanted to Heart Attack Grammy since we would be going over there.  (I called Grammy ahead of time so she knew and did not come out while we were surprising her) I talked with all the kids on the car ride over and explained how to heart attack someone.  I told them we had to be very sneaky by being very quiet and put hearts everywhere.  They were so excited, and so as soon as we got there I handed everybody a stack of hearts (i'm guessing we had about 80ish) and we all started to sneak around the front yard to put the hearts everywhere.  The big boys did an amazing job!  The two babies decided they did not want to put down their hearts, instead they started to pick up all the big boys hearts!-)  It was so funny, so I had to explain to the babies (who are not really babies, they are both 2) that they had to 'hide' the hearts.  They finally got into the mood and helped us hide the hearts and everybody was super sneaky about it!  When we placed the last heart, we rang the doorbell and shouted "Happy Valentines Day!"  Then, all the kids decided that since they said Happy Valentines Day, that the surprise was over so they all RAN as fast as they could to pick up as many hearts as possible!  The point to this story was two-fold.  First to explain why I have no pictures of our beautiful heart attack job.  And secondly to take a second and appreciate and laugh about how kids brains work.  With a real heart attack the attacker does not pick up the hearts for the attackee.  But while explaining the rules to my kids I was so focused on getting the kids to be sneaky I forgot to mention that this heart attack is not like the game heart attack that we have been playing for the last 2 weeks and so... we were very nice attackers and picked up our mess 2 seconds after we made it.  Oh well, at least Grammy knew where our intentions lay!

We did however, successfully Heart Attack their Grampy and Uncle Bryce.  On our way home for the day we stopped by and attacked the front door of their apartment to show them how much we love them!  And in the picture you can see not only did we use hearts in our attack but we also used homemade valentines.

Arlo was super grumpy because I made him come back up the steps to take a picture. I know I can be a mean mom even on valentines day!

I then dropped off my kids at our church because our Young Women's provided free babysitting today and then took my daycare kids home.  When I got home Timmy and I were going to spend the time we had to work on our house.  I know, not very romantic on the day of love, but in our defense we really need to get moving on our house.  We have been living in it for over 3 months now and still do not have a single picture up or our back patio cleared of moving boxes and we are ready to be settled!  So, when I got home we got to work on the boxes on the patio and after a few minutes we decided to bag the working idea and go to dinner.  And a wonderful kid free dinner it was!

So, that pretty much sums up our Valentines Day!  My heart is so full of love it will last me until next year's V-day!-) 

Before, I sign off on this post a few other pictures real quick!

 The other day I lost a stone out of my band and so I had to take it in to get fixed.  When I got it back it was so beautiful and sparkly I had to take a picture and show off my husbands good taste for like the millionth time!

And finally, we went to Sea Life the other day and here are some cute pics from that.  It is so exciting, because we will be taking our boys to Hawaii this year and it was so fun to show them all the things they will be seeing when we go snorkeling!  Now they can not wait to go!

 (Sorry, I could not fix the red eye in this one!)

Our White Christmas

Where did December go?  I have no idea!  But it went way too fast!  And now Christmas has come and gone and my boys are already asking for presents for next year!  They are so funny.

Here are our Christmas lights!  I am so proud of them, they may not look like much but they were put up, taken down, put back up and taken back down all by ME!  Why, you ask??? Because, I started on the right side of the house and hung them to the middle where the outlets are, then I started on the left side of the house and hung them towards the middle and then when I went to connect the strands in the middle... they were the wrong connection ends.  So, I had to take them down and hang them back up so I could plug them in.  That is alright though because it was a rookie mistake.  Next year I will not make that mistake, but next year I bought about another 15+ strands of lights for my yard during the day after christmas sales!!!! YAY!!!  I love Christmas lights!

And here is a picture of us with our tree after it's been decorated.  There is nothing better in the world than putting up our Christmas tree listening to Christmas music, drinking hot coco and talking about where and when we got each ornament on our tree.  The boys love looking at their ornaments from previous years and buying their ornament for this year.  They love it so much that this next year we are going to have to re-buy a few ornaments because the boys loved them so hard, they broke;-)  But this tradition, is by far my favorite!!!

Here is Arlo's Christmas letter to Santa.  He told me what to write and I wrote it verbatim!  He was so cute, and so excited.  The next 5+ Christmases are going to be the best because of Arlo's and Cohen's excitement in and for Santa and all that comes with the Santa package!  The best part about his letter to Santa is that after we sent it to Santa Claus, North Pole, Arlo actually got a REAL letter back from Santa!  I could not believe it! 

Here is a video of the boys looking for Rudy, our Elf on the Shelf.  I tell you, we may be late in the game for an Elf on the Shelf, but Rudy was a miracle worker.  All I had to do was threaten to go tell Rudy about a behavior and it was instantly fixed!  I am thinking about asking Rudy to come back to our house every month (or as needed) so Santa can keep tabs on these boys all year long!!!!!

Here is Arlo with Santa at our ward Christmas Party.  He asked Santa for a red camera and an American flag.  Cohen was to scared to go any where close to Santa.  Maybe next year!

These next few pictures are the after math of our pre-Christmas family Christmas.  Since we were going to Utah for Christmas, we invited over all my family (Grammy, Grampy, Papa, Uncle Bryce, Uncle Levie and Family and Grandma and Grandpa GG) to our new house for a Christmas dinner and opening presents from each other so we would not have to wait till after new year for their Christmas.  Well, it was wonderful, the boys got more presents from grandmas and grandpas then they did from Santa Claus (almost).  And needless to say, these boys are loved and SPOILED!!!!!!  I didn't get enough pictures from this night and I am totally bummed about it.  But here is one I did get and then the rest are of Arlo and his bike the next day!

Grammy and PaPa got the boys their own Nabi (kid tablet), guns and swords!  They know how to win their way into little boy's hearts!!!

Arlo got a new bike with pedals and without training wheels and Cohen got a cool 3-wheeled, green scooter from their Grampy! (Videos available of them riding these presents on New Years blog!)

Here is another Christmas tradition... our annual visit to the Mesa Arizona LDS Temple Christmas Lights!  They are so beautiful and a great way to teach my boys about the true meaning of Christmas!  We also used these pics for our Christmas Cards!-)

And finally....

Christmas Morning!!!!

And it would not be Christmas without a little bit of snow... I mean A LOT of snow!!!

The rest of these pictures are from our Christmas Utah trip.  My boys love coming to Utah and playing with their 16 cousins and Aunts and Uncles!  We have a blast!  Also, I would like to give Jen, Rex and Family a BIG thank you for letting us crash your house year after year!  We appreciate it and love you!

As you can see, we spent a lot of our time sitting, eating and talking around their kitchen!

We also went bowling!

And we went to the Natural History Museum to see... you guessed it DINOSAURS!!!!

Here is a few pics of the 18 cousins!

And to finish up this Christmas blog, here is my beautiful, big boy singing his favorite Christmas Carol!