February 2014

February was a pretty slow month for us (relatively speaking).  Highlights for February:

-We had the missionaries over for dinner.  Three of them! It's always nice to feed the missionaries, especially since I have two of my own brothers out on missions, so I hope the members there feed them well.

-Princess day at preschool:

The greatest thing about princesses is their dresses!

And of course, she had princess hair too!

-Death by Chocolate Night at the library.  Our Lyman library is pretty awesome, and I wanted to go to the Death By Chocolate night last year, but missed it.  So this year, I made a dessert--Polka Dot Bars--and loaded up the family to go to Death by Chocolate for FHE.  My dessert won, so I won $20.  Polka Dot Bars are the best! We ended up spending it all at the library that evening anyway, most of it on the cake walk for the kids, and some on a Death by Chocolate cookbook.  The library just had its budget cut, so it has no money to buy new books anymore.  I thought the money went to a good cause.

-The Sunday before Valentine's Day, we experimented with some fun V-day hair:

Hearts and flowers are the order of the day!

Look at those four cuties!

Heart french braids

Heart twists

Claire got a fancy fishtail with baby's breath--doesn't look like much from the back...

Sweet.

-Random cuteness:

Gotta love those covered-in-food-asleep-in-the-high-chair moments!

-Ward Party-Soup and Salad night.  It was an adults only party and it was lots of fun, although there were about 20 soups and only 2 salads, so it was a little unbalanced that way, lol! It was nice to visit with a lot of the other adults in our ward.
 
-More Valentine's Day hair! As if I didn't have enough heads to experiment on the first time around...
Valentine's Day actually fell on a Friday this year, but we did V-day hair on Thursday since there is no school on Friday. 

Hallie got a side-part whole-head heart, and Claire got 5 twisty hearts.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Pretty heart braids!

-Finally, the real Valentine's Day came.  Rob had been cooking something up with the girls all week, and on Friday night, I finally found out what it was:

A candle-lit dinner for two in our sitting room.  The girls were our "waitresses" and they helped Dad get everything set up.  Hallie made a bunch of paper heart chains like the one on the piano and they were our decorations.  So cute!

Hallie played us a song on the piano for our entertainment during our meal.

Our watiresses.  They were so cute!

-And my contribution for Valentine's Day.  The girls and I made chocolate dipped strawberries and peanut butter bon-bons.  Yum! We had so much that we took plates over to the Lunds, the Olsons, and the Hunzikers to share!

-Ever since we moved into our house, we have known that at some point we would need to install a tub in our master bathroom.  We only have one tub in our whole house, and it is in the main bathroom.  Also, it is the smallest tub I have ever been in.  A regular, full-size adult cannot take a bath in it.  It's so shallow and narrow that it isn't comfortable at all.  Rob's shoulders cannot even fit in it, and I can't get comfortable in it either--and I'm a pretty small person!

After last hunting season, both Rob and I agreed that a tub was definitely a must have within the next few months.  We used to have a nice huge built-in dresser in our bathroom which was about the right size for a tub, so we ripped it out and Rob started construction on this little beauty.  It took him about a week from start to finish to get the new tub set, plumbed, and tiled.  Didn't he do a great job? I love it! This tub definitely gets a lot of use!

The most politically correct way to show the joy that is derived from the use of our tub!

 -Claire lost her first top tooth--Hallie ripped it out after it had been hanging by a thread for a while.  Dad had tried pulling it lots of times, and so it was a surprise when Hallie just yanked it right out!

Hallie: the Tooth Puller!

 -And lastly, we got rid of Tank.  It had been a long, long time coming, but I was just sick of him peeing and pooping in my house.  Also, he started chewing on the spines of books (infuriating!!) and I was so done anyway, that we just decided it was time for him to go.  He wasn't a bad dog, in many ways he was a perfect dog, but I just couldn't do it anymore.  I don't think I'm much of a pet person.  There is a nice older lady in our ward named Carolyn Harsha who just recently had to have her dog put down and she is very lonely, so we offered Tank to her.  I think he is the perfect dog for her since he loves to cuddle and that is what she was missing.  I hope he is happy there. 

-The last week of February was mostly spent packing and preparing for our trip.  On the last day of February, we left to drive to California for our Mexican Riviera Cruise!! What a blast! The girls missed one week plus one day of school, but it was totally worth it.  We had a fabulous family vacation!