Sweets & a Sock Hop... just another busy week!

Last night was Drew's Blue & Gold Banquet and the theme was 50's Sock Hop so we all dressed up... like we all LOVE to to do! I borrowed my friend's poodle skirt and the boys were all "Greaser's", which gave Will an opportunity to wear his "Mut" jacket that we got him for his birthday (Mut is Indiana Jones' son for those of you not familiar...). Drew & Jeff made and decorated a guitar cake to sell at the cake auction, which raises money for scout family camp. We ended up buying back his cake for $80. The boys were SOOO excited that we bought back the cake! It was funny! As if anyone else would ever spend $80 for a cake! (We looked at it as a charitable contribution.)

This was our last activity with Pack 4444, as I made the difficult decision to move Drew into the neighborhood scout troop so that he could start going with his friends from school. We have loved our time with Pack 4444 over the past 18 months so it was really hard to move, but hopefully it will be a good move for our family.

On Thursday our neighbor's Becky & Blake joined Will & I on a tour of the Sweet's Candy Factory with his preschool class. It was so much fun! They made you wear funny hats as they took you through every step in the candy making process, complete with free candy samples along the way. My favorite was trying the jelly beans before they put the hard shell on them... they were covered in powdered sugar and so yummy! My next favorite was trying the peach salt water taffy fresh from the assembly line! It was so soft and chewy! We ended up buying a ton of candy as we left... now our house is full of temptation!
I would highly recommend this tour to any parent out there who is looking for something fun to do with their kids while they're off track... it was free and the kids get candy! How cool is that!?!

Mardi Gras!

We celebrated Mardi Gras with Kelly & Danny and their boys last night and it was a BLAST! We started the evening by decorating our own masks and then feasted on the best chicken & sausage gumbo and cornbread ever! As we ate, Jeff entertained us by reading a book about Mardi Gras to the boys and teaching them about the holiday. For dessert we had King's Cake, of course!

I baked a baby in the cake and the person who found it in their piece got to be the "King/Queen of the Mardi Gras" and lead the parade!

Fortunately for us all, Jeff found the baby in his cake. He did an amazing job leading us all around the house as we danced to Mardi Gras music. He really played it up and the boys all loved following him around and mimicking his actions! He had us all shakin' our booties on the fireplace at one point! It was great!

Will and I spent the day making the yummy King's Cake. It's not quite the same as the "real" thing, but it's so good, no one seemed to mind that it wasn't authentic.

I am so thankful for my friendship with Kelly and I love that she loves doing these fun little celebrations as much as I do! We make a great party planning pair! We've started some really great traditions together! And to think, it all started with Momschool!

More bragging about my boys...

Drew's elementary school was the lucky recipient of an art grant from the Utah legislature which provided funding for a dance teacher. It's an awesome program that strives to teach kids math, science, English, history and more, through the art of dance and movement. Last night we were able to see Drew and his classmates perform at a special "Gallery Walk" at his school. They did a "dance" with "shape-shifters" (that's what Drew called them... they were just big rubber bands) illustrating all the geometrical shapes they could make with their bodies and their prop.

It was so cool to watch! And I'm such a sucker for cool new ways to teach kids things... I totally started tearing up because I thought it was so cool and such an amazing opportunity for these kids! I just love learning and I know that cool things like this will encourage my boys to love learning too!

Speaking of loving learning... My star reader Will earned his Alphabet Crown at preschool which means he knows all his upper and lower case letters and their phonetic sounds.... well, duh! We already knew that! He's known that stuff forever it seems! Still, it was special to be recognized at school with a special crown:) He's such a smarty-pants, I just know he's going to love school because it all just seems to come so naturally for him.

Great job boys! Keep up the great work!!

My love list...

I've been inspired by Kelly yet again! In honor of Valentine's day, she posted a list of all the things she loves, and I think it was an awesome idea! So, (like most of my ideas)... I'm going to copy it and do a love list of my own:

THINGS I LOVE:

1) Laughing with my family... their laughter cheers me up, no matter what kind of mood I'm in.

2) Running on the treadmill while watching Planet Earth DVD's and listening to Fall Out Boy on my iPod; such a great feeling!

3) Sunny days! Even if it's cold out, I just LOVE the sun!

4) Finding old friends on facebook and going out to lunch or dinner with them to catch up... wondering why we lost touch in the first place.

5) My new neighbors across the street. I couldn't have asked for better neighbors if I'd hand-picked them myself... they are everything I've ever hoped for in neighbors!

6) Snuggling with my boys in the morning before we get up to face the day. A good snuggle-time always ensures a good day! And then snuggling again before bed as we read books together... a good snuggle is ALWAYS welcome!

7) Funny dreams! The ones where you wake up and wonder "what the heck was I thinking?" For example, I totally dreamed I was hanging out with Troy and Gabriella (HSM) in a hotel room while we waited for Jeff's cousin Stacey to have a baby... Gabriella and I even found some cookies that were only 13 calories each, so we ordered them through room-service. I just love crazy dreams like that!

8) Silence... it feels so good sometimes, especially when I'm alone. I think so much clearer:)

9) Singing out loud! It just makes me feel good... even though I have an awful voice... I still just love to sing!

10) Smiling in photos. I've never been a "face-puller", I just like to smile!

11) Scrapbooking.... I love the feeling of finishing a page that tells a story about an event or person. The more photos I can fit on a page the better. I would rather embellish with photos than stickers and such. It just feels so good to put a story together on a two-page spread.

12) Edamame; for some reason I have to eat some every day-- I crave it!

13) Checking off things on my to do list... sometimes I'll even write things down after I've done them, just so I can check them off:)

14) Opportunities that allow you to focus on the positive and wonderful things in life. I LOVE THE POWER OF POSITIVITY!

I could go on and on, but I figure I'll stop at 14 in honor of Valentine's day being on the 14th of February:) But I will add one more thing that I love: I loved writing this list!

P.S. This photo is of the boys in the "Under-roos" we gave them for Valentine's day... I loved them when I was a kid so I thought the boys would love them too... and I was right... Will wore his for 3 days straight until Jeff made him take them off so he could wash them. The red lips are chocolates. So cute! When I was a little girl I always wanted a cute boy to be my Valentine... Now I have 3! How lucky can a girl get!

Drew's 8th Birthday!

Drew chose to have a dog party to celebrate his 8th Birthday and I'll tell you what... P. D. Eastman was definately on to something when he wrote "Go, Dog. Go!"... a dog party is a GREAT idea!
Drew and I sat down together and planned his party together and it was so fun to hear all his great ideas! He's very creative and when we put our heads together... fun, fun, fun was the result! We started the party with a hot dog dinner and all the boys decorated their own dog bowl. Then we played games centered around things dogs are good at... we had a smelling contest with all sorts of different smells, held a barking contest similar to charades, played a Go fetch! relay, and instead of a pinata, we filled a baby pool with shredded paper and candy, taped the boys thumbs (because dogs don't have thumbs) and let them dig for their treats.

It was total chaos and so much fun! We winded down to some doggy yoga and then watched "Space Buddies"...
The party could have/should have ended there, but call me crazy, the boys all slept (if that's what you can honestly call it?) over... I won't go into detail, but let's just say, we won't be having sleep-overs again anytime soon:) But what we'll ALWAYS remember is that Drew had an AWESOME 8th Birthday! I love him so much and am scared to death about him growing up too fast, but I am so proud of the young man he is becoming!

Family Values Nights...

We have been doing what we call "Family Values Nights" together since Drew and Will were very little. We made a family flag that we hang when it's time to begin, and we center our activities around values that are important to our family (honesty, integrity, responsibility, kindness, money management and more). Well, when Drew started scouts a few years ago, we found out there was a scouting badge and award that we could earn for doing these things, so we decided to work on it together as the focus of our family nights for 2008. It's called the Boy Scouts of America Family Award and there is a book with activity topics such as strengthening family relationships, developing personal strengths, teaching responsibility, handling difficult situations and more. We completed the book and were recognized for our work at Drew's cub scout pack meeting in January. It was a cool feeling to be standing there together as a family knowing how we'd been working together for this award for a year.

And now that we've completed that, this year I've decided to set another goal for our family values nights. We'll still focus on values that we feel are important to our family, but we're going to be learning about them as we celebrate the sacredness of the wheel of life and our connection to the earth. Our first celebration of the year was Brigit Eve which we celebrated while the rest of the world was watching the Super Bowl. We made snake candle holders, did a search for signs of spring in our yard and collected branches, berries and leaves to make Brigit dolls (an ancient Irish ritual), had a poetry dinner where we each shared our favorite poems, followed by bananas foster for dessert. (Brigit is the holiday from which Groundhog day stems.) It was a fun celebration and we look forward to more as the earth rotates around the sun:)