Blue and Gold Banquet

Tonight was the blue and gold banquet and the scout cake auction. I was baking like crazy at my house because we have 3 boys with cakes to make. As we were looking for cakes, I found this great idea where you auction off a cake to be thrown at the scoutmaster and cubmaster. So, I figured what's two more cakes......and before you know it, I was baking 5 cakes! Chris is Scoutmaster and he graciously agreed to be attacked! I think he just wanted to eat cake!
Brother Orton, our cubmaster, was a good sport too and agreed to be plastered with cake after I ran the idea by his wife and she accepted for him! Between the two cakes that were thrown, we made an additional $60 for the boys.
Joshua's bowling alley cake sold for $25

Samuel's Gummy Bear Olympics cake sold to us for $35

And we also bought back Caleb's aquarium cake for his birthday tommorow for $40. The boys had a great time and of course they loved eating the cake most of all! Stay tuned for more scout stuff.....the pinewood derby is tommorow!

So this is what happens when a six year old gets the camera.....

There were about 20 pics of this video that Savannah just checked out from the library and has watched non-stop since she got it!And LOTS of extremely flattering self-portraits!

Happy Valentine's Day

Our day started late with a chance to sleep in till NINE O'CLOCK which is unheard of in this house! Chris had a "computer campout at our house Friday night, so we had 12 boy scouts loudly playing video games in our basement all night and didn't get much sleep. After a drowsy Saturday trying to run kids everywhere they needed to be, we definitely enjoyed the extra rest and have never been so thankful for late church! While we slept, Cupid came and sprinkled our table with hearts, which has become a fun family tradition. Shelby went out on her Valentine's date Saturday night with Chris (yes, she is dating someone with the same name as her father....strange, I KNOW!). I love how the "Return with Honor" quote stands out in the background!

Chris and I went out for Italian food Saturday night and enjoyed a little bit of alone time while Joshua passed off a Faith in God goal by entertaining his little sister for the evening. All in all, it was a very nice Valentine's Day at our home!

But WAIT.....There's MORE!!!!

Yes, MORE SNOW is what we woke up to this morning! Actually it was just lightly snowing when I took the kids to seminary, and although it was sticking to the neighborhood streets, it wasn't a problem on the main roads. I went to workout and then came back to pick up Caleb and bring him home. Shelby got on the bus and headed to school and Caleb and I came home (his school has a later start time, so he gets to come home for an hour and get ready for school). After my shower, this is what it looked like outside! While Chris and I were debating whether or not he should drive Caleb to school, our local school system called a 2 hr. delay for all the elementary and middle schools. Because Caleb goes to a Governor's School, it is not bound by the local school system. There are 13 school districts that feed into his school. We realized that if Chris drove him to school, there may not be a bus to bring him home since our local district would probably turn around on the freeway if road conditions got too bad. So we decided to keep him home. Obviously a good decision because about 20 minutes later our school district abandoned the 2 hr. delay and closed all un-opened schools for the day. A few minutes later, Caleb's school closed too. So I now have four giddy, excited kids home with me for the day and one very disgruntled teenager who feels life is extremely unfair because I will not drive to school and pick her up NOW. Needless to say, school really is the safest place for her to be right now! Being on the roads would be a mess!

In other exciting news, Caleb is now the proud parent of EIGHT baby fish! He used some of his Christmas money to set up an old fish tank and furnish it with a few fish. He can only add two at a time, so on the evening after he added his second set of fish, he noticed babies swimming around. He gathered them into our "nursery tank" and is feeding them crushed fish food. He is proving to be a very good "daddy"!

And The Snow Kept on Fallin'

The kids were actually ready to go back to school on Thursday after missing the first half of the week due to our last snowstorm. (And I have to admit to being ready to see them go, myself!) After a delayed start, they were able to get in 4 hrs. of school that day. I spent the day scouring every store I could think of for snow gear because the weather man was forecasting another major winter storm for the weekend. I was far from successful, but did find a pair of snow boots for Savannah. By the time the kids got home from school Thursday, Chris had called and said that his work was closed on Friday due to the coming storm. We teased the kids that they still had to go to school, but dad's work was cancelled!

Friday morning we woke up to no snow and no school cancellations. I took Shelby and Caleb to seminary and then headed to the YMCA with Joshua to work out. As soon as we stepped on the treadmills, the school cancellation scrolled across the TV screen. So all the poor kids had to go to seminary but not school!

By 10:00 am Friday, the snow was coming down in big heavy flakes. I took Joshua, Samuel, Caleb and Savannah on a 2 mile walk through the snow to McDonald's. I figured if they could walk there, they deserved to eat lunch out! Plus it helped use up some of their wild and crazy energy! One of Caleb's friends met us there and we had a great time! Over night the snow turned to rain which helped keep our accumulations down, but also created a sheet of ice underneath the snow that fell Saturday morning. Still, it is beautiful!

My poor Valentine's Day flag has yet to show itself off without snow freezing it together!

The bushes are collapsing from the weight of ice and snow. We may be re-landscaping whether we want to or not come spring!

Samuel and Savannah turned my snowman into a fox, but I think it looks more like an alien!

And church is cancelled for the second week in a row! Isn't it convenient that these two weeks were the weeks that my family was scheduled to clean the building?!!! No complaints here!

Fun in the Snow

Two days after our snowstorm and none of my kids had made a snowman, so I had to take matters into my own hands and build one! The snow was surprisingly easy to work with. Just for Savannah, I dressed him all in pink! Chris made the following disparaging comment about my snowman.....

"Aren't snowmen supposed to be made out of round balls?"

He was lucky that I didn't HIT HIM with a ROUND BALL!!!!

Josh and Savannah layered up in several sets of clothes to keep warm and took turns pulling the twins down the street in the sled. I love this picture of them walking home.

I was kind enough to let them pose with MY SNOWMAN even though they didn't make it.....well, Savannah DID put in the arms and made the face, so I guess it was okay!

And this is what our road looks like on Day 3 following the snowstorm. We were lucky enough to have a construction crew bring a grader in late tonight to scrape the road a bit, but basically it has now left it a white sheet of ice! The kids are out of school again tommorow, so it looks like we have at least one more snow day to play around!