You win some, you lose some

good idea:
Telling the kids they'd get their German pancakes after they finished their spinach smoothies.




bad idea:
Checking the long range (April/May) forecast on this snowy "spring" day--colder and wetter than normal. Kill me now.

Good idea:
Bagging my weight-lifting plan in order to spin and chat with Laura for an hour.

Bad idea:
Waiting for 60 minutes to run dry boots to Seth at school. They kind of forgot about him and by the time I got there, he'd been hanging out in the nurse's room OUT OF CLASS for almost 2 hours. I can just picture him, oblivious and chatting, as each new person came in. Why would it not have occurred to him to wonder why he was not in class all morning??

Good idea:
--learning time with Faith. Best 20 minutes of my day. Especially when she points at a hexagon and says "hey! That's a hexagon...I leawned it from Abbyth Flying Faiwy Thchool."




Bad idea:
--deciding to pay my kids' allowances/babysitting money. Without going into detail it revealed one child's ridiculous over-spending habits, another's losing $ habits, and one's tendency to borrow without asking and not pay back. Disturbing 30 minutes at the Romney house. Someone tell me they won't be homeless and broke someday?

Good idea:
-/making this dish for dinner: http://www.marthastewart.com/354733/spaghetti-savoy-cabbage-and-breadcrumbs



seems like a bad idea but was actually a good one:
--middle school band concert. Those kids are GOOD.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Hawaii Recap! Yay us!

 

It’s probably obnoxious to have any negatives when you are discussing your trip to Hawaii, so let’s just do those first:

LOWLIGHTS:

1.  Rain.  It was the worst weather in a decade.  Isn’t that sad for us?  You probably heard about it on the news.  Because I come from a rainy area, it really bummed me out that my Hawaii trip was rainy. (Here’s us, in the rain, at Pearl Harbor, where we couldn’t go out to the USS Arizona Memorial, due to rain.)

 

2.  How dang expensive everything in Hawaii is.  $15 for a bowl of oatmeal at my hotel?  Seriously?!

3.  How far our (awesome) resort was from anything.  It just meant we had to pay a bunch of extra taxi money to get to the bus/tram to sight see.

4.  Our airplane’s windshield cracking, the resulting delay, missed flight and overnight stay in Seattle.  It was kind of excruciating to be in the Hawaii airport for 6 hours without getting to enjoy the long-awaited sunshine.

 

HIGHLIGHTS:

(There are much more of these)

1.  Spending 5 straight days with Ryan.  I love that guy and don’t get enough time with him and I LOVED not having to share him with anything else.

2.  The GORGEOUS resort we stayed in.  Ryan was awarded this trip at work (because he’s awesome) and his company treated us SO well.  The pool, beach, restaurants, dolphins, room were all just amazing.

 

3.  The Polynesian Cultural Center.  I loved every minute we were there (okay, except for the dinner…not so good).  There was such a neat feeling there and I loved the grounds and the shows and all the stuff we learned.

 

4. Eating sushi 4 times.  I feel like I know it now and I am officially a fan.

5.  The weather perking up the last 2 days.  I got to run my long run for the week (15 miles) and it was while I was running that the sun came out and stayed out.  We vegged on the beach the whole day.

6.  Meeting up with our friends from home.  It was fun to hang out with them 5000 miles from our little Washington town.

7. The tour we took of the LDS temple in Laie.  I was overcome with the beauty of the building and the truth that families really can be together forever.

8.  The pineapple.

Writing about it makes me sad it’s over, especially on this dreary day in Eastern Washington.  It was so dreamlike and we were so lucky to get to have those days together.

Fun February

No wonder February seemed nuts. Look at all the stuff we did:

14 days of valentines 2012:

Lunch dates

Strawberry crepes for breakfast

Treats and Valentines shopping at Target

Making Candy pops

Valentine shirts (self-timered this one, can you tell?)

Family Ice skating (MUCH more fun now that Seth can kind of skate solo)

The famous Parfaits

Cookie decorating with the neighbors

Gabe was busy too. He was skiing with the neighbors:

competing in his 3rd Math is Cool competition (they took 2nd place):

and doing his China Fair project:

We had playgroup at our house. The theme was art, so here they are scultping masterpieces from edible playdough (thank you Pinterest):

We had birthdays:

Emma’s was a little low key, but considering we’ve spent every Saturday for two months building, painting, sanding, hanging, shopping and sewing for her new teenage room…I’m not feeling too bad.

She had coffee cake for breakfast, Papa Murphy’s pizza for lunch and the big old Costco chocolate cake to share with the Daines during present opening:

We are getting SO close on that room. I can’t wait to show it on the blog, soon!

Ryan had his usual super low-key birthday. He asked for a lunchdate with me and Faith:

and breakfast for dinner

and NO presents because…

We bought a Honda Pilot. It looks like this,

but this isn’t ours because I’m too lazy to go downstairs, and take a picture.

It was a little crazy because it all came about in less than 36 hours. I really had planned on doing a humerous post on our 9 year old, cracked windshielded, duct taped sided, broken seat-belted, broken dashboarded, horrible smelling, 185,000 milesed van, just so I could document the trash can I drove around in. It had started worrying us and we didn’t want to pay to fix it when we planned on purchasing one in the fall and within a day Ryan found this screaming deal on this 2 year old decked-out Pilot. Errands are fun again. The whole family pinches ourselves when we get to load up in that glorious thing.

We also did one-on-one dates with Jane and Seth:

Jane wanted to go skating again and some nice lady walked up and gave us two free tickets. Nice!

Plus also, it was super sunny and basically having along time with each kid is, like, the most genius parenting trick ever.

Seth did breakfast and then did the Home Depot workshop with Ryan:

And, finally, this totally random shot of Seth’s Valentine’s box, because I REALLY had to improve on the embarrassment that was Jane’s box last year (see this post, if you’re interested). Again, thank you, Pinterest.

So that was February. I think every single picture on this page had red, pink or something sugary to eat in it. The next post will have something blue (sky, water), tan (skin, sand) and more treats to eat because….we leave for Hawaii in less than 48 hours. Yay for alone, warm, couple time!

Belated Birthday Tributes

Recently, two people have commented to me regarding my February birthday buddies and I thought that the quotes kind of exemplified those two people that I’m lucky enough to be living with.  We’ll let them speak for themselves:

About Emma, who turned into a TEENAGER on February 12th, her Young Women’s leader said “That girl has everything I would want in a daughter.”  (Aren’t I lucky, that I get that girl for my daughter?!)

And on February 28th, when Ryan’s sister Heather came over with birthday wishes and presents, she related the following conversation that she’d had with her daughter Courtney, age 5: 

Heather:  “What should we get Ryan for his birthday?  What does he really like?”

Courtney:  “Well, he really likes kids!”

 

(It just speaks volumes that that was the first thing she thought of…he’s always taking time to pay attention to, and interact with, the kids in the room.  He is fun and gentle and aware of others.)

WE LOVE YOU, RYAN AND EMMA!