Kids

We've definitely had our fair share of snow this year!  The kids had so much fun playing with their friends on the piles of snow in our backyard.  I'm sure they could have sledded down the stairs.  It's nuts!

 I've been working on scanning all of my parents slides from when I was a baby.  The kids were curious about how slides worked, so my parents brought in the slide projector and we watched slides for our FHE tonight.  I laughed when we turned on the projector and immediately they were standing in the light to make shadows.  It brought me back to when we would do that.  I love seeing them do things that I grew up doing. 

Note: I submitted my application to be a casual Educational Assistant at the Elementary School on the 24th.  Yikes!  I volunteer there enough that I might as well get paid for it now!

Quick Trip

Lennard had a follow up appointment in Calgary for his wrist today, so we decided to make a mini-vacation out of it and go up the night before!  We booked a room at the Port O'Call Hotel and headed up!  The kids were SO excited to sleep in a hotel... but even more exciting was that it had a pool with waterslides!  We had dinner at the Olive Garden and then took the kids swimming.  Unfortunately, the pool was really cold!  We didn't last very long, but the hot tub warmed us all up afterwards.

Emma had a rough night getting to sleep.  It was too dark, then she wasn't close enough, then she wanted to sleep with me.  It was extremely frustrating, but eventually she finally fell asleep after we turned on the bathroom light.

The next morning after having breakfast at the hotel, we headed to IKEA.  The kids played at their play place for about an hour before they got bored and we had to go get them.

Lennard had his appointment with Dr. White booked for 12:30, but it took forever for him to be seen.  The kids did so well waiting, but we hadn't eaten ahead of time (thinking it would be a quick appointment).  I finally gave up waiting and took the kids down to the hospital cafeteria and got some food.

Unfortunately, the appointment didn't turn out as we'd hoped.  Apparently, his wrist still isn't healed completely.  Grrr!  He was told is has basically stalled at about 60-70% and that our options are to (1) just leave it (which the bone could be displaced or he could have complications down the road), (2) have surgery to take the screw out and pack it with fresh bone to hope it will then heal or (3) use a bone regeneration machine for three months and see if that will help it heal.

 Since we are booked to go to Nauvoo this summer, he really didn't want to do surgery, but thought we might have to.  When we went and talked with the doctor again, he suggested Lennard try the bone regeneration machine first and then see.  Lennard is quite frustrated with the whole situation.

We finally headed home at 5:00pm!  What a super long day!

Family Day

We had such a wonderful Family Day today.  We got the opportunity to attend the temple and do sealings with my parents and four of my siblings and their spouses.  We had two rooms going - one with my parents, Uncle Scott, his daughter Loural and her husband and Mindy & Dan; then the other had us, Shauna & Matt, Melissa & Mike and Roger & Trisha.  It was such a great way to spend the morning.  Both Lennard and I were brought to tears and we sat and listened to the promises and blessings given as couples were sealed together and children were sealed to their parents.  What an incredible opportunity to be able to participate in this work. 

An huge added bonus for the day is when Emma decided that she could handle being with the rest of her cousins out at my parents house (without an adult)!  For her, that is huge!  A number of my nieces and nephews are old enough to babysit, but usually she absolutely refuses to go if there won't be an adult.  Another huge breakthrough was when she went with my brother and his kids this morning instead of us having to drive her out there!  It feels like there just might be a little light at the end of the tunnel!  She did so good all morning too!  She was happy when we got there and she was upbeat about getting to play with her cousins!  Hooray!  Ben is so easy going that I sometimes think I forget to write about him.  He was absolutely fine going and was just glad to get to watch a movie and play with his cousins.  He didn't care how he got there or who was watching him... as long as there was a movie!  ha! ha!

We had a delicious roast beef dinner afterwards and got to sit and visit with everyone that was there.  We didn't stay too long after the dinner, as Lennard wanted to take the chance to plow out the airport while the Town machinery wasn't in use today.  There is SO much snow that it ended up taking him WAY longer than he thought it would take.  It didn't even get completely done in the almost five hours he was out there, but it's better than nothing!

The kids and I had a lazy afternoon and watched a couple movies together.  Emma played with her dolls some of the time and Ben played a few games on the PS4.  It was a perfect 'family' day.

Family Date

We try to take the kids out on a one-on-one date once a month, but with the crazy weather we've had it hasn't been safe to drive at night.  We decided to have a 'family' date instead.  Lennard had gone in to work at 5:00 am to move snow, so he got home just after lunch.  We headed in to Lethbridge to get groceries, but first took the kids mini-golfing and to get frozen yogurt.  It was a good thing we had the place to ourselves because we are not golfers!  It got a little wild, but it was lots of fun!  ha! ha!

Emma loved getting to try all the different kinds of yogurt and toppings, while Ben wanted vanilla... with sprinkles!  What a funny boy.  It was a great day and we were able to get home in the daylight.  Thankfully, the roads were okay, but we're supposed to be getting lots more snow, so I was glad we were able to stock up on some groceries too!

RS Valentine's Day Dinner

As an Enrichment committee, we decided that since our Relief Society activity night fell on Valentine's Day, that we'd do a dinner for couples!  We thought we might be lucky to get 75-80 people, but when the sign up sheet went around we ended up with over 125 signed up!  It has been a very busy month trying to get everything planned, prepped and set up.  We spent a few hours Tuesday night getting all the tables and chairs set up and the linens and centerpieces put on.  Thankfully, one of our committee members owns a wedding decorating business and she allowed us to use her decor for the dinner!  It doesn't really show much in the picture, but it was really cute.

 All day long today I ran from one thing to another.  It was quite a crazy day!  I ended up getting called to see if I could help out in Ben's class for an hour and, for some reason, I said yes.  I was getting messages while I was at the school for other errands that I needed to do! 

As soon as I was done at the school, I went down to Extra Foods and got more carrots (I was worried that we wouldn't have enough).  I then dropped off more olive oil to Sara who was cooking all the chicken and had run out of oil.  I got home, peeled and chopped the other 10 lbs of carrots that I'd just bought and then took all 40 lbs of carrots over to Shannon's so that she could cook them for us.  She's not on the committee, but was gracious enough to use her double ovens and help out!

I then had to get six pans of rice ready to go in the oven before I got everything else loaded into the van so that I could take it to the church.  Unfortunately, a blizzard had blow in this afternoon, so I ended up having to shovel sidewalks first so that I could unload!  I got everything unloaded and before long we were in the thick of things!  We were trying to keep rice warm in the ovens, while getting the chicken and sauce reheated (while blowing breakers, etc), cutting and heating up the bread, plating desserts, making salads, etc.  It was a zoo!!  Thankfully, some of the sisters arrived early and came in to help!  We just about had a disaster when one of the sisters turned the ovens up and we just about had a fire when the parchment paper on the bread got quite scorched.  We couldn't use some of the bread as it got burnt, but we managed to get enough for each table.

We started only a few minutes late and it went really well!  We had everything in large roasters, so as long as we were careful not to plug two in at the same time, we were okay!  We fed about 130 people and even had enough for people to come get seconds!  We did learn an important lesson about rice... it triples when cooked.  We had LOTS left over!  ha! ha!

 We had a short program after the dinner.  Don Pierson sang, Jill Heninger played a song on the piano and Shawn & Linda Olsen sang.   It was just the right thing to end the evening.

Thankfully, we didn't have to take any of the chairs or tables down since there is a Stake Appreciation dinner tomorrow night (that we get to go to).  Clean up went fairly smoothly.  We'd used real dishes and silverware for the dinner, so we had lots of washing up to do, but we were home before 10:00!  Everyone that talked to me seemed to really enjoy the evening.  I'm grateful so many came out even with the rotten weather.  It made it worth the effort!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The kids were SO excited to give out their homemade Valentine's gifts that they were up and going before 6:00 am!  Emma had bags with candies and little notes for each of us.

Ben's gift from Emma

 Ben gave each of us notes.

 We helped write them for him and he signed his name. (If he'd had more time, he would have written them himself.)

 I love that they were so excited to give each other gifts... and that they thanked each other this way!

Ben decided that he needed to 'dress fancy' for Valentine's day at school.  He's quite the little ladies man!  He sure melts my heart!