Date night

Christian & I had a date the other night. We went to go see the comedian, Brian Regan, who Christian has loved for a long time. He's very family friendly, which I love. We gave Christian 2 tickets for Christmas, and then Mike & I proceded to try to persuade him which parent he should take with him. He saw right through it, of course, and would play us off of each other. In the end, I scored the 2nd ticket since Mike ended up having church meetings. Darnit.

Before the concert, we had dinner at a nice restaurant. I taught him some restaurant/date etiquette, which every 13 yr old just loves. He was a good sport, though. The waitress even said, "Trust me ... your future dates will love your mom for this."

Tried to get a decent picture of us pre-concert, but right as I took the picture he would pull this face. Every time.

Adorable, isn't he? :)

Smarty pants

Well, she did it. Haley was in the top 3 kids of her class for the class spelling bee so she went on to the school spelling bee, which happened yesterday.  It started out with 36 kids and was quickly whittled down, round after round.  Haley stayed in the running by correctly spelling words like valetudinarian, filibuster, epidemiologist, pharmaceutical and asphyxiate.

Down to the final few...

Part of our cheering section -- the adorable Olsen girls, who are thankfully also our backyard neighbors. :)

Haley placed 3rd in the school, which means that she's off to the district spelling bee soon! She couldn't stop smiling.

And then she promptly had to let out a little steam by rockin' out with Sarah.

Family party

Being in an LDS ward means that you get very close to your neighbors. You see each other multiple times per week sometimes (with church and then weekly church activities), you serve in callings together and so get to know lots of different people that you may not know as well otherwise ... There's book group, play group, craft nights, movie nights, girls night out, etc.

So moving out of a ward is a big deal. We only moved a few blocks away, so we're technically in the same neighborhood ('ish) -- same school, same church stake -- but it still makes a big difference in who you see every week. And while we love our new house and have felt so welcomed by our new neighbors, we still miss our friends from our last neighborhood & ward. So what do you do when you miss someone? You find an excuse to get together!

The kids & I delivered invitations to everyone in our last ward and had a Family Night open house to see everyone. They all brought food to share and it was a fun night of yumminess, kids playing and adults staying and hanging out for the evening.

Loved the pile of shoes at the door. :)

I wish I'd taken pictures all evening because the crowd rotated and changed often. The kids were playing in every room in the basement -- hide & go seek seemed to be the favorite. We had about 70 people and wish we'd had more. We'll have to do it again this summer, bbq-style.

Alternative use for the hall banister...

Notice the ipod set up on the floor. It was quite the dance studio for awhile yesterday.

Nothing new to report

I've hit a blogging wall. I used to blog several times a week and lately I'm good if I blog every couple of weeks. What's my deal, people?

It's funny how much just hanging pictures on the walls makes a house feel like a home. I've had things leaning against the walls to figure out where I wanted to hang them, and now I'm making real holes in the walls to hang portraits of the kids and other cool things that I've been collecting over the years. For example ...

I'm not very scientific when I hang pictures, unfortunately. The first one up is easy -- I just eyeball it. The 2nd one is easy, too, but the others are definitely harder to hang evenly. Hence, this grouping has 2 pictures hung while the others wait patiently on the floor.

When Paige saw me hanging these up, she asked if we were having someone "freakishly large" over for dinner. :)  Mike isn't entirely won over by the giant silverware either but they make me happy every time I walk by them.

I am just barely taking the Christmas trees down today. Why has it taken me so long, you ask? Because I don't have enough furniture to fill this house and so taking the trees down has quite literally left some gaping holes in my decor. Christmas lights just make a house feel magical, too. Don't people decorate with twinkling trees for Valentine's? Easter?

I'm kicking myself for not having taken more pictures over the past couple of months. Pictures of all 36 of our Thanksgiving guests, or of our Young Women's pajama breakfast here the other morning, or of Christmas morning, or of the private Orange Leaf frozen yogurt party that the extended Mayfield clan had. I didn't even take a Christmas pajama picture this year. Probably because I had the flu on Christmas Eve (so awesome), but still .... Here's a few random shots that I did manage to take, though.

My adorable niece, Ali, with my adorable Elle. There's some serious love between these two.

The girls had an American Girl rock concert. They made instruments for the dolls out of paper and then had a lipsync concert to Paige's ipod music.

We had quite a few cousin sleepovers over the holidays.  Lots of cousins running around together is definitely a good thing.

Elle's preschool gave a little concert at a care center for Christmas. Elle couldn't have been more serious during the concert but she sang every note and did all of the actions. For as animated as she normally is, she sure clams up on stage.

There's always lots of playing around with phone apps. There's the 'stachematic' mustache maker app,

... the 'fat booth' app that adds 100 pounds to your face (this is Christian's friend, Ian -- trust me, he's a cute kid),

... and the 'zombiematic' app that turns your precious daughter into this monster:

That's just wrong.

Back to tackling the garage and the remainder of the boxes that need unpacking ....