Maybe a Mousekatool can Help...

So, you know when your children watch too much TV when....

We were at the doctor's for James and were in a room painted with dinosaurs. There was a Triceratops head on one of the walls sticking out and Sam kept calling to it, "Triceratops, Triceratops..."
Then he looked at me and said, "he can't hear us."
I said, "nope, he's just pretend."
Sam wasn't having any of that and said, "I know, maybe a Mousekatool can help."
I started laughing and said, "maybe. What do your say?"
He looked excited and said, "Oh Toodles!"
He was very disappointed that Toodles didn't come and said, "He can't hear us. Toodles is far away."

Sad I know, but also very cute! :)

Valentine's Day Retreat

We had a great Valentine's Day at Bear Lake. It was definitely time to get away and boy was it wonderful. We love to go to Bear Lake in the winter because it seems so barren and beautiful with all the snow.
We took our friends Dave and Aymee and their kids with us for the fun long weekend. We just played games, watched movies, stayed in our jammies, and relaxed. I was able to get out with Sam a little bit. He loved playing in the snow and sledding. I wish we would have gone out more but it was VERY cold and we got a lot of snow. Poor James had to stay in because he got really sick while we were there. I got a little worried about him but couldn't go much about it until Monday because we got snowed in!
There was so much snow and so many people there snowmobiling, 4 wheeling, and sledding that it packed the snow on our hill so much that we couldn't get out. We were about there for about 2 hours trying to dig out some tire tracks for us but we just couldn't get up the hill. Finally a neighbor came out and towed us up. We were so grateful.
So needless to say we got home late Monday night and the whirlwind of real life quickly came upon us. Seth off to work, me running to the doctor for the boys, cleaning and unpacking, my Primary Meeting.....
Vacations no matter how long or short and was end so abruptly!

Here's some pics from the trip:

Cute Sam stuck in the snow. I went to go save him not thinking it was too deep because he is so light and didn't sink down. Needless to say I had to run put my legs in warm water because I definitely am not too light and I DID sink through! :)

Here's the boy's cute little Valentine's Day buckets. It is so fun to get into the holidays more now that Sam gets it.

I love this shot. Not only does it show our set up so everyone can do their own thing, but you see it all. Seth and Dave at Nintendo. Aymee and I on the big screen playing the Wii and James in the background watching a DVD on the laptop! :)

My boys aren't spoiled or anything! Look at each of them with their own laptops.

Poor James was so sick he would just fall asleep where ever. Notice the bubbles in the picture. James loves bubbles so much and had to have them in hand all weekend.

Pizza Night and Visiting Teaching Messages

We had a fun family night with some great friends. We had Melynn and her kids (Kayden, Makian, Kaleb) and our neighbors Dave and Aymee over for homemade pizzas. It was a blast. It had been way too long since we'd had people over.
We had a great time making individual pizzas and then a great Family Night lesson on the important of taking care of our bodies and the Word of Wisdom.


This fun night, plus the great Visiting Teaching Message for the month brought back a lot of fond memories from my childhood. I was remembering all the traditions I had as a child.
Each meal we would have to wash our hands before dinner and our dad would smell them to see if we used soap. They sometimes we would earn a quarter if we didn't talk the whole meal. I would have to stay at the table until I ate all my food. I remembered sitting at the table for hours because I wouldn't eat my spinach! And before we could be excused we would have to look at our Mom (at one head of the table) and say, "Thank you for the meal." Then look at our Dad (at the other head of the table) and say, "May I please be excused?"
And who ca forget the candle at each meal. It could only be blown out when my dad said "3". It was always a great game of tricks, other languages, ways to get him to say it without realizing....and if you blew out the candle before he said "3" you had to do the dishes.
It was so fun to think about all these fun little things I remembered. It made me so grateful for my parents and all they did for me. I am espcially grateful to my mom who always cooked. It's nice to look back in my mind and only remember eatting homemade meals at a table that was always full of my family.

Sam's First Time Ice Skating

Well, we finally did it! We got Sam on the ice for the first time. Needless to say he was very excited about it! Seth finally had a good hockey game time yesterday so we were able to enjoy watching him play and then hang out a little longer to take Sam skating.


It was so cute to see Sam get so excited about skating on his "Hockey Skates" like dad does.

I obviously don't have the skills of how to really tighten hockey skates yet...

because Grandpa had to fit them. It was fun to have Grandpa M there to share in the fun.

James got into it too. We weren't quite ready to have him out there too, although he wanted to be. He did get to have some fun in the stroller though and enjoyed the speed.


I couldn't decide what little video to upload, so here they all are. A progression of his ability to glide on his skates.
At first he couldn't even stand up.

Then he just wanted to run.

Then he got the idea of how to glide.

And that turned into getting a little lazy and loving having Dad do all the work!

This was definitely a fun night, but our backs were definitely tired at the end of this whole experience.

Bed Head

James has some of the best bed head I've seen since the days of living with my brother Jon. He's even cute with crazy hair! This was right before church, you should have seen me trying to comb this down!

Galactic Battle

Seth is always so great to set up big armies of his Star Wars figures for the kids to destroy. Seth has fun setting it up and the boys love destroying it. It is the perfect combination.

Here's a little of how I have to clean up after a ground battle. Mom always gets stuck with the clean up! :)

Here is the ULTIMATE BATTLE downstairs on our ping-pong table. This is every figure he has (minus the two we found later under the stove from the previous battle). It is pretty impressive.


I had to video it too to get the full impact! :)