What we've been up to.

Winter.
It's winter. Still. Most years I don't mind the freezing weather and welcome the snow. But this year, wow, we have had some serious snow, inversion, and freeeezing temps. I think we are all feeling pretty much done with winter about now. I caught these pics on a day we were having a heat wave of about 30 degrees, after what seemed like weeks of temps in the teens.

With weather this warm, who needs a coat? I love capturing moments like this one....my two kids playing together. Nicely. No torturing or tormenting each other....or their mother.

Children's Literacy Festival.
A few weeks back the kids were given free tickets to a kids literacy event. They fed us breakfast, gave the kids gift bags with free Cafe Rio meal coupons, free Cold Stone coupons, coloring pages and free T-shirts. The kids got balloons, and they each won a free book and gift in a drawing.

They were interviewed by channel 13 news. They were shown on the teaser advertising the broadcast, but not on the actual broadcast. Oh well. Still pretty cool to be interviewed for T.V.  There were a handful of children's authors at the event and the kids got to have their T-shirts signed by the authors. We didn't stay to decorate the T-shirts, so we did it at home. Pretty fun event.

Season for skating.
 We are loving ice-skating this season. This time we let the kids bring a friend. They had a great time. Devun is a fast hockey-style-skater. It was Megan's first time ever skating, but she had the hang of it pretty quick.  

The kids favorite parts of the evening was when the lights went out and the disco ball came on!

Girls night out.
 Ellie and I and Amy G. and Natalie had a little girls night out recently. We shopped at Target, ate dinner at Paradise bakery, and went to the UofU gymnastics meet. It was a great time, and Ellie was really sweet and patient with little Natalie. (Only had my phone for pics.)

Boys night out.
 Darin and Logan got to go to the Jazz game. They started off with dinner where the special guests get to eat before the game, and then enjoyed the game with awesome seats! Logan was totally into the game, and was shown on the jumbo-tron big screen for over a minute...dancing and cheering.

Valentine's Day.
I helped facilitate the kids making their Valentine's Day mailboxes. It was fun. Kind of. I helped Ellie and a friend do theirs together, and then helped Logan on a Sunday afternoon. They turned out pretty fun. These two are getting so grown up, they did every bit of assembling their valentines for friends, by themselves. I did, of course, provide the cards, envelopes and treats. Logan gave away sports valentines this year, and Ellie gave secret message valentines.

Long weekend.
This weekend happens to be a holiday weekend. Three day weekend for Darin and I. Four day weekend for the kids, due to teacher meetings on Tuesday. Friday afternoon we decided to do a family overnighter in Salt Lake. Nothing like spur of the moment. We packed light and headed to a Marriott Residence Inn, where we had a gift voucher to use. We had dinner at Sweet Tomatoes, which is the perfect spot for our family. It's buffet style so everyone is happy. But it's lots of yummy salads and soups and not the nasty Chuck-A-Buffet style. Sticking with tradition, the kids were in their swimming suits within about sixty seconds of arriving at the hotel. I let Darin have all the fun with the kids in the pool while I went shopping at the mall. Alone. It was hard to let Darin have all that fun without me. But I survived. ;) I bought clothes for Logan. I hope he'll wear them.

We let the kids stay up late. They read and Ellie did some writing and we put an overnight hair conditioning treatment in her hair. The morning brought the event that ties with swimming for the kids favorite part of all our vacations....eating the free breakfast buffet. Fruit Loops, waffles, sausage, blueberry muffins, etc. Then it was back to the pool, and lounging around the hotel room until check-out at noon.

Darin and the kids headed home while I shopped by myself for another couple of hours. Then two of my fab kindergarten teachers met up with me for a girls day out. We shopped Babies R Us. (They are both pregnant.) And then we headed to a new chick flick, and ate dinner while we watched the show. Super fun. Love those gals. And love this little family of mine.