Murder Mystery Valentine's Dinner

For Valentine's Day, I wanted to do something different, so I hosted a murder mystery dinner. I was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of the 'speakeasy.' We had a poker table in one corner, a black jack table in another, a bar, a buffet, and a few tables. I printed off some 1920's posters from the internet and hung them on the wall.

Here's some pics of the players.

We had Beef Scallopini, pasta, breadsticks, salad, pie, and spumoni for dinner, along with sparkling grape juice and IBC root beer.

It turns out that I was the murderer! But we were all pretty shady characters! Can't wait til the next one.

My funny kids

Elora likes to try new foods and new flavor combinations. This is a picture of one of her latest; Mandarin oranges and cheese on chips. Silly girl!

Dale will probably die when he sees that I posted this picture of our youngest son, but I thought it was too cute not to share! Elora and he were playing downstairs and he came up with this on. Apparently he dressed himself and he refused to take it off for a long time. He kept spinning around and posing. It was too funny!

Here's Elias sans skirt, shawl, gloves and hat, looking like a rock star!

I kinda forgot...

that I have a blog! So, what's new in my life? Dale started school in January and he's still working full-time, which means we rarely see each other. He goes to class from 7-10pm Mon, Tue, and Thur this semester and I work Wed night and Saturday all day. Ummm....other than that everything is pretty much the same.
Oh, wait--I have now started selling my bodily fluids for a profit (my plasma). It's not too bad, it's pretty much like donating blood, except it takes longer and they give you back your red blood cells. They provide free babysitting and so I get to get paid to sit and read a book for 45 minutes! Dale thinks I'm insane, but I can get $45/week, so I think it's worth it. I have also joined a "health club" where I work 2 1/2 hrs a week to get a free membership. The kids and I go swimming there at least twice/week and I'm trying to figure out my schedule so that I can work out at least three times/week. Why am I working out all of a sudden, you might ask? Well, not only do I need to get rid of this flab around my midsection (I promise; I have some--being 29 is catching up on me), but my sister and I are competing in the Great Urban Race this summer!
For those of you who've never heard of the Great Urban Race (let's face it--ALL of you) here's a quick explanation. It's similar to the Amazing Race TV show on a smaller scale. The Amazing Race races around 12 cities in several weeks and the teams have to complete certain tasks and figure out clues along the way, but the Great Urban Race has 12 clues/tasks in one city (we're going to compete in Seattle) and only lasts half a day. Oh, and the biggest difference is that in the Amazing Race, teams win $1 million, but in the GUR you win $300, and then can go to the finals and have a chance to win $10,000. Maybe if we run in this, we can apply to be on the Amazing Race and have a better chance at getting accepted! (We love that silly TV show and imagine ourselves traveling the world)
Our team name is The SuperMoms (I know, not too creative, but we had about two minutes to figure out a name). We have to wear matching uniforms, so we're going to dress as superhero moms. I'm designing an outfit with an apron, a cape, and rubber gloves. I'll post a picture as soon as I'm finished (not for a while). Ariane's been studying up on Seattle tour books and bus routes, so hopefully that'll help. I'm going to start studying soon, but I want to get the uniform out of the way.
Well, I'd better go make some dinner. If you have any Seattle guidebooks laying around, send 'em my way!

Girl Scout Cookie Time!

Kydee is selling girl scout cookies again, so if you're in need of some really good cookies, call or email me! She is trying to sell enough to go to a week-long horse camp. Last year she sold about 390 boxes and went to a Girl Scout camp in McCall ID. The Girl Scouts are opening a camp closer to us where the girls learn how to ride horses, and she's very excited for that this year. I know that she's a hard worker and will reach her goal. The price this year is $3.75/box including tax. Only $1 of that is for the actual product cost, $.23 is sales tax, and the rest goes to the girl scouts divided among the council, the troop and the girl. She's been hitting the pavement today and sold 43 boxes so far. Way to go!

Thanksgiving in Seattle

We went to Ariane's house in Spanaway, WA for Thanksgiving this year. The kids had a whole week off school and Dale and I got the time off work. We had fun seeing Ariane, Matt, Jonas, and Hazel. Friday we all headed to Seattle to go to the Pacific Science Center, the Children's Museum, and check out the city.

This is the view from our hotel room; isn't it beautiful?! We got a great deal at the Red Lion and it was right downtown.
Here's the famous 'gum wall' at the Pike Place fish market. The entire wall behind us is covered in gum. People come by and add to it, sculpt with it, and write messages in it. (GROSS!)

We found this weird-looking broccoli at Pike Place. I just had to take a picture.

The first day we were in Seattle, it was a beautiful, clear day; unfortunately, the next day was cold and cloudy.

We had fun walking around the city, riding the bus and the monorail (that was actually the kids' favorite part), going to Pacific Science Center and the Children's Museum, and looking around at Olympic Park. We all decided that we didn't have enough time (or good enough weather) in Seattle, so we're going to have to go back in the summer. Thanks Ariane and Matt for letting us stay with you and for showing us around the town. We miss you all and wish we lived closer!

Halloween

I'm finally getting around to posting about Halloween. Elias was so cute as a skeleton, Elora was a mermaid with pink sparkly hair (no surprise!), Kydee stuck with her creative streak and went as a book worm, and Dalan was Indiana Jones (and was quite upset that most people thought he was a cowboy; his favorite video game is Lego Indiana Jones). The kids had lots of fun walking around our neighborhood; there was even a haunted backyard. They got over 10 lbs (!!) of candy, so they're still working on eating it (I only let them have two pieces/day). We had a Halloween party at our house the night before and it was so much fun that we might make it a tradition. Thanks to everybody who came!

A little rant about the forgotten holiday...THANKSGIVING!!!

I love Thanksgiving--the food, the family, the relatively stress-free day of sitting around eating and talking, and most of all, taking time to think about all that I have to be thankful for.
What I hate about Thanksgiving is that the rest of the world seems to have forgotten it. Halloween and Christmas have completely eclipsed my favorite holiday! (Gasp, did she just say that she had a favorite holiday other than Christmas?! Isn't that against the law or something?!)

I challenge all you readers to take a stand and actually CELEBRATE Thanksgiving this year. I'm not talking about gorging yourselves in a few weeks (that's fine to do, btw); I mean really celebrate being grateful for everything that you and I have.

In our family, every day in November at dinner, we each say something that we're thankful for (no repeats allowed) and we write it on a construction-paper leaf. The leaves are then taped onto our "Thankfulness Tree" (a piece of posterboard with a bare tree drawn on it). On Thanksgiving Day, we read all the leaves. I think it's a great way to really think of all our blessings--having the rule of no repeats makes for creative answers, and I think it helps the kids be happier with what they have, instead of focused on the interminable lists that so many write out for Santa. They also seem to say 'thank you' more often during this time of year and spend time thinking about how to help those in need.

If anyone else has any ideas on great Thanksgiving traditions, or how to help our families be more thankful, please share!

Our new bathroom

A long time ago I mentioned that we were adding a bathroom in the basement and someday I would post some pictures. Well, you lucky readers, someday has finally arrived!!!

Here's my dad taking down the wall under the stairs that would become the doorway. Yay for my dad! He's the hero of this project. He removed the wall, put up a wall, built the shower stall and did the plumbing and electrical work. Thanks, dad!
Oh, we also have a really great friend, Ben, who helped A TON with the taping and texturing of the sheetrock. Thanks, Ben!


This is the before picture of the bathroom area.

And this is the after picture. I think it looks wonderful! I bought some dark pink accessories to go in there and it looks awesome. I'm going to hang black and white pictures in there someday, but for now, we're just glad to have a bathroom downstairs.

Irish Family Reunion

These are pictures of our Irish family reunion. (My mom's brothers and sisters.) We had lots of fun swimming in the Virgin River, down by Zion's National Park.

Micah's Wedding

Well, my internet connection is finally working, so I'm going to catch up on blogging. (I really should be working on finishing the basement bathroom, but oh well!)

Micah, my brother, got married in June in Moab. Here's some pics.

Here's Micah and Kaylee after the wedding. It's a pretty dang good picture, if I do say so myself.

Here's all my parents grandkids. They're going to have two more by springtime.

(No, we're not having one of them.)

Kaylee's brothers found a huge toad and showed it to Kaylee. It looks like she really appreciated that, huh?!

"You may kiss the bride!"

Here they are at the start of the ceremony.

Congratulations, Micah. I love you and I'm so glad that you found such a good woman to be your wife and mother of your children. My kids are so excited to have Kaydance as a cousin and look forward to the next one!

Moab

The day after Micah's wedding, we decided to go to one of our favorite places near Moab--Honeycomb Rock (or as my family likes to call it, Fraggle Rock). It's a giant rock (it's actually several rocks) with lots of caves in it. When we were kids, we imagined that it was Fraggle Rock because of the caves and the sparkly rocks.

There was a stream of sunlight coming in from a crack in the top of this cave and it looked really cool.
The kids were trying to bury the light. They thought it was coming up from the ground. It was really funny to watch.
Here we are at the top the Indian ladder (Another fun place my family likes to go at Moab). The crack in the rock on the right side of this picture is where the ladder is located. Dale, my cousin Todd, and I are on the top.
Here's me and Tasha climbing down the ladder.

Fourth of July

We went river rafting on the 4th with some friends. We all had lots of fun except Elias, who cried and whined the whole time.

Here's everyone that went...Dalan is behind Elora's head; other than that, I think it turned out pretty good for just holding it in front of me.

It turned out that the reason Elias was crying the whole time wasn't because he was scared of the water like we thought, but because he had a broken leg. :(

We had to hike down a really steep hill to get down to the river. Dale was holding Elias, slipped, and fell on Elias' leg. He checked Elias, didn't see any scrapes or bruises, so he thought he was alright. OOPS! He's got a cast now and walks all over the place (he got tired of crawling everywhere after about a week). Except for nighttime when he can't find a comfortable position to sleep, he acts just like any other 21-month-old.

Here's a picture of Elias with his blue cast, which came off (long story). He had to get another one. Elora picked out a glow-in-the-dark cast for him, so the kids think that's pretty cool.

Barbee Reunion

We hosted the Carl and Jenetta Barbee family reunion this year and had a ton-o-fun! I wasn't sure how things would go with that many people, but it went really well. We went geocaching, tie-dyed shirts, had a photo scavenger hunt (pics below), and a treasure hunt throughout Idaho Falls. We were glad to be able to visit with everyone and have so much fun together. We were sad that Charles' family and Jason & Jeannie couldn't make it.

Here's some pictures from the photo scavenger hunt.

Summer update

I just realized how long ago my last post was, so here's a few picture updates of early summer.

One day, Elias found one of the kids' bike helmets, put in on, went outside and rode his bike. He was so cute, so I just had to take a picture. The funny thing was that he never keeps hats/helmets on for more than 10 seconds and he'd never rode a bike before. He rode his bike with the helmet on for about 45 minutes.
Kydee was in a contest at school to see who could read for the most minutes in two months. She read over 4,000 minutes and won the contest, so she got to ride to school in a fire truck. They took her for a 30 minute ride around town first; she got to turn on the siren and she loved it, of course! (Dalan won the prize for reading the most in kindergarten, so he got a $5 gift card to Barnes & Noble; too bad that's not enough to actually buy a book there!)

Elora loves to help me in the kitchen and she always pretends that she's the chef and I'm the slave that has to help her. (I have no clue where she got that idea!) Here's a picture of her making bread.

We helped my parents with their cotton candy booth in Moab, UT and while there, Kydee and Dalan got to ride this trampoline-bungee thingy. They had a lot of fun.