happy valentine's day 2014...

So the night before Valentine's Day, around 11pm while we were watching Olympics, Steve looked at me and said "I have nothing for you for tomorrow."  I honestly wondered "why?" for a second before I remembered about Valentine's Day and had to admit to him "Oh, I am so sorry honey, I didn't even think about getting you anything for tomorrow!"  By this time I was so stressed out about getting the kids' all squared away with their valentines for their class parties that any romantic notions of the day went straight out the window.  You can take me out for a random Thursday sometime, okay sweetheart?  =)

Valentine's Day for me has totally turned into a kids/family holiday.  By the time February hits and we realize we live in MN and the snow and cold will last another couple of months yet, it does everyone good to focus on a little fun and craftiness and love, right?  So commenced another year of crazy homemade valentine's.  This year the big three all wanted different cards as well which made it a little more crazy.  I may be obsessed with homemade Valentine's, but I am also obsessed with the kids making most if not all of it on their own so that they can feel proud of what they did, not thier mom. (If you want to revisit the past years' crazies, here is 2011, 2012, and 2013 =)  And not pictured below is Aahma B, who joined us for the crazy last year and was able to help with the beginning stages of making them this year since she was visiting the week before.  (thanks for giving me motivation to start early Mom B!)

Grace:  "I want something that is not too girly because I want the boys to like them too (is she REALLY saying this already?!!).  I also don't want something easy - I want to put hard work into them."  (yeah, like her mother she was eating those words the night before Valentine's Day!  ha!)

(momma notes:  these turned out very cute, but does anyone make googly eyes that stay on?  we tried both the sticky back and glue on ones (with TURBO tacky glue) and there were still ones that fell off resulting in much sadness and sulkiness at school the next day.  G is my craft loving girl and did a great job on focusing on these without much help from me at all since I was helping her brothers.  She also picked the font and homophone valentine greeting - they learned about those in class getting ready for valentine's day!)

Willem:  "I want to draw and color a valentine for everyone and it should have a race track on it that I can draw and color cars on each one too.  And maybe a parking lot!" (while I was looking at Pinterest for ideas with him he also saw the "I never tire of your friendship" on one and loved it)

(momma notes:  knowing how carefully my boy draws and colors and how much time he takes, I had to talk him down from the drawing everyone's!  I had him draw the road and parking lot - seriously his idea and it turned out so cute! - and I scanned it in to the computer and printed it out.  I suggested that he color the yellow lines on each one first, and then if he had time he could add more color to the rest.  Then we found Cars sticker sheets to hand out with them.  Although he was upset that he couldn't put the stickers on each person's!  I told him Liam and grandmas and grandpas wouldn't mind if he put their stickers on.  Personally, these are totally my favorite valentine this year!)

Carsten:  "I want to hand out candy.  And I don't want to use Willem's cards."
Momma:  "I want you to sign your name on each one now that you know how to write it."

 (seriously this photo tugs at my heart because he is getting so. so. big.)

(momma notes:  yeah, I came up with this one for him, but he loved it because he loves to play tic tac toe too.  And he drew the game board on the back and signed his name to each one and stapled the packages of m's - he did such a good job!!!)

Henry:  "Color...markers, momma?  Peeeez?"

(momma notes:  I know he could care less, and I really wasn't going to do a card for him, but his coloring on paper with markers was seriously what got us through all the valentine making sessions, so I thought it would be appropriate to use those and make him a valentine.  plus he is all over glue sticks too so he loved gluing the papers together!  And he is saying "cheese pik-uhls!!!" in the last photo. =)

And finally Momma: "Pinterest is evil.  You find ideas like this and think it is a great idea to make them for 26 third graders for their class valentine party snack that I am in charge of.  Please please please someone remind me next year to just order cupcakes."

(momma notes:  remember the age of children you are a room mom for - third graders could have done this themselves during the party and would have had way more fun and done it a lot quicker than the two hours it too you.  seriously!  also, all these foods do not have evenly smooth surfaces to make adhesiveneess easy.  pressing down too hard to get the applesauce cup to stick results in breaking through the foil and applesauce dripping over everything.  glue dots on top of packaging tape - need I say more?)

I sent this photo to one of the other room moms with the request to remind me not to do this again next year and to just order cupcakes.  She sent me a message back saying "Friends don't let friends do Valentine crafts!"  =)

I think I just need to stick to doing them with and for my four sweet kiddos.

 (by the way, this photo right here?  makes me all sorts of happy.  take that winter!!!)

fun friday, 2.7.14...

In which we put on Christmas jams, broke out the $1.97 Costco clearance Christmas ornament cookie kit, drank out of our Christmas mugs, put away the Christmas decorations, and watched the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics (looking for countries on the globe and Google Earth, pretending to bobsled, and cheering for USA when they walked though)...

fun friday, 1.24.14...

Today's Fun Friday post is brought to you by the letters C, a, r, s, t, e & n!  One of Carsten's goals when he turned 5 was to learn to write his name.  Before this he would attempt, but get frustrated and not be interested in all at sitting down to learn how.  But now he is 5, and it was a big deal to him.  (friends in Sunday School all write their own name on their papers!)

I had seen a neat chart for a girl learning to write her name that had a picture of a balloon with a letter of her name in each balloon and she colored one in when she learned how to write it.  That was something I had not thought of - teach him one letter at a time.  And this turned out to be a great strategy as Carsten is fairly long and has some tricky letters to learn.  So Carst sat down at the computer with me and we made a chart for him:

We were trying to think of a good prize for when he finished his goal, and I was trying to steer away from his suggestions of toys, but he didn't like my suggestion of ice cream (whose son is he?!!), and then he pointed at the screen and said:  "HOW ABOUT A BALLOON FROM THE DOLLAR STORE?!"  perfect.

Carsten hung his chart up under his all important tractor calendar in the sun room and we started.  I printed out tracing worksheets from this site, and we worked on one or two letters a day.  He would write the letters on his calendar that we worked on.

And Friday he decided that the last 3 letters were going to be easy and he wanted to finish his name and get balloons for everyone for fun friday.  (since I didn't have a better plan I was all for it!!! =)  He finished the tracing sheets for t, e, & n, and then I printed out his name from the Amazing Handwriting Worksheet Maker and told him this was his "test." =)

 He passed!  I am so proud of him - he went from not writing his name at all to getting it down in way less than a month.  He was SUPER proud as well.

(this kept Henry busy while we were working on it! =)

Carsten colored in his last balloon, and we made plans to go to the dollar store after we picked up Grace and Willem from school.

I was planning on taking everyone grocery shopping first, but then we got a kind invite from our friends the DY's to bring the kids over after school and join them for pizza.  Carsten said he would rather do this and we could get balloons the next morning.

And we did!

Balloons are a GREAT prize for my name-writing-super-big-five-year-old, and a GREAT fun inside distraction for all the kids from all the cold outside...

a polar vortex day...

School was called off today, not because of snow, but because of the "polar vortex."  Yep crazy weather patterns have given us super cold temps and dangerous wind chills...enough to call off school.

There were LOTS of complaints everywhere about the "polar vortex" but I didn't mind one bit because we got to stay in our pajamas all day and spend our Thursday...

 doing this...

and this...

and this...

and this...

(side note, because it was a "polar vortex day" and not a snow day, I felt it was alright to play Cars Monopoly versus the regular version.  hope my brothers will be ok with that.)

and this...

and this...

(normally I am all about not leaving the house if school is called off, but I was easily persuaded with a late afternoon invite: I mean, how can you say no to a cozy warm home with cousins and cookies and hot chocolate and books and hex bugs?!  And a puppy!  And Auntie Christy let us come over in our jammies. =)

and this...

(Grace had to write a haiku about her day:

I had a snow day

I wore my pj's all day

We played games at home

Aahma R loves haikus and wrote one back for her too:

I had a snow day

I dressed in my clothes and crocs

I knit for Grace)

and this.

AND, just so you don't think that things were only sunshine and cookies and puppies all day, we had no less than 11 meltdowns, 18 bonks, 9 fights, 2 band-aids, 3 bookshelves emptied, 1 big momma meltdown, 37 complaints about chores, 1 bag of frozen chicken explode all over the floor, and 85 whiny/fussy "Momma!"'s. 

When it all weighs out though...a great day.

fun friday, 1.17.14...

Boppa and Aahma R came to visit!!!  Bakery treats, learning about electricity while fixing a baby monitor, reading books, the hand game, new games on Aahma's ipad, and lots of hugs and giggles made for a great fun friday!

a rough patch...

(Auntie Christy, these baskets are PERFECT - thanks!!!)

smelling the flowers Mom and Dad R sent Steve

Dad B worked from the "Coon Rapids office" while they were here

After a lovely Christmas / New Year's / Carsten's birthday celebration with Steve's family, we were looking forward to enjoying the last few days of break and gearing up for getting back into the routine.  We were then issued a rough week that we only made it through by the grace of God and the help of others and are now standing on the other side of it feeling very blessed.  Tired.  But very blessed.

It started Thursday evening with a broken toilet and a flood that I have only seen the likes of on TV shows, spanning multiple levels.  This of course happened on the busiest day of the year at work for Steve, who I couldn't get a hold of, and I literally had no clue what to do, so I called the neighbors and Dan quickly came over with a wet-vac and a dehumidifier and a calm, "it will be ok!" attitude that I very much needed.  Lots of time was spent that night sopping up water with every towel and cloth diaper in the house.

Then Steve got sick.  It started out as a cold and moved into what we thought was full blown influenza, and for 3 days was the sickest I had ever seen him before.  The kids were troopers and kept themselves happy and busy upstairs with new Legos from Christmas and games while we quarantined Dadda downstairs.  He got worse and I was going to take him in, and then his fever broke and he slept and got better.  Or so we thought.  The next day ended with him not being able to move and having a hard time breathing and his chest hurt and I had to call 911 for an ambulance ride to the hospital.  It is all surreal yet to me that I actually did that and that actually happened, but it did (thanks again to Lynne for coming over in the middle of the night to sit with the kids!).  After a long night in ER, it turns out it was not influenza, but strep pneumonia, which is a particularly nasty form of pnuemonia and it knocked Steve out good.  His heart was fine, and they got him hooked up to IV fluids and meds, but it still took him 2 days in the hospital to even be at the point where he could walk out the door to come home (and that was a slow walk - he laughs that he got seriously lapped by an 80 yr old couple).  And then it was 5 days of resting and more meds at home before he was in any shape to go back to work.  And it will be another week yet before he is truly back to normal.  Having sick kids is the worst, but having a seriously sick husband is also the worst.

We are so thankful for all the help we got through this rough patch.  To our neighbors who came quickly to help, to J&C who also came as soon as they could the next day, to Steve's parents who moved in for 4 days to help with kids and the house and getting back to normal, to friends who brought meals right away, to church friends who brought meals later after Steve went back to work, and to everyone who lifted Steve and us all up in prayer. The Lord is good and Steve continues to improve each day, despite a very busy week for him.  It has not been the easiest for Steve to transition slowly back into work this week as there was a consistory meeting this past Tuesday in which he had a lot of end of the year reporting and budget preparing and such to do as he is church treasurer, and it is also their semi-annual inventory day at work tomorrow which requires a lot of work the week before and day of.  Steve has been taking a lot of little naps, taking it very easy at home, and getting to bed as early as possible which has helped.  My mom and dad are on their way now to spend the weekend with us which will be so nice - not only for us, but for Steve too as he won't fret too much about us at home while he is so busy at work if Aahma and Boppa are taking good care of us. =)

This has made us all a little more thankful for each other, a little more thankful for health, a little more thankful for the care and love of others, and a lot more thankful for the continued blessings that God grants us all.