The theme for this year's birthdays is FIRE!

At least that's what Jake pointed out when he noticed a trend for the weekend of Aidan & Jonah's birthdays! Aidan turned 15 on January 28th this year. Since your friends are way cooler than your family when your fifteen, he spent his birthday evening with them...booohooo! Anyway, on Saturday morning we lit his candles and were singing "Happy Birthday" while he goofed off and made his usual silly faces for the picture I was trying to take. Suddenly he smelled something funny. He burnt his hair! He rushed upstairs to put out the flames (just kidding), but luckily he was due for a haircut anyway, so we had to rush right over and get the "burnt" bits trimmed off! Needless to say, I didn't get my picture, but here's his cake...

Continuing with the theme. I was making Jonah a giant cookie for his 13th birthday on January 30. I'd made one last year too, but didn't remember that it doesn't take the whole batch of dough. So I put the entire batch of chocolate chip cookie dough on my pizza stone (with no rim) and patted it into a lovely circle and placed it in the oven. I checked on it midway through and saw that it was running off the edges and dripping all over the bottom of the oven! "Yuck! What a mess I'm going to have to clean up" I thought, but left it in since it wasn't done. A bit later I checked again and the drips were FLAMING in the oven. Aidan got a little freaked and went looking for the fire extinguisher. But I wanted to try to save it, so I just closed the door and turned off the oven and let the flames burn out. Had to open all the window so the smoke alarm wouldn't go off. I did actually save a nice circle from the middle. Funniest part...Jonah slept through the whole thing! An exciting start to the new year! Happy Birthday to my Aidy Boy & my Donut!

PS Jake is scared!

Hello Blogging World!

I am trying to come out of my blogging coma. There have been stirrings lately. When I left you last, Jeff was still unemployed. I got a job soon after my last post, hence the blogging coma. I felt overwhelmed trying to work part time, run my house AND blog! I finally feel like maybe I've got a handle on it, but if you come to my house, just don't look too closely in the nooks and crannies...those don't get as much attention as they used to! I hope my children don't feel the same. I've worked my way up the stair stepper (that's exercise humor because I am now a circuit coach at Curves!) to the perfect work schedule. I'm working M-Thurs 9am - 1pm. AND Jeff got a job too. He's coming up on his one year anniversary in March. Way too much has happened to try and catch up last year, so since it's only 2 months into the new year, I'll start fresh with this year's stuff. I hope I remember how to do this...

Are we having fun yet???

As you know Jeff has been out of work for 6 months now! I can't believe we have survived this long...we are sooo blessed! I was talking to my sister the other day telling her some of the blessings along the way and she asked if I was writing them in my journal. I must admit, I am a terrible journal writer, actually that's too generous, I am not a journal writer, but she got me thinking. I really should be documenting all these great blessings. Thinking about it is a good first step. Jake's class actually gets credit in seminary for "thinking" about reading the Book of Mormon. But I'm getting side tracked, this was really meant to be a silly post. It's very cute when Anissa says our family prayer at night, she always says "bless Mom and Dad that they will have fun while they're home tomorrow". Well, here is a very silly picture of some of our "fun" while grocery shopping:




Should we be offended? I'm not sure, but the "fun" has been great. It's been wonderful for Jeff and I to spend so much time together and just be us. It's really strengthened our bond. When the time (finally) comes, I'll really miss having him right there all the time...thank goodness for texting! But I must say: ENOUGH WITH THE FUN ALREADY! CAN WE GET BACK TO WORK NOW?!?

That's my boys...

A few weeks ago we had our stake leadership training. Joni gave a little bit of history on why the Primary was organized. A lady in the early church days (I forget her name...I know that's bad...it's kind of a big part, but anyway...) she was horrified at the state and behavior of all the boys in the town. They would go into gardens that were not their own and some were even seen hanging off wagons (gasp!). How were the girls to find good husbands if things continued in this manner? So Primary was born. I think today, I'd be happy if my boys just went outside a little bit more, their own "garden" or otherwise. Jeff found this cartoon today, and I think maybe this is the best I can hope for...

Halloween

We made it home from our camping weekend just in time for trunk or treat. Only Anissa and Jonah (and Jeff) dressed up. They had fun, but Jonah got WAY TOO much candy...18 pounds. I think he'll share (selected items of course!) Luckily, after the weekend he took me up on the offer to hide his candy. I loved their costumes this year...

Family Fun at Warm Springs

We spent the long weekend at Warm Springs with lots of family. We had an exciting first night which included propane tanks on fire! That was really scary. I thought the tanks were going to blow up. Luckily the men got it out with fire extinguishers before we were responsible for burning down the entire property. After saving dinner, we had fun making s'mores around the fire and then enduring a pretty cold night. The next day we swam and explored and the little kids had fun catching tad poles. Anissa was introduced to an old classic by her cousins, the movie "The Bad Seed". I hope it was a lesson on how NOT to behave. Jake challenged anyone who would play chess with him and it turned out to be a great weekend...we even witnessed the ever allusive teenage smile from all the teenagers present!

And the answer is...

You guessed it, Jonah is the messy one. He would like to say in his defense that the red shorts are Aidan's...so there you have it. I love 'em both to death. Isn't fun how each child comes with his own distinct personality.

What great kids I have

For my birthday my kids made me brownies (while I was attending Johnson JHS openhouse). Hot fudge brownie sundaes are my FAVORITE dessert. When we got home, they were ready to light the candles, all 40! They actually put 40 candles on. I didn't even know we had that many in the house. By the time they were finished lighting them, I had to hurry and blow them out before there was a giant pool of wax on the brownies and then we had to turn on the vent fan, so the smoke detector wouldn't sound off. Here are some great pictures...it looks like a 9 x 13 pan of fire!

My lovely roses from Jeff...

Guess Who

Aidan and Jonah share a room. I walked into their room the other morning and just had to laugh. The state of the room was such a commentary on their personalities. Can you guess who belongs to the messy side and who belongs to the clean side? Let's have a little poll...see how well you know these boys. I'll reveal the answer in a few days...

Taking a lesson from Harry Potter...

And his cupboard under the stairs. Only I think ours is probably way more impressive. One good thing about Jeff having a lot of free time on his hands lately is that we are getting a lot of projects done around the house. We decided to make our coat closet function a little differently. We'd punched through a wall at the back of the closet a few years ago so we could get access to the space under the stairs. We just took it a step further and finished it off. We took the coat rack out because it was a pain to get to the storage space. Aidan always said he wanted it to be his bedroom, but he's little too big for that now, so we made it Anissa's office. She loves it! She's been neither seen nor heard for extended periods of time the last few days.