Independence Day

Since we had over hauled the bed rooms, we ended up doing a lot of the house, and piling everything in the garage. So it has been a crazy mess for a while, we haven't even been able to get the van in. Ugh!! I hate that! So we spent the day Cleaning out the garage and utilizing our attic space above it! Which is amazing!! Not sure why we didn't use this space before!

So the garage is amazing and more spacious than it has ever been. We still have too much stuff to use it as a 2 car garage though, but oh well.

Then the kids went next door to help with our neighbor's eagle scout project. He constructed wooden cages for a wild bird rescue center. So they are huge cages for eagles and hawks and other big birds of prey. My kids went over to help paint them.

Then we all went over to roast dinner on the fire pit. Yum!

Don't ya love Evey's AMERICAN spirit?!!!!!! We all had a good laugh when she came out in that shirt!

After we had our fill of hot dogs, brats, watermelon, and smores. We all headed over to another neighbors house for a fantastic firework show.  These neighbors go all out every year and go to Wyoming for the "BIG" fireworks. Then the whole neighborhood goes over and we have a huge block party, and they try not to kill themselves and everyone else as they set off these beasts! There were a few close calls, one of the huge boxes toppled over and would have shot the fireworks straight into everyone, but it had shot it's last one just before it fell,and me and a few others were hit with some falling mortar, but everyone was fine and had a blast. Unfortunately it started raining and so the night ended a little early. But it was so much good clean fun! Thanks again, Chelsea and Josh for the great party!

Beware: Phone photos!

Independence -Sunday

The plan had been to give the kids their Saturday showers at Grammy's house Saturday night. But since we had to keep applying bug spray, it was silly to shower and then go to bed smelling of Off! So they didn't shower....Ewww! And since we got home so late anyway and had to carry most everybody in, showers were put off until morning. Sunday morning, when everything is rushed anyway.

I used to love 9 o'clock church (we rotate every year 9, 11, 1) and Jon appreciates it in the fall so he can watch football, but as our family grows, and all these stinkin' girlies!! :) it makes it hard to get out the door on time, even though the chapel is a 5 minute walk...less driving time!!! There have been numerous times I have done hair in sacrament! This Sunday was one of those days. We got everyone showered and out the door, but were late enough to not find a seat, luckily I jumped on the front row once the deacons were done passing the sacrament, and proceeded to do hair.

Both Evey and Paris wanted elaborate braids, so by the time I was done it was time for the closing song.  I love July when we sing patriotic songs and the closing hymn was the Star Spangled Banner. I couldn't even get through the first line before I was bawling like a baby!! I love when the piano and organ tag-team and the sound is full and the congregation is standing, and our beautiful conductor sings an unwritten harmony. I love our national anthem, and especially when we get to sing all of the verses.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing as we usually do, until I go to choir practice and then the whole gang shows up for our weekly dinner together.

Apparently it is a challenge to play croquet with a naked monkey on your head!!

Winter loves Tristan and often grabs his finger and drags him to play with her.

Oh yeah and she loves to be as naked as possible, which I let slide while at home!

We ate yummy Ka-bobs and then started a wicked game of Killer bunnies, but had to pause for fire crackers. Our awesome neighbors texted right  as we were heading out that they wanted us to join them as they set off some too (I think it's a tradition now, we've done it for at least 3 years now), so we just combined our stuff and had a blast! Our laws on fireworks were loosened this year and so it was legal to get ones that shot up to 100 feet in the air. So Kurt picked up some of those, missed getting pics of them though.

Winter's first sparkler!! She still requires quite a bit of help.

Not sure what they were looking at , but it must have been interesting!

Spa Treatment

Evey chose to have a Spa/Makeover party this year.
Not really sure how it happened, but we were
throwing it together 3 days before.  She chose to
only invite a few of her closest friends. It ended up
working rather well!  The dollar store was my best
friend in those few days before and it ended up
having most of what I needed. I thought it would
be awesome for each girl to get her own bath robe.
But this would have required more time for sewing,
or a me willing to fork out over 20 bucks each, ha, I think not!

I wanted everyone to have their own mirror,
and I was worried that would end up being a big expense,
I really wasn't willing to spent more than a dollar
or 2 each so I was really happy the
dollar store had some, and they were pretty cute too!
We also got monogrammed kleenex for each girl
half of at Hobby Lobby. Love that place!!

We kept with the monogrammed stuff and made personalized water bottles.

Pretty cake right! Well...Jon helped me in the
kitchen with all of the goodies,
so we made this , as per Evey's request,
 Red Velvet Cake. But after it was done baking
we set it on the oven to cool, forgetting that
we were using the oven still, so it was hot.
Well after a while and when we went to ice
it with super scrumptious icing,
the cake was all dried out and crumbly.
So Sad!! I went ahead and iced it even
 though Jon ran out and picked up a store bought Red Velvet cake.

We did a fresh finger food dinner for the girls. Lot's of fruit
and see those deviled eggs back there,
we almost didn't make those after all,
which would have been a huge mistake,
The girls DEVOURED them.
Evey also contributed to the cooking and
made zucchini bread all on her own...super delish!

Fruit salsa and cinnamon/sugar chips....mmmm nom nom!

Allowing her facial mask to dry and beautify!

I guess she got a little hungry.

Girl Party Rule # 1: Must be goofy at all times!

At some point during the night the girls were talking about someone's
family tradition of smashing the birthday person's face in a cake.
It just so happened we had an extra cake,
so they gave Evey's face a nice cake mask.
She, like, had to totally redo her, like, make up after that!!
 Funny thing though the girls ended up eating a lot of the
smashed cake because it tasted better than the store bought.
Awww, made me feel good.

A lot of steps are left out of the pictures,
Jon had the other kids watching movies in their room,
and so I was helping them with all of the different things on my own.
I told my sisters how much I wished they would have been here to help,
it would have been so fun!
Anyway, this is soaking feet before pedicures while creating bath salts.

OO lala!
I really love 11 year old birthday parties!
The girls can do most everything on their own,
and move at their own rate, and a 5 hour birthday party flies by,
they had to rush their manicures. But they had a great time being girly!

This is Evey's real birthday with all the family.  Trying to decide which wish to wish for is hard !

Cake #2 We asked Evey what kind of cake she wanted for her family party,
and she said ice cream cake. So we decided to retry the Red Velvet,
but make it ice cream. So while looking for a ice cream to complement the red velvet,
we stopped by the Ben and Jerry's section to check out their new flavors.
One happened to be Red Velvet Cake. Perfect!
Turned out a little messy, but it was Go-ood!

And the Oscar goes to...

I know I've said it a lot. But , I'll say it again,
We are BIG movie people! Last year we decided
we wanted to see as many of the nominated movies
as possible. Well it's also the year they changed it
from 5 Best Picture nominees to 10. And from the
time the nominees are announced to when the Oscars
airs, is only about a month. Yikes! I think we did pretty
good last year. And we did even better this year. We
saw all of the Best Picture nominees and that gave us
most of the acting, directing, cinematography, and
special effects awards. It was awesome to be informed
on the movies!

We were sad though because, in the animated category
the number of nominees is based on the number of
animated movies accepted for nomination in that year.
So there were 15 movies accepted which meant 3 movies
could be nominated. Had one more been accepted they
could have nominated another 2 movies and we were
sure one would have been Tangled. It was such a great
movie! Don't get me wrong Toy Story 3 and How to
Train Your Dragon were so worthy (we didn't see The
Illusionist) and the other 15 movies included some of
our favorite movies, Despicable Me and Megamind,
but we really felt Tangled was snubbed!

Anyway, we had to throw a Red Carpet Party! We had
our normal friends and fam and then had another couple
and their cutie daughter. We were sad that a few new
friends couldn't join us after all. Next time, next time :)
We originally thought it would be fun to do a black tie
affair. But with everyone having been at church and in
dress clothes anyway and then thinking about how it
would be nice to relax while watching the Oscars, and
not have to be uncomfortable in nice clothes, we scrapped
that idea. Then we thought it would be fun to have
everyone wear black, like t-shirt, and then we'd hand out
black ties, but that one got scrapped too.
So we just left the clothing.

We served a somewhat fancy meal and had everyone
fill out a ballot and the total running time of the show
for a tie breaker.  We also played bingo through out,
with prizes. It was awesome! Some of the squares were:
winner puts on glasses, presenter flubbs line, Anne
Hathaway sings, Christian Bale spotted with Jesus-like hair
....and tons more. So Funny! I think everyone won at least
once.  Although it took Jon and I an almost blackout to
finally get a bingo!

We really enjoyed the show. Anne Hathaway and James Franco
we're pretty good.  I as always love the opening sequence the
most. But I couldn't find a video of it. I think ABC removed it.
BOO!

Jon and I were happy with the Best Picture winner, King's Speech
was amazing! If you haven't seen it you should! If it's the "R" rating
that's stopping you....don't even get me started on the rating system!!
It's "R" because he drops the "F" Bomb a few too many times. But,
in England they went ahead and lowered the rating because he uses
it in a "therapeutic setting"  No Violence, no naughty scenes!
As for acting, we were SO happy Christian Bale won for supporting
actor, he was AMAZING in the Fighter!  I was torn between Colin
Firth and James Franco for best actor. Franco was awesome in that
he was able to command the screen all on his own for an entire movie,
and Frith was just awesome.

If I was torn for actors I was even more so for best actress. They were 

all great, but just not Academy Award Winning in my mind! But, 

what do I know. I went with Natalie Portman because she seemed the 

obvious choice. Jon went with her, because he's always been a fan. 

But too bad for the True Grit and Winter's Bone girls, that would have 

been awesome to win an Oscar so young!

I was actually happy Inception took home so many awards over the 

front runner Social Network. I enjoyed Inception so much more and 

so voted for it. And was pleasantly surprised to win those few categories, 

except for score. Boo Social Network, although Kurt went with it because 

he is a Trent Reznor fan. And how cool is that, the lead singer of Nine Inch 

Nails wins an Oscar. Eat it Music world!

Anyway, enough Oscar talk.
Tristan won the Lindsey Oscars, by one right answer over me, and only
because he guessed both documentary films right! Boo!! He took home
his very own "Oscar" statue! It was great fun,
already looking forward to next year!

SUPER thanks for asking!

Eventhough we really didn't care for either of the
teams in the superbowl this year. It has become a
tradition to throw a superbowl party, if for no other
reason than to have a party.  We had our normal
groupies here and a new couple.  It was a ton of
fun, as always.  They had made a squares game at
work ( you get assigned to a score, or numbers, on
a grid and if the last number of the score at the end
of each quarter is your numbers, you win) so it was
fun rooting for whichever team, it didn't matter, as
long as the numbers matched. Jon was close only
on the halftime score, but no winner for him.
We always love the commercials, here's our favorite.
Can you guess why?!!!!



We really enjoyed the halftime show! I hear a lot of
people thought it was lame, but really it was the best
in a long time. The Black-eyed Peas are great performers.
Yes Fergie may have been off key  for most of the time,
but really, most artists are like that when they are live
and not LIP SINKING!! Anyway, we liked it. Then we
had to watch the new Glee after, LOVE that show!!
And , I guess I should mention, I love superbowl food!!
Sometimes during the rest of the year, Jon and I decide
we are having "superbowl food" for dinner. So Fun!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

....Jon was born!

So Here's the pooper scooper for February 1st...
It's Jon's birthday, but he has decided that he would
rather not "celebrate" getting any older, so I was not
allowed to picture document the day.

It's Tuesday so kids have school, but Evey skipped
orchestra (which is before school)
so that we could give daddy his presents,
which consisted largely of Star Wars "junk"

(I call it junk, he calls it FAVORITE STUFF EVER!)
However, his "main" present won't arrive until March 2 at 3 pm.

Jon played hookie from all classes for the day and
our bestest friends who now live in the DC area were
in town, so they came and spent the day with us. It's
amazing how when you haven't seen good friends in
a while, how you pick up right where you left off,
as if no time was ever spent apart. We are hoping
they find the right job out here so that we can live
next to each other and grow into old geezers together!

We didn't get to have a sleep over like we usually do
though, early morning commitments took them away
from us! We did get to meet their youngest though, Jamie
was about to pop with him last time we saw them. And
they got to meet Winter. We were sad they couldn't bring
their 2 older boys. Lex and their oldest are the same age,
and always have a blast together.

We decided to go to Tucanos

(delicious Brazillian Grill with all you can stuff in your face
scrumptious meats, grilled veggies,

Grilled Pineapple, and
fried bananas....nom, nom, I'm getting hungry!)
for Jon's birthday dinner and since Evey had a dance
performance, she didn't have to go to dance class that day,
so it worked out nicely.  Jon somehow dodged the pounding
drum Birthday song, still trying to figure out how he did that.

We dropped Evey off at her performance, feeling a little bad we
weren't staying to watch, but we did watch it the night before.
It was an awesome show. No photography allowed though,
so no pictures from that either.

Then we spent the rest of Jon's birthday playing games
with Jamie and Danny. They bought him a new Wii game
and so we HAD to try it out!

A little tribute to my wonderful hubby for his birthday...
I'm so happy to have shared so many birthdays with him and
see how he's grown from a teen aged boy into such a wonderful
man. I really couldn't ask for a better person to share my life with,
he is amazing in every way and is a wonderful example to our children.
I'm so proud of him for all he has done and am looking forward to all
the things he is working for right now. Sure do love that guy!!

LEXS Academy

Part 1 -Setup

Starting at 5 the kids get to have friend birthday parties.

So this was Lex's first. We decided on a superhero theme.

Lex would have been okay with a spiderman or batman

party, but (some may think I'm crazy) I really can't stand

character merchandise! Don't get me wrong I still by the

kids a character toy, if they really want it, but I steer clear

of character shirts, or towels, or bedding or party stuff.

So we decided to create his own Logo and have a superhero

training academy. It just so happens his name works

perfectly for the League of EXtraordinary Superheroes- LEXS.

So we went crazy with it. We made invites, and stickers and shirts.

I also made each boy a cape,mask, and gauntlets for their training.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do for the cake. We

wanted something with fondant, because I wanted to try a

new recipe. So I decided on just a round cake with the logo.

But I did color the batter so it was a fun multi-color cake.

So this is my first time making homemade fondant. If you've

ever bought it from the store you'll know why I didn't want

to use it again, yuck! It turned out great though!

I made sure everything fit in the colors we picked. Black

and green soda. Kurt named the green soda Kryptonite Juice,

so that is what all the boys wanted.

We set up some training stations for the boys to train to be

superheroes.

We had:

Dodging "Bullets" on the tramp (Kurt threw squishy balls

at them and they had to jump and roll and dodge them)

Leaping over buildings

Crossing shark and alligator infested waters

Target practice

Finding Kryptonite in the Batcave

and

Rescuing a damsel in distress

I took a few pictures of Lex before the party, because I knew,

I wouldn't get too many once all the boys got there.

He has retrieved a sliver of Kryptonite

(glow sticks in a sea of balloons)

Part 2 -PARTY

Trainees pondering a run away balloon.

Superheroes in training....listening very carefully to the

master superhero

And they're off!!

Perfect aim! They had both silly string and water grenades

to hit as many targets as possible.

Super sisters

Evey made friends with the alligator and shark! Paris, however,

fell in at one point, nearly loosing a strand of hair!

The poor damsel, in need of rescue!

Never fear, captain D is here!

Training complete! These are REAL superheroes!!

Time for some grub...

... sweets...

...and a wish!

Part 3- Clean-up

The cake turned out delicious!! The fondant was really yummy.

We thought it looked pretty cool the way the balloons

were weighted down by the silly string...a bit alien.

Staff retrieving a stray balloon.

Super staff..

or super geeks???

I might get a beatin' for posting these!!

Cool shirts huh?! It was fun okay!

Mom and Evey had to leave in the middle of the party to

get Evey to her Dance Company pictures. ( we weren't

informed of the photo shoot until AFTER invites were

delivered!!! Argh! And they even asked me to do the

photoshoot, which I would have loved, but we had some

superheroes to train!) But I was very thank full to Kurt,

Grammy, and Tristan for their help. We couldn't have

pulled it off without you!