Valentine's Day

I am a receiver at David's Bridal for my job. Which means I take care of the incoming/outgoing shipments. The Friday before Valentine's day, my boss as me if I had something shipped to work. "No", I replied. So went back to my room to investigate.

There was a box from Shari's Berries. Now I have been in the Top 10 in the company for managing my room, so I thought that maybe that had decided to recognize me for that, as when the store makes quarter they send us cookies.

Well, I opened it only to find that my wonderful husband had sent me chocolate covered strawberries and pretzels. The note read, I'm "Berry" lucky to have you for my Valentine. Thanks for "sticking" with me all these years. - Love, James. He racked up the points.

Grandpa Chapman's Birthday

James' dad's birthday is January 1. Since we hadn't seen his parents for a while we went over to celebrate.

Since Mikah was working, we decided to take the car. The weather didn't look to bad, until we hit the usually bad spots. From about Burley to American Falls it was a bit touchy. We made it in one piece.

On Saturday, we went and got party accessories. We got party poppers, sparkling cider and hats and horns. We celebrated each time zone until midnight.

On Sunday, we had a family get-together with my specially, brisket. Apparently the Sunday before Loraine had forgotten to turn the oven on and the meat didn't get cooked. So everyone was glad for a complete meal.

Thanksgiving

For our actual Thanksgiving day, we just hung out and played in the pool and some slept. (Connor) We went to the Tournament of Kings. It's a medieval jousting show with food. I didn't want to cook. It was a better show than the one I saw with Anna in Vegas.

Christmas

Christmas was very quiet this year. I just put up the downstairs tree and minimal deocrations. We had placed to just give money to the kids so they could then buy their own presents. But two weeks before James decide that they would need something to open on Christmas. So went and got a few gifts and gave the rest in cash. Everyone else had the same idea. Both grandparents send cash.

The kids got up earlier then in the past. We opened presents and it was over. Alexia commented that eventhough this was the smallest Christmas this was the best. I think it was because my mom got us a gelato maker!! We've had gelato several times a week. I'm going to have to slow down on the calories.

Thanksgiving

The kids had the week of Thanksgiving off from school and I wanted to go some place warm. So we headed to James's parents condo in St. George. I found out that Joel and Cheryl Leithead were going to be there for a soccer tournament and invited them to stay with us.

We went to Vegas one afternoon because some people (Trevor) felt left out when I took Anna in the spring. We hit the hi-lits of the strip. When we went into the Venetian hotel, there was a statue and Trevor wanted to have his picture taken with him. Little did he know that it was a street performer and he put his hand on Trevor and made him jump!

Joel's family came and hung out with us for the weekend. It was great to catch up and play around.

Year end catch up

Yes, I know that I'm behind. The story of my life. Where to start?????

October 31: Halloween
I wanted to have a party, but lost steam. I did get Friday off.

Dead flower girl

Trevor: stick figure
November 5: Exchange student went home.
Long story. We did learn some things out of the experience and will probably be selecting another student for next school year soon.

November 22: Cello debute
Played with the choir in Sacrament. Huge bust, but I did do it and it's over.

Thanksgiving: Went to Firth, ID
Enjoyed the food fest with the Chapmans. We went over Thanksgiving day and came home on Saturday. It was great not to have to go anywhere.

December: Came and is going out fast
Managed to get school grades up. Christmas shopping done early with the exception of a few missplaced ones. Got all but one tree up, Mikah's, seaside.

Family room

Sugar and Spice

Living room

German

Texas

Snowman

Took in a stray cat. We let her in the house (controlled rooms) when we're home. I'm not doing another litter box. She does go to the door to be let out.

Lily

December 25-27: Christmas
Christmas has been quite. No visitors or guest. The kids are getting older.

Mikah's favorite gift: wool coat
Connor's favorite gift: Saints beannie
Alexia's favorite gift: long sleeve shirts
Trevor's favorite gift: Bubblebee transformer

We got several blu-rays for gifts and so we have been running through the Harry Potter movies. We will finish up with Order of the Pheonix and the Half-Blood Prince tonight.

Fourth of July

I love to BBQ, so that's what we did for the fourth. We had the Frenchs (Jase, Carmen, Jarin, Shayla, Brendon, Alyssia, Chelen, Mariah, and Eloryn), Pugmires (Jeff, Pam, Paige, Preston, Josh, Faith, Porter and Brig), Camille McCashland, and Shawn ? over for the party. Lots of good food, brisket and pulled pork. Mikah and James and I think Paige went and loaded up on fireworks that lasted into the night. The other kids played with water ballons and water guns.

Easter

Sundays are usually my day to catch up on family blogs. So it is fun to read and see pictures of everyone's little families and the easter excitement. Since the kids have gotten bigger, we don't do the "hunt" anymore.

I do have the eggs that tells the story of Easter and we have done those for several, several years. I wanted to do something a little different. We made Easter cookies. Trevor had wanted to make cookies, so on Saturday night after they got ready for bed, we said that we were going to make cookies. Each ingredient has part of the story. We put them in the oven (the tomb) and sealed it up. Then announce we were going to bed. You couldn't have planned the reaction better. Yes, we were sad that we had to leave the cookies but a wonderful surprise would be waiting for us in the morning. The cookies are meringue cookies, so in the morning they are hollow. It was pretty cool.

Valentine's Day

I decided it would be fun to give treats everyday of the week leading up to Valentine's day. It was fun watching the kids either find what they got or "when do we get our treat".

We've never really done anything big for valentine's day. Occasionally we would get Lee's chocolates and pig out, but we have tried to go to dinner. We lucked into some reservations at Cafe Vincino's, not a bad little Italian restaurant. I had the quail and James had the Ahi. The caprese wasn't worth the $7.50 but the creme brulee was great.

I have a goal this year to have a family fun activity once a quarter. Debating the long weekend; tubing or movie, we got a call on Friday night (9 pm) to clean the chapel. The people that signed up used Valentine's day as an excuse not to do it. Now I could go on about my thoughts on this but I will spare anyone who might read this. I wasn't too happy, but I decided it would qualify for our family fun activity as service is always good. Dutch Bros coffee was have $1 16 oz drinks as afterwards we went for hot chocolate. There was a bit of a wait so the picture is of the kids being goofy.

Christmas

We were a little worried about Christmas this year. It was going to be small as far as gifts go. Alexia had made comments to the number of gifts. To give some history, I had seen the Pirates of the Caribbean on blu-ray and fell in love. Then we decided that for the same price of a blu-ray, you can get a PS3, well imagine that. Connnor had gotten Guitar Hero for the Wii and everyone was hooked. So the question was posed that for Christmas, we would get a PS3 with Rock Band. The rest is history.

So for the rest of the day, Rock Band 2. We had Chris and Carrie Hale and their two girls, and Carmen and Jase French and their seven kids; about 20 people over for dinner (brisket)and rocked out.

Thanksgiving

Even though we had just spent a week with James' parents, we went for Thanksgiving. We had been over to Firth for a while and a visit was due. The weather was nice until the day after and then it was freeeezzzzzinnng! Connor had just gotten a camera for his birthday and took all the pictures. We drove over on Thanksgiving morning just in time for the food. We shot clay pigeons before we left in the cold. Mikah surprised us and does very well with a shotgun.


Pull, Mikah

Pull, James

Connor and Emma (cousin)


Trevor and Nathan (2nd cousin, once removed)

Halloween

(I'm playing catch up) Since Halloween is my favorite holiday and it fell on a Friday. We partied!!! It was the warmest weather I can ever remember for a Halloween. I invited 25 families and got 13 of them. So we had about 50 people come. We started with kid games and then left them to the video games. Since it was so warm, I planned a ghost hunt outside. It turned out pretty good.

Labor Day

We had originally planned to go to Eastern Idaho for the weekend, but I had a call in shift for Monday and James agreed to sub in Sunday School. So we didn't go. The weather was on the cool side, so watersking would be a bit chilly, but great to float the river. We've lived in Boise 15 years and have never floated the river. James had done it with the Priest and Laurel just a few weeks earlier. Trevor loved it so much he threw himself in. There were a few little rapids we had to navigate through, but it was a pretty smooth ride.