May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

Oh man- what a week oh what a week! We had so much going on that I bet I sleep through most of my spring break.

Hunger Games

Our day finally arrived and we were so excited. I absolutely loved the movie as it stayed so true to the book. I have lots more to say about it but won’t take the time to do so here.

Shirts….check!

Pizza…check!

Tickets…check!

Family and Friends…check!

The Bordens!

Nina and family were sweet enough to drive up to spend their Spring Break with us and she went with us to see the Hunger Games. It was a fun-packed week and I have a feeling they went home completely worn out. That’s the sign of a good vacation right?

 

Tyler and Showchoir

He had quite the week as well. His showchoir performed at his school, did elementary tours, and had their finale on Saturday that we attended. He was great and sad its over, but excited to audition for the high school ones in May.

He also had a boy scouts camp out. Poor guy- he is dead to the world today.

Misc

The weather has truly been amazing!! My tulips are in full bloom. Yesterday Bob and I pruned the apple trees, weeded and turned over the soil for the garden, and trimmed all the bushes.

I took advantage of Ninas artistic ability. I gave her some materials to help me with the Manga sign for work and here is the result. So dang awesome!

Nina also made her famous egg rolls from Hong Kong while she was here which is always a special treat.

Other Fun Meals we had:

French Crepes (my favorite is fresh cut strawberries and bananas with nutella and topped with strawberry homemade syrup!

Homemade Samoas

Homemade Cold Stone Creations

Finally finished my downstairs bathroom!(Black, white, hot pink and Paris!)

 

AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN 17 YEARS I HAVE HAD AN ENTIRE SPRING BREAK TO MYSELF!!!!!

Afters and Firsts

Afters and Firsts

The plan this week was to call this blog “Before and After”. However, I forgot to take ALL the before pictures cause I think I’m getting old or losing my mind. So, instead you will have to picture all the “before” photos and I will provide the “afters”.

Afters:

1. Being the awesome mom I am, I scheduled Tyler to have his teeth pulled during Spring Break. He had these 2 baby teeth that were deeply rooted and the new teeth came down anyway totally sideways. So, he had those 2 teeth pulled and brackets put on the new ones to yank them back into place. It really hurt for a few days, but he is doing way better now.

2. This could count as an “after” and a “first”. Marisa got highlights for the first time when she got her hair cut. She looks adorable!

3. Kayla got her haircut as well, but as always, refused to get her picture taken. So, heres all I could get.

4. We took tyler in to get his hair evened out and his unibrow waxed (yes, all his choice-apparently I cut crooked and rip the hair out of his head).

5. I REALLY wish we had gotten a before picture of Alayna’s hair. She had started looking like a wild woman being raised by wolves.

6. The laundry pile is always a beast after some spring cleaning, but this weeks was just ridiculous.

7. I don’t have a picture yet cause its not quite done, but Marisa was kind enough to paint the downstairs basement over break, so now we just need to finish the décor and then I will take a final picture.

Firsts:

We also had several “firsts” this week.

1. The doorbell rang late one night and we went outside to find that someone had saran- wrapped Marisa’s car!

2. When my kids were growing up, I always called the Ice Cream truck the “Music Truck”. I didn’t want them to know it had treats. This week one came by and they ran outside to get ice cream and now claim that their childhood is complete because they were able to FINALLY get ice cream from the ice cream truck. Silly people!

3. Bob made this new Raspberry pie recipe.

4. The weather this Spring Break has been AMAZING! We were able to walk and play outside and even wear t-shirts and shorts! Just perfect!

5. We tried out a new dessert place in town called “Orange leaf” (a reward for helping me with some spring cleaning and spending hours at work helping me). Its like an ice cream buffet. You fill your cup with ANY flavor of frozen yogurt and then they have the most amazing toppings and then you pay by the weight. Very cool idea.

6. Kayla is getting a little worried about turning 16 and someone asking her on a date. On Friday, the doorbell rang and a little glass cup with 2 rocks in it was left on our proch with a message that said “This is for you, Kayla. From, ?”. She went completely batty trying to analyze what it meant and who it might be. Later, she found out it was ALAYNA that had done it!! So dang funny!

7. All of our shirts have arrived for the Hunger Games Midnight show! We have never attended one and are very much looking forward to the experience. We are THRILLED that Nina and kids took us up on our offer and are coming up today! Nina will go with us to the movie and all the younger kids will stay here with Bob for a fun kids movie night.

8. We tried this new smoothie recipe and it’s a HUGE hit. You freeze yogurt in muffin tins and then vacuum seal it in a bag with frozen fruit. Then when you want a smoothie, you just add it to 1 cup apple juice ina blender. The kids had them all just this week.

9. 3 words…Pepperoni Monkey Bread! What a VERY fun idea and another huge dinner hit. Each roll is stuffed with pepperoni and cheese. Then you dip it into spaghetti sauce.

Others:

1. March Madness has begun. You can tell because Bob walks all over the house with his paper that has his team pics.

March comes in like a LION and some Pinterest Miss-terests

March comes in like a LION

Not in the weather sense, because the weather has been AMAZING this week. My tulips have risen their sleepy heads and my roses have started growing. But March did enter our home like a lion where germs are concerned! Good Gravy! We have all been sharing this hideous head cold that likes to hang around forever. Not fun! I think every kid missed about 2 days of school. Ugh! So, everyone is very ready for a break.

Spring Break FINALLY arrives

Spring Break is FINALLY here- for the kids at least. They can finally relax and its finally so gorgeous that we can workout outside. I think they have lots of game playing and fun planned, but what they don’t know is that I have a HUGE list of spring cleaning they are privileged to help me with! Bwaahaahaa!

Alayna lost another tooth. Poor Tyler gets 2 teeth pulled tomorrow.

Alayna has also started an in home restaurant to make money for her savings.  I think its great!

Temple Trip, Stake Dance, and Orange Leaf

Marisa, Kayla and Tyler got to go on the youth temple trip to Nauvoo yesterday. Tyler was sweet and brought me home some fudge. The night the girls attended the youth dance and went out to the really cool new dessert place called Orange Leaf. I guess you get all the ice cream and toppings you want and you pay by the weight of it. Sounds perfect to me!

The shelf

Tyler finished his tech project and I was so impressed with what he made. He wanted to do a shelf like Kayla made to display things he makes and likes. Bob helped him get it up yesterday. I’m just grateful he didn’t lose any limbs in the process.

He also made a homemade siren in tech. Lucky me…a constant police siren following me around all day. Just what I need.

Movies

United 93- Last week we watched this with the kids. I feel its important for them to learn about things like this that are an important part of our history. It was a good movie and sad, but opened up some great discussions about what happened that fateful day.

Abduction- This was a great action-packed film and Taylor Lautner was great in it. Even Marisa, who hates action flicks, liked this one.

Ice Quake- ok mom this is another VERY fun natural disaster flick. We watched it with Tyler and Alayna last night and loved it.

Hunger Games- T shirts arrived this week. Bring on the fun! Midnight show March 22 11:59PM.

Books

Obviously, Ive been reading some good books lately. Here are some suggestions for fun.

Future of Us- This is from the same author of “13 reasons why”. I loved this book and those of us who grew up way before facebook even existed can truly relate to it. Warning: some of the content may be a little too adult for middle school.

Death Cure- This is the 3^rd book in the Maze Runner. I still like it. The series is intriguing and action packed, but I do like Hunger Games better. I’m only half one done with this book so I don’t know how it ends yet but a new “prequel” to the series comes out in August.

The Deadly Sister- I LOVE mysteries and this one was great. Obviously, when ita about teenagers it’s a little less mature than adult novels, but this had a great twist at the end.

Pinterest Miss-terests

I guess after a few weeks of solid pinterest hits, there had to be some misses right? This week was a tough week with everyone sick and me working extra shifts.

1. I tried to make BYU brownies. Got home and decided I was too tired to make from scratch, so I made the brownies from a box. Then, when went to make the famous mint frosting I found we were out of mint extract and some geek didn’t put it on the grocery list. Then I went to make the ganache and found out we were out of the whipping cream. So it ended up being boxed brownies with green non-mint frosting and nobody ate it but me. Booo!

2. I came home one night after working 9 hours straight. The plan was chicken parmigian and I had no energy left to make it, so we just cooked up the chicken and ate that. Talk about boring.

3. I tried the sock bun. It didn’t work for me- probably cause my hair is too short for it.

Some successes:

1. I tried the 3 bun hairdo and it looked so pretty today. The picture however doesn’t really show it well- instead it look like if you add an egg and some yarn it could pass for a bird nest.

2. We made home made frosty’s in our ice cream maker and they were to DIE for. Definitely a hit!

Culture Food Week and why we don’t have missionaries over very often!

Missionaries for dinner

It never fails.  Every time we have the missionaries over, some sort of disaster will occur.  I can count on it every time.  If you have followed our blog for a while then you will remember things like the cooked scissors, bubble bath disasters, etc.  This week, before they came, Tyler dropped some plates and they shattered into millions of pieces!  Kayla was fascinated as she said it went in slowmo and it flew over her head.  I was not as amused.

 

Culture Week

We tried making some new foods from other countries this week.  It was all a huge success.  Again, recipes can be found on my other site.

Homemade rolls (extras in monkey bread)

Gyoza

My mom made this for us all the time growing up.  Ive rarely made it, but we did it this week and the kids LOVED it!

Empanadas

We were inspired this week to make these after watching Amazing Race.  They had to make a ton of these and they looked interesting.  Tyler found a recipe and we tried it.  So VERY yummy!  Next time though we are gonna make some kick butt creamy cheesy sauce to go on top.

Olive Garden Fettucine Alfredo

But I forgot to take pics.  Definitely NOT a lowfat recipe, but sure was delicious!

Puppy Chow

Not a new recipe, but will be trying to make Wendy’s frosty’s tonight!