A Month of Love

I love holidays, and I love family traditions. I have always loved Valentines day gimmicks and all. 

 Meg has a valentines dance at her school with all the 6th graders. She had another one of these dances back in November and she came home with stars in her eyes and declared it the best day of her life. She was floating all afternoon. She worked up the courage to ask Brock to dance on a girls choice and they played Taylor Swifts Love Story and she proclaimed it "their song". Other boys asked her to dance to and she danced every dance. She was soo excited for this Valentines dances. She had her outfit planned well in advance. She looves her converse and wanted to wear them because she's already taller than Brock. This dance didn't go quite as well. When they played Love Story, another boy asked her to dance before Brock could. Then on one of the girls choice songs she asked Brock but then he got called down to the office so she only got to dance with him once rather than twice. She came home sullen. I guess you win some and you lose some.

 I know, I know. I'm crazy. We spend so many hours on valentines boxes nowadays. It's not to be showey. Its because I love doing it with the kids and being creative, and I love fulfilling their hope for what their box could be. That's my motivation. This year, Adin requested a Tower of Terror box. We looked at images online and did our best to recreate it. I really wanted to make it so that you put the valentine in the elevator and dropped it into the box by some sort of pulley system, but try as we might we couldn't get that to work out. Bummer. It still turned out pretty cool and he was happy.

 On a side note, Gracie makes a dang cute vater.

I think I've mentioned how much this girl loves to help me in the kitchen. She helped me make our traditional valentines pizza from start to finish. We just need to learn a little more finesse when spreading or stirring. Right now it makes for quite the messy experience.

How cute is that?

It's not a super fancy tradition but a tradition the same and the kids love it. Heart shaped pizza candlelight dinner. Last year we added chocolate covered strawberries to the mix and I think that's hear to stay.

I'm so flaming mad that we don't have a single picture, but Brian and I got to go back the Manti House Inn for a valentines dinner. We had our wedding luncheon there. I've wanted to go back so bad. It was a fun experience to get to be back in there and remember that day. The only downer to the night was that the food was truly terrible. Apparently there is a different owner from when we got married. We paid a pretty penny for it. It was buffet style and there really wasn't a good thing on the buffet. I didn't care though. I have been itching to go back there so bad for so long that it didn't dim the experience too much for me. Meg and I got diagnosed with strep throat the day before this dinner and Brian got hit with it just an hour or so before we left. He knew I wanted to go so bad that he was a trooper and medicated himself up and went anyway. He was a little bit kooky but I like him that way. :) That's a wrap.

BYU game

We wanted to take the kids to a BYU football game last year, but it never happened so we agreed we would try to make it to a basketball game. The kids were super excited when we told them. Adin even got a little bit of a sick belly the day before and he was so terrified he would miss the game that he told me he prayed that it would get better so he could go. During the stretch of holiday months we did a ton of traveling for parties so we hadn't done anything just with our little family for too long. I was so excited to just get out of Manti and do a fun activity as a family. 

We thought we would be okay waiting till a couple days before to get tickets but when I logged on they were completely sold out. I was heart broke. I start watching online classifieds and found someone that would sell me 10 tickets at $5 a piece but the catch was that I had to buy all $10. $50 was close to what we were going to spend for our whole family to go at regular ticket price so I jumped on it. I decided since it was sold out to try and sell the other 5 tickets. I sold them at the regular ticket price and unbeknownst to the buyer he paid for our tickets and his since I originally bought them underpriced. That left room in our entertainment budget to go out to dinner. We all adore Texas Roadhouse and talk about how much we miss it all the time so that's where we went. It was absolutely insane. Because of the game and some dance competition at BYU the restaurant was packed. Like standing room only and we were packed into the waiting area like sardines. Our promised 30 minute wait slowly crept to more like 50 minutes. It was such a relief to get a table and enjoy our juicy steaks. Grace was even good at the restaurant although Brian commented that taking a toddler to dinner is like taking an animal to dinner. Ha.

On a sad note, BYU lost a game that was supposed to be a cakewalk and no probably won't go to the tournament. Wa wa.

Another side note from the week. My ELEVEN year old has waaaay too many serious suitors for her age. She likes a boy named Brock (I think I mentioned him) and he likes her. He tends to like to shower her with gifts. This was the third large gift. The first was a bracelet, earrings and chocolate at Christmas. Then he randomly gave her a giant heart chocolate in January and now this. She acts like shes embarrassed but I know it really makes her feel good. Meanwhile another boy from our ward emailed her and told her that she is the most beautiful thing that his eyes have ever seen and that he can't stop looking at her and then told her he loves her. Ay ay ay, between the boy drama and the far worse frenemy girl drama I'm not sure I'll make it till my next birthday.

Family Snapshot

Just a little update about our lives right now. January is a pretty boring month so I don't have any fun things to blog about...hopefully February will prove more interesting. :)

We are still in Manti...not loving it. Brian's job is near unbearable. The only reason he is still on his feet is the promise of it ending. His boss finally retired in December and he has applied for his position. He will most likely interview next week. All the talk from the higher ups is that he'll get it. I'm so proud of him. He's worked hard there and truly proved himself. People love him. He deserves this for his efforts. We have also applied to go back to school to get his Ph.D. It's been his dream for years and he just hasn't been willing to pull the trigger. This job and this town have pushed him over the edge. We applied to University of Utah, University of Southern California and University of Kansas. They all have their pluses and minuses and we weigh them out constantly. We won't hear back from any of them until Marchish so we are waiting on pins and needles. Brian is more hesitant about this bold of a move than me. I'm ready for change and I've felt good and comforted about this decision. He mostly is concerned about uprooting our family and I am too, but I feel we'll be blessed...especially him and the old kids. Him possibly getting this promotion has made him second guess even more. He hates the prison though and I really really don't like this area. Sometimes I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin. I feel so isolated and detached from the world. The kids friends are just okay. Neither of them are super attached and have taken their fair share of being left out and treated badly. They just both came into situations where friendships were established so they are often the third wheel. That hurts my mama heart to watch. I really don't love the weather. The house we have rented doesn't have heat upstairs so in the winter we pay $400 a month to heat the thing and we are still bundled up and freezing all the time. Anyways, I feel like a whiner so that's enough.

Next week, I think I'll have a little more of a fun post...if we can get out of this town and find some fun. :)