Happy Birthday, J.R.R. Tolkien

It's J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday (January 3). It's a Saturday.

Yes, we can have a Lord of the Rings marathon. 

Back To School Baby Bonding

The kids went back to school today which meant Jet got Mommy all to himself. And he didn't have anyone else to cling to so he was quite clingy with Mommy. We had some fun, though. We sang, we danced, we read books, he helped me with dishes, and he had quite a bit of fun playing with his dinosaurs. He loves those things.

When the kids got home from school he was happy to cling to them again as well while I made dinner.

Since January 3 is J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday, I asked Alexa to play "Lord of the Rings" music. She decided to play mostly "Harry Potter," music. I pointed that out to the kids.

For Family Home Evening, we watched Paddington 2 while eating orange marmalade sandwiches. Well, some of us did. Some decided they couldn't stand them and some named Jet devoured two themselves.

I kept making the kids stop the movie to make this comment, "Today is J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday, right? So and so in this movie played such and such in... Harry Potter." They got a kick out of that. I think I did it four times.

January 3 is also National Drinking Straw Day so I let the boys use the long straws to drink hot chocolate for after school snack. Those straws are fun.

I made sure to give Jet cups with straws today.

Catching Up on the Last Five Months- 4

Let's talk about August.

The kids started new schools in August.  I did not do the best with first day of school pictures this year.  This is what you get.

August 9 was Book Lover's Day.  We started letting Nichole watch the Lord of the Rings movies with us.  We were partway through "The Return of the King" when school started.  Then a funny thing happened.  Nichole's history teacher mentioned a quote from the character, Aragorn.  Some of the kids in the class asked, "Who's Aragorn?"  So the teacher jokingly assigned them homework to watch all three Lord of the Rings (extended edition) movies.  So Nichole came home with a big smile on her face and was able to complete her "homework."

August 14 was National Creamsicle Day.

August 15 was National Relaxation Day.  We went to the annual juggling BBQ that day.  Mmm, that part of the day was relaxing.

August 22 was Be an Angel Day so we had alfredo with angel hair pasta.

August 24 was National Waffle Day.  We ate waffles.  I didn't take pictures.

August 30 was National Toasted Marshmallow Day.  We toasted marshmallows over the stove and made s'mores.

We went to a picnic to celebrate some friends' 50th wedding anniversary.  Way to go, friends.

We went to a couple events at the Orem Library. One was a live animal show.  The other was a birds of prey show.

 
Jeremy and I built a large shark arch for Sharktastic Saturday at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point then took the kids to the event.

Certain things are just tradition.

We went to a picnic again for HawkWatch because we volunteered and did the short-eared owl survey again earlier in the year.  We decided to bring a cheeseball... that looked like a short-eared owl.

While we were there, Nichole picked some yarn out of her pocket and just crocheted a bird to sit on her finger.  Yeah, That's what she did.

I need to start a series of posts on this blog titled, "If you give Nichole a medium."  This is what happens when Nichole says, "I want to make a cheeseball."

We celebrated Jr.'s birthday.

One evening, the young women in our ward were providing babysitting so parents could have a date night.  Jeremy was out of town at a fair so the boys and I went to drop Nichole off to help.  However, the Young Women leaders convinced me that even if Jeremy wasn't there for a date, I should leave the boys (who were already having fun running around) and treat myself to some time alone- soak in a bath or something.
So I went home and soaked my feet and polished my fingernails while finishing a movie.  Awww, it was relaxing.

While Jeremy was still out of town, the kids and I decided to have a $2 dinner.  We went to the grocery store and each had $2 to spend (not including sales tax).  Each person was assigned a food group (protein, milk/dairy, fruit, vegetable, and grain) so they had to find something that fit in that food group.  We were allowed to get creative with the pizza when some of us used less of our $2 on one item and then used the remainder to get the pizza which counted for multiple food groups.
This is what we ended up with.

Lucky and I also had some bonding time when I found a nail in our tire.  We took it to Les Schwab and had them fix it while he and I ate popcorn and watched TV.

Then we went to visit my sister and had bonding time at her house.

Phew.  I think that is it for the craziness that was August.  I started out to write this blog post thinking, "Oh, we didn't do much in August."  Then as I started going through pictures and lists of holidays I realized, "Oh, wow.  We did a lot in August."

I'll catch up on September later.

Ice Castles

Last night I didn’t write a blog post.  It was J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday so we put on one of the Lord of the Rings movies but I was celebrating a new holiday my mom told me about.  Festival of Sleep Day.  I slept on the couch while the movie was on.

Today, however, our whole family celebrated National Trivia Day.  We went up to the Midway Ice Castles to visit our friend, Brent.  Oh, it was so good to see him.  

He showed us around this year’s ice castle and told us some really neat information about it.  Perfect for the holiday.  We even found a spot that had a piece of trivia on a sign so we could take a picture.  

This was our first time seeing the ice castles at night.  It was so cool with the lights in the ice.

After exploring the ice castles, we got to visit Brent and his wife and youngest daughter.  Oh, it was so good to see all of them.  Brent used to be our home teacher while at the same time his wife was my visiting teaching companion.  Such great people.  We still remember when Brent built an ice castle in his backyard.  After that it really took off.  Now there are massive ice castles in several different states and even one in Canada.

Lucky had never been to an ice castle since the last time our family was able to go was when Lucky was a newborn so he and I stayed home while Jeremy took the other kids.  That was not long after The Piano Guys had filmed their Vivaldi’s Winter/Frozen video there. 

I mentioned that when we went this evening and Lucky kept asking where The Piano Guys were.  He was just sure we were going to see The Piano Guys there.  I had to let him know that they weren’t there but they had filmed a video at another ice castle like this one.  Then when we told him we were going to visit Brent’s house, he latched onto that idea.  “We’re going to visit our friends’ house,” and wouldn’t let us forget it.  He got upset a few times when he thought we weren’t going to go to their house.  We reassured him and he kept mentioning it.  He didn’t want us to forget to go there.  He was so happy.  He even gave Brent a hug when we were about to go home.  It was cute.  He definitely had a good experience tonight. 

I enjoyed it, too.  The last time I was able to visit these friends and go to the ice castles was before Jr. Jr. was born.  That was the first year they were doing it at Midway.  Wow, that was a while ago.

It was a great evening.  And the weather cooperated for us to head up there.  We got some snow yesterday morning and we’re supposed to have a winter storm, but we didn’t have any problems traveling to Midway today.  On the way home, we got a lot more snow through Provo Canyon, but we made it okay.  We just went somewhat slowly.  Jeremy and I both remarked how glad we were that we were able to go.  The ice castles are great and all (read: amazing), but what we really love is to see our friends.