Katniss' Braid

I stumbled across this video this morning. Alan and I are going out to see the Hunger Games tonight, so I thought why not give it a try...

I don't normally dress my kids in matching clothes...

But sometimes they are just too cute

80 Degrees Outside

Reason why I love Alan #45874

He bought me this:

A KitchenAid mixer has been on my "someday" list ever since we got married. Last week while my parents were still here I saw a deal on Amazon that showed the mixer as being marked way way down and had a mail in rebate to make it even cheaper. I looked at it, showed it to Alan, showed it to my mom, drooled over it, and kept the tab of my browser open for a couple of days while I waffled over it. I KNEW it was an amazing deal and that I wasn't going to find a better one, but I have a hard time spending money, especially when it is in relatively large amounts. And then it happened. I waited too long and the deal expired and the price went back up.

I was so mad. For the past week I've been lamenting about not buying it. Every time I made dinner or looked at recipes online I thought "well, if only I would have bought the KitchenAid I could do that" or "this would have been so much easier if I had just bought it".

Yesterday afternoon UPS delivered this white beauty to my door. My jaw hit the floor and I almost started crying as I opened it (that's how excited I was). Alan knew I wouldn't have the guts to buy it on my own and went ahead and bought it to surprise me. My husband knows me so well.

We can be cool parents sometimes

 We started out Saturday morning by going to Costco. The girls were very excited for the samples and they love riding in the double cart seats together. I don't have a picture of us at the store (almost all of these are from my phone...), so here's a picture of Alice showing off her mad stacking skills.

 The girls took a long nap after the store and lunch. We decided that we needed to get out somewhere and run them around. Our thought was that if we wore them out enough they would sleep really well and maybe not be as thrown off by Daylight Savings. We headed out to Alan's work to play.

 Alice started having a melt down, so we found a break room to make popcorn and have some juice. They walked around with cups full of popcorn and they thought is was the best thing ever.

 After a lot of popcorn, juice, and running around, we headed home. While I made a pizza for dinner, Alan and the girls made a blanket fort in the living room.

When the pizza was done, we all crawled in the fort to eat dinner and watch Toy Story. The kids went right to bed after the movie was over.

I guess I should watch what I say...

(Alan walking into the kitchen)
Elsie: "Hey, what are you doing?"
Alan: "Nothing. Just going into the kitchen. Is that alright?"
Elsie: "No, it's Mommy's kitchen."
Alan: "It's our whole family's kitchen. We have to share it."
Elsie: "Well, sometimes I go in with Mommy and she says 'Get out of my kitchen'."

Dee Dee and Grandpa come to visit

My parents came out to visit us this past week. The girls loved having new people to play with and I loved that I got a break from full time mom duties for a little bit.

Alan and I were able to sneak away one night to go see Brian Regan at the capital. We had a great time together (and with all of the other members of our ward that saw him the same time as us). We had a whole 5 hours away from the kids... It was wonderful.

Just to prove how close we were. We sat in the second row and could see every expression and the sweat beading up on his forehead.

We took them out to Alan's work for lunch and to walk around some of the newer buildings that they hadn't seen yet.

Alice was quite taken with Grandpa...

In true form, we are moving again in April (I haven't had my birthday in the same place in 5 years...). We have found a house a little closer to Alan's work that we will be renting for the next three years. Since there is no one living in the house right now, the owners let us have the keys so we could get a jump on painting the walls. My dad always loves a good project (and is a pretty dang good painter), so Alan and Dad spent all day Saturday painting the new house. We took the girls over for a little picnic lunch and then just let them work. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I have a few before and after pictures of the place. The previous occupant was a 90 something old lady and I just wasn't feeling her whole floral wallpaper border ...

Here is my kitchen now. The backsplash under the cabinets is a light yellow tile, so we had to find a color that would work well with it. I really really love it.

The laundry room had the same yellow flower border stuff going on...

BAM! Blue laundry room.

The last room we wanted painted was Elsie's bedroom. It had the weird wallpaper border too, and I just wanted to get rid of it.

Thanks again for all your help Mom and Dad! Everyone misses you a lot.