Life Catch Up

 

I'd forgotten how fun it is to put curlers in the girls' hair. Copper has a-m-a-z-i-n-g hair!

I'm not a Valentine's Day lover but I did get the girls a bag of popcorn, a shirt, and wrote them a nice note.  That's as good as it got!!

I don't know why I took this picture, except I was feeling really overwhelmed with gratitude for some of these work folks. This was at a leadership meeting I went to and about halfway through I just had a thought that I was so grateful to get to know some really incredible people. I came on board at just the right time, I believe.

Okay. Magic Puzzle Company FOR.THE.WIN.

Their puzzles are seriously the most fun puzzles I've ever done.  Amber lent me this one.  They have the cutest puzzle pieces in the cutest shapes; super cool.  It was weird to think they all connected together in one puzzle, but they did!

When I was done, it ended up into three big pieces that slid together. 

Puzzling, hahahahaha....

 In the box is an envelope with instructions not to open it until the puzzle was all completed.

Here's the completed one!

When I got it home completed (I finished it at my mom's while the rest of them watched the Super Bowl), I opened the secret envelope. SPOILER: it gives instructions on how to move the pieces around, creating a diagonal in the middle with a bunch of other pieces to fill it in.  A second puzzle! Super cool. So I put it together, slid the pieces back together, and found they all worked out perfectly, just into a different story. Definitely a cool surprise.

I am now taking gifts in the shape of any Magic Puzzle Company creation...

Did I take more pictures of this puzzle than anything else in my life that was more important?

Yes.

Kota and Micah had friends over for a "bake off". They invited them before they asked us, and luckily for them Tim and I are pretty patient... Kota does this often...

They made the biggest mess in our kitchen I think there has ever been, ever. Ever.

But they had fun and they were awesome sports about cleaning it all up.

I was an awesome mom and threw every bit of the crap in the trash...

This is a double layer chocolate cake with icing in the middle and top with crushed oreo and more frosting...

This is a picture of the counter. Not pictured: the floor, stove, microwave, table, and inside the sink...hahahah

This is a double chocolate cake with homemade cookie dough crumbles and two pounds of chocolate chips.  Now we are out of chocolate chips and they're quite aware it'll be a bit before there's more...

This is their friend Emery. The three of them are best friends. We carpool with Emery every day, and every day we drop her off at 3:45 and every day she's back at 4:15 for the evening... We love her and I love they have a friend to eat pizza with on our stairs...

Red loves us...

Copper and Taryn teaching my mom how to use her phone. I love it.

For one of our Family Adventure Challenges we had to string an obstacle course around everything in the living room, then time ourselves going through it. If we bumped a string, we got sprayed in the face with a squirt gun.  I pretty much won everyone...

A few weeks ago we all went and watched Copper perform as a pirate in the junior high's Peter Pan. She's a cute pirate.  A bunch of her friends were also in the play. Love good friends, fun times, and great family for coming to support. Copper had a crowd there- both of Tim's parents cheering her on, Tim and I and the twins, my mom, her young women leader, and other kids from our school and neighborhood.

Copper and Megan. For what it's worth- I love this friend of Copper's...

Last but not least... a cousin time together.

Now that the twins turn 12 this year, they were able to get their limited use temple recommends.  Shandee and Ryan reserved a time for cousins to go perform baptisms for the dead so they all went together. It was pretty neat. Actually, it was really cool. Tim baptized them, and then four girls behind us didn't have anyone to help them, so Tim agreed. I think he performed like 30 baptisms. I found a bunch of family names to take, which I hadn't ever done before. It really means something to do work for someone you know you're connected to.

Jack's too young, so he and Shandee were off gallivanting in Provo....

We went to the Provo temple because it had the soonest reservation time, which we still had to book almost a month in advance. I can't believe they have appointments starting at 5:00 a.m. every single half an hour until 9:00 at night and every single temple around here is booked every reservation time for months at a time. It's unreal how busy the temple is, and it's very cool.

Afterward, we all went out for ice cream at the BYU creamery.  Fun times!