The Way to a Man's Heart...

... is through his stomach... With no further ado I give you "2010 Valentine's love through food."

Our ward had a Valentine's Dance (hopefully more on that in a later post) and we were asked to bring treats... this is what I made and they were as good as they looked. :)

Valentine's morning this sweet heart came in to our room with breafkast in bed.
Even on Valentine's Day my man can't take a wake up call well. :)
Heart shaped toast with strawberry jam and sprinkles. Yum! He also made scrambled eggs (even though I told him repeatedly not to do it without me!). They were the saltiest, pepper-iest, most loving eggs you could imagine.
I wanted to make a festive dinner, but this was the best I could come up with. Shepherd's Pie is a favorite round these parts and heart shaped cheese was the perfect finishing touch.

Love, love love... love is all you need!

I feel bad I haven't been putting pictures up lately... SORRY! My blog has been boring to come to I'm sure, but it has been so much fun for me to read all your fun and wonderful comments! Thank you so much!!!

We're feeling the love in Texas getting ready for Valentine's Day...

We'd like to share our love with you.

Oh, and chocolate? We've got it covered...

Would you like some?

Levi kindly opened the hot cocoa tub and left it for baby sister to enjoy, what a loving brother.

What more could we possibly need?

Oh, LOVE! That's right. Today we're all feeling the love for our

BABY BOY

that will be joining us this summer.

Hope your Valentine's is as sweet.

Taking guesses...

We have an ultrasound on Friday. Any predictions what type of baby we'll find?

Just curious...

If given the chance to move to Japan, would you take it? For say, I don't know, around 2 years...

Yep. I'm one of "those" fans...

1 hour and counting...

I won't actually get to watch it tonight, but I'm still super excited for the big LOST event. FYI~ I won this shirt from a contest on longlivelocke.com! Yay!

Oh yeah, that's my belly too. For anyone who cares. :)

What do you think about this?

I'll be adding hardware once we get it for the kitchen, but until then... what do you think of this?

The Laundry Area

As part of our goals for the year we are improving our home. We decided to start out small with our little laundry nook just outside our kitchen. Here are some before pictures...

The cabinet wouldn't even close because of a broken hinge.

Some bright green paint and white cabinets certainly freshen the place up. And I LOVE the addition of chalk board paint to my back door. Its fun and functional and it looks so much better!
Stay tuned for February/March's projects... the kitchen and one of the kids' rooms.

Karate Kids

Never a dull moment around here...

Surgery

So this is Eliza's finger. When I first saw it, I thought it was just the dark berry jam that she loves in her PBJ, but upon further examination it turned out to be a hematoma, from what we didn't know... a few days later and upon even MORE examination I discovered it was a big ol' thorn stuck down in between her finger and nail... OUCH!!!

I held her down and Ethan performed the extraction. All is well now, she just has a gap between her finger and nail that will hopefully grow out.

I know its a lousy picture, but you try taking a picture of a really painful finger of an 18 month old!

Goals Revisited...

I thought it would be great to keep tabs on myself and be accountable for my goals. So I going to try to do a progress report each month on how I'm doing. Hopefully that will help keep me on track.

• Budget: Well, it took most of the month to figure out what we think will work, but we're so excited to implement what we've planned. Its so nice to plan money for fun activities and for things like clothes and home improvement projects!
• Birthday Greetings: I missed one birthday in January (sorry Caroline!). I thought of her all day, but never got around to calling. She turned 1, so I doubt she'll be scarred for life... I did get birthday wishes to everyone else in January! So 4 out of 5, isn't too bad... I'll do better this month!
• Organize my life and home: The schedule is working out great for the few big chores I planned for January (laundry, groceries, and recycling). I plan to add more to the schedule this month; bathrooms and floors. I have not kept up with the Grand Plan Challenge as well as I'd hoped, I will do better this month.
• Books: I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Black Beauty, and Outliers in January. The first two have been blogged about, Outliers will be posted soon.
• Crafts: I did a really simple craft to help motivate the kids to be obedient and posted on the book-nook about it.
• Letters: I have yet to hand write a letter, though I did send a few emails telling people how much I love them. This month, 4 letters will be written.

Other goals that I didn't mention specifically on the blog that are happening:

• Home Improvements: Each month we've budgeted to make improvements to our home (mostly decorative). We did our laundry area (its attached to the kitchen and will have a few more things added as we do the kitchen) and garage (Ethan built some shelves and a work bench, it looks SO much better) in January. February and March will be the Kitchen and maybe a kids' room.
• My Healthy Family Challenge: I'm eating a lot better but not quite working out as much as I need to.

Overall I think I'm making progress in my life (the purpose of the goals, right?). I'm enjoying working on it too, which makes my life happier. As the year goes on, I'll hopefully stay on track and get my life in order in these areas, so I can make other improvements in the future.