Valentine's Day 2024

One of the things I like the most about Valentine's Day with school-age kids is that you can really decide what level of intensity you want to celebrate with.  I felt like there were always a lot of extra activities when they were in pre-school, but not quite as much with elementary school.  If you want to make a Valentine's box, you can, and you can decide how intense it should be.  You can do more complicated valentines or you can just buy a pack of candy from the store.  You can celebrate as a family but you don't have to.  It's very refreshing after all of the late fall/early winter holidays, where I do not feel like I get to decide the level to which we celebrate whatsoever.

This year, we actually did kind of a lot for Valentine's because it was what the kids wanted to do!  Molly and Elliott were both excited to make Valentine's boxes.  

Molly decided to make hers look like a bookshelf with plants on it and put all of her favorite books on the shelves!

Elliott wanted Mario, of course.  We used an oatmeal jar to make the pipe on top and toilet paper rolls to make the smaller pipes for the side scenes, and then cut out a bunch of clip art for the pictures.

Molly and Elliott both had very clear ideas for what valentines they wanted to hand out.  Molly found these cute rock-themed ones and then we added some agate slices from Amazon.  I can't get Elliott's to load right-side up, but they're some cute Mario ones with little sticker faces that were extra from his birthday party.

On the actual day, I gave each kid some of their favorite lollipops and gave Gerrit two bags of some of his favorite candies to take to work.  He gave me a weighted blanket to see if it could help with my nightmares...I sometimes wake up with really intense nightmares and they're exhausting.

I also decided to make a special Valentine's dinner for the family.

This is a Valentine-patterned sponge cake with stabilized raspberry whipped cream.  It was a fun experiment!

We also did strip steak with cowboy butter, honey-crusted cornbread, spicy fried potatoes, and green beans.

All Fall Down

Miles and Elliott got very invested in the Jenga game they played after my dad's birthday dinner.  Their faces were really cracking me up, so I took a series of pictures to capture their intensity :)

This might be my favorite.

I just love that Elliott is SO SHOCKED.

I hoped to catch it falling but it just fell too quickly!

The next day Elliott decided to use them more like dominoes instead and it was also very fun!

Three Kids in a Beanbag

When the kids wanted a beanbag chair for Christmas, I was so worried they were going to fight over it.  I will not say that has never happened, but the unexpected benefit of accidentally buying one that is obnoxiously large is that all three kids can enjoy it at the same time.  I love seeing all three of them curled up together, reading happily!

Temple Baptism Trip

Molly got to go to the temple for the very first time!  It's very hard to get weekend or evening temple appointments here so we pulled Molly and Miles out of school on a day when Gerrit would be home.  It was a wonderful day as a family!  We went out to Waffle Love and had some of the tastiest waffles we've ever had from them afterwards.

The Horrors of A.I. Recipes

Miles and my dad thought it would be fun to ask ChatGPT to come up with a recipe and then actually make the recipe.  It's a sweet pasta salad with strawberries and chickpeas and a truly nasty sauce made from Greek yogurt, honey, and mayonnaise.  As a person who actually ate this recipe, I do not recommend getting your recipes from Chat GPT.

I DO recommend getting your recipes from trusted cookbooks and websites.  Please compare the salad above to these beautiful cookies. (Neapolitan and chocolate chip with pecan brittle)  Which would you rather eat?

Elliott at Nine

                                                  

Elliott is nine years old!  It's his last year before he's a tween and that makes me feel extremely old. Here's a little bit about what he's like right now!

*Elliott has been working really hard on writing.  He's always been a strong reader but writing has often stressed him out.  The two of us have been working on strategies for planning and thinking about his ideas, and he's made so much progress! He went from crying and taking hours just to write six sentences to being able to routinely write around 20 sentences of creative, funny writing with a minimum of panic :)  I'm so proud of him!

*He's also been doing a lot better about actually eating dinner.  He has always been great about eating every possible fruit, vegetable, or straightforward meat, but has refused to even try many dishes for years.  He decided to try the food and has been pleasantly surprised to realize he likes a lot of them.

*Elliott loves going to his Lego Snapology class and to Knowledge Bowl!  He also loves the weekly library activities and going to boys activities at church.  His favorite activities are pretty much all learning or science-based.

*He has made some really great friends at school this year.  That hasn't been the case every year so that makes me really happy!

*Elliott is an enormous fan of anything related to Mario, whether that's the games themselves or just the characters.  He's also still a huge fan of all dogs and his favorite is corgis. He also LOVES Disneyland and wants to go to every Disney park around the world.  His top wish right now is Shanghai but then his next choice is Orlando.

*He is a curious boy who loves to read and learn.  He tells me fun facts all the time and can often be found with a novel, graphic novel, non-fiction book, or his scriptures.

*Elliott has a sweet nature and a kind heart.  He wants his friends and his family to be happy and is the first to jump in with a hug or with a service project.  He chose to do five acts of kindness for a January homework activity and realized that things like hugs, making cards, making treat, and helping clean were all things he already likes to do!

Here are some of his favorite things right now:

Friends: Kyrie, Kairi, Remington, and the kids in his church class

Favorite books: The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza series, The Wild Robot series, Wayside School series, The Ice Cream Machine, InvestiGators and Agents of S.U.I.T. series, Harry Potter illustrated books

Favorite things to do: Jumping, running, and spinning, playing with stuffies, games on the computer and Wii U, reading

Favorite toys: Mario toys, stuffies, Lego

Favorite foods: Pepperoni pizza, tacos, pork burritos, pavlova, cookies, banana bread, carrot cake, coffee cake, Goldfish, cuties, celery, berries

Favorite place to go:  Disneyland, Snapology class

Favorite clothes: Comfy pants and blue shirts

Favorite animal: Dogs

Favorite show: Zxmany videos (Mario walkthroughs), Hamster and Gretel, Press Your Luck (he loves the whammy animations)

Favorite scripture story: Noah's Ark, because it has dogs

Favorite restaurant: Sweeto Burrito, Pizza Pie Cafe, Five Star BBQ, Smokin' Star BBQ (technically closed), Toadstool Cafe

Favorite song: Mario songs

Favorite subject in school: Reading

Favorite color: Blue

Favorite game: Splatoon, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Paper Mario

Mario (Birthday) Party

Elliott wanted a Super Mario birthday party more than anything this year.  I bought a pack of Mario clip art on Etsy and then had Elliott help me design his ideal Mario scene for the invitations.

One of Elliott's favorite things from Mario is the piranha plant, so I made him a piranha plant cake.  I made a 9 x 13 and a 6 inch round, both of his favorite cookies and cream cake, and then cut it out and frosted it to look like a piranha plant.

I don't usually put much effort into party decorations.  I got swayed by how cute and semi-easy the Pinterest pictures looked and ended up doing a LOT of decorations for this party.

The room full of Boo balloons is both a decoration and also a game.  Molly and I spent forever blowing up very large white balloons and then drawing faces on them.  We ended up needing our air mattress pump for the biggest ones!

I love decorating the little window between our kitchen and family room.  I made bricks and question blocks out of cardstock, cut out the little mushroom, and then made coin strings out of yellow plates and yarn.

Our front door and the inside of the house both got a yellow poster paper star.

Like I mentioned, he loves piranha plants, so I cut one out of poster board and it ended up being five feet tall.  I also made a little chain chomp out of a black lantern and construction paper.

This was my favorite little corner with the green pipes and bobombs (also black paper lanterns and construction paper) and poster paper cloud.

Another view of the Boos!

While we waited for everyone to come, we played a Mario character matching game.

Shy Guy shuffle is an actual Mario Party game. I cut shy guys out of construction paper and then taped them to cups.  I made coins out of an oatmeal box, but they needed to be on something that slid better. Oops!

The kids LOVED the little bombs and spent a lot of time playing with them while they were waiting for their turn on the other games.

For the Boo game, we blindfolded the kids and then they had to get through the boo blockade without hitting any balloons.

Our next activity was a Yoshi egg hunt.  The kids and I had decorated white easter eggs with green circle stickers and then filled them with chocolate coins, and then I had Molly and Miles hide them in tricky places all around the outside of our house.

Next up, we played Bowser May I.  We had each kid do their actions with a partner to save time.

Fireball blast was really fun!  I made five little fireball beanbags out of red felt, and then we put pictures of Mario villains on a board and played it like cornhole.

Our last game was Chain Chomp tag.  It's basically just chain tag with a Mario-sounding name :)

Finishing up with presents and cake!  Elliott said it was his best birthday party ever, so that makes me happy :)  He had two years in a row where various Covid surges meant that we couldn't have a friend party so I'm happy that this went could go well!