Valentines Weekend

I'm kind of sad that Valentines is over, because it's really one of my favorites... but I'm also starting to get my fill of hearts and pink and candy. Well, maybe not the candy part...haha. Becca and Jake went to Bellair playgroup for their Valentines party - they exchanged some valentines and colored and decorated yummy cupcakes - and ate them of course. They also had a darling little red frame and some props for taking some Valentines pictures outside - we gave it a try and they are pretty cute considering I'm not a photographer and I don't have a fancy camera (anyone want to buy me a fancy camera?... ben?!)




On Friday, Ben and I celebrated Valentines together - he made dinner reservations and I got a sitter... those are usually our assumed tasks when it comes to dates. We ate at Tutti Santi, a place we've dined at before, but many years ago - Ben enjoyed lobster ravioli and I loved my homemade gnocchi. I love Italian food! Ben spoiled me with 2 dozen lovely roses and some fancy chocolate truffles. They were all gone within 24 hours, enjoyed by yours truly. One of the many reasons I love Valentines. :) Well, I mostly love it because of Ben... he is wonderful.


On Saturday, we didn't do any Valentines activities, but it was very busy with family fun. The kids spent a small portion of the morning finishing up their weekly chores so that they'd be ready for Family Movie Night. Our current chore system continues to be successful, but it's definitely just as much my responsibility to remind the girls continually of the jobs they need to do, as it is theirs to actually get the chores completed. A lot of it is teaching them how to even do the chores and what the expectations are for it to be considered complete. Emma found that sweeping the back patio is much more fun while wearing roller skates. :) And Becca discovered that the vacuum is much bigger than her.




After chores, we packed up a lunch and headed to the Anthem outlets to play and shop around a bit for Emma birthday gifts and Ben clothes - Ben is all of a sudden skinny and nothing in his closet fits... it's been a constant process to try to restock his closet with new smaller clothes... probably not the worst problem to have however - haha.






When we finished up shopping, we headed straight to the movie theater... we decided that instead of watching a movie at home, we'd go see Gnomio and Juliet for our Family Movie Night. It was a cute movie! And we love when kids movies are just as entertaining for the adults. :)

On Sunday evening we had a Valentines/birthday celebration at Ben's parents home. Emma and Peter share a birthday (Feb 16th), which Emma loves! So, we were spoiled with Valentine gifts and a delicious red and pink dinner, and then Emma and Peter got to open some great birthday gifts and blow out the candles on a delicious chocolate cake made my Aunt Emily. Emma got some darling dresses, books, and doll house accessories from Grandma and Grandpa Dangerfield - the Lee's got Emma a new Fancy Nancy book and cute pj's. Oh, and Grandma and Grandpa Szymanski got Emma a Connect 4 game for her b-day while they were up visiting. She LOVES to play it! Emma has the greatest aunts, uncles, and grandparents... what a lucky girl!






On Monday (Valentines Day!), I got out the heart cookie cutter and made some heart shaped pancakes for breakfast. It's amazing to see how much more excited the kids are when the pancakes are shaped like something other than a circle. :) The girls then headed off to their Valentine parties at their school classes. Since I got to go to Becca's Christmas party, I decided that it was Emma's turn for me to visit her. I brought Jake along, which I thought might be a recipe for an early exit, but he did well and even got to decorate and eat his own Valentine cookie. He loved that! I love how excited Emma gets when I come to her classroom. She's such a cutie!


I checked Emma out of school about 20 minutes early so that she could just come with me to pick up Becca from preschool instead of having to take the bus home. As I pulled up to the home that Becca does preschool at, Emma and I both quickly laughed at the line-up of minivans waiting for their little ones. As a mom (especially a Mormon mom), this is the world I live in now... minivans everywhere! haha.


When we got home from school pick up, we did the same valentines lunch we had last year - heart shaped pb sandwiches, strawberry smoothies, and a handful of m&m's (for good measure). The kids were quick to dump out all their valentine loot from school and pass around their cards and treats... Jake collected a large amount of suckers from the girls and he sometimes would have 2 in his mouth at once. I dare to say that Jake loves Valentines day. ;) We also finished up our Valentine collage on the fridge from all the mailbox exchanging this month....


The girls helped me make sugar cookies (that we later decorated that night for FHE) - Emma was excited to wear her new apron set she got from Grandma Dangerfield for her birthday! When daddy came home he brought the girls their traditional valentine gifts of balloons and chocolate - can you tell they were excited?! We had a lot of cookies leftover too, so I packaged up some extras to take to friends. Oh, and the REALLY big balloon that Becca is holding in one of the pics, was given to her free from the Fry's play area... since it was the day after Valentines, I'm guessing they were trying to get rid of them. You should have seen her face when I picked her up after grocery shopping! That balloon is bigger than her!

Mom and Dad ♥

It's been such a great week! My parents drove down from Utah to visit me here in sunny AZ this past Friday. And we've had such a great time with them here. My mom and dad are wonderful!

On Saturday morning, Ben was busy volunteering as a medic at the Phoenix Open. He was so excited to get to be involved in a PGA Tour event! While he was enjoying being around the golfers, the rest of us got to work on Valentines. :) I'm not a big fan of buying the pre-made boxes of Valentines, if I can help it, for the kids classes, and I like having the girls help out as well - so after much searching I finally found a simple thumbprint Valentine idea. Dad tried to keep Jake entertained with Toy Story while mom and I worked with the girls and whipped out about 80 Valentine cards for all the kids Valentine parties.




Ben apparently declared it golf day, cause soon after he got home from volunteering, he went out golfing with my dad and Emma. This was officially Emma's first time to experience a full round of golf and she came home so happy that she got to spend time using her clubs, driving the golf cart, and spending time with daddy and grandpa.






While they were golfing, my mom and I took Becca and Jake on the little hike by our home, and then to play at the park. We definitely tried to take advantage of the wonderful weather while my parents were here to escape the snow...










On Sunday, the kids really loved having grandma and grandpa come to church with us. And Emma bore her testimony by herself for the very first time during Sacrament meeting! I'm so proud of her! I was glad to have my mom in Primary to help me out with my busy class of 4 year olds. :) After church, we got busy getting plenty of food prepped for our little Super Bowl party - Ben's parents came over to enjoy the festivities. None of us are really big fans of football really, and for most of us, the Super Bowl is the only pro football game we watch every year - but every year, I really do enjoy it and I actually do watch the game closely, while eating lots and lots of food and goodies.

On Monday we did some shopping while the girls were at school in the morning - it's always a must for my family to make a visit to Trader Joes while they are here and I also got to help pick out an early birthday gift for Emma and some little cute pink gifts for the baby on the way. After Emma and Becca got home, we packed up a lunch and headed to the zoo...














On Tuesday morning, we did another little Valentine project - this time for the girls school teachers. I'm not usually good at preparing little gifts for the teachers, which seems sad considering I was a teacher... this time I decided to be fun. They turned out really nice I think, but next time I might get a larger amount of chocolate melted so I can cover more of the pretzels in it and also use larger sized, brighter colored sprinkles so the red color shows up a little more. I guess if you used white chocolate the red sprinkles would pop more, but I am just not a big fan of white chocolate. I saw this idea HERE, plus the link shows you lots of other things that can be decorated in a similar way - great ideas for gifts for any holiday if you just switch up the sprinkle colors.






Early that morning, my dad had gone out on an epic long walk, and went exploring in the cactus covered hills that surround our neighborhood. He offered to watch the kids while mom and I went on our own little hiking adventure. I've been wanting to venture out on the longer hiking trail, but hadn't ever had a chance with all our little ones. I do love that these trailheads are just a 5 minute walk from our front door...









A view down towards our home and the surrounding community... I've really come to love the desert!.

That afternoon, we went to the Heard Museum downtown. I wanted to take my parents here, mostly because I knew my mom would really appreciate a museum dedicated to Native American art and culture....








The rest of my parents visit was kept busy with playing plenty of games, Family Movie Night, neighborhood walks and a trip to Yogurtology for FHE. Thanks mom and dad for coming! We miss you already!

February Love

I say it every year, but I really do LOVE February! I love red and pink and hearts and love. :) I was happy that our Valentine mailboxes made it though their year of storage and have made a triumphant reappearance. I noticed them in the Target dollar bins again this past week (in red, white, AND pink!), so I decided to snatch up a few extras, in case any of mine need replacing and because next year our little girl on the way will need one too! I love that our family is still growing. :)





The girls have already been hard at work the past couple days making Valentines. They spend at least 30 minutes to an hour every day crafting up a storm, cutting, and gluing, and writing love notes to each of their family members. I've been throwing in some love as well... usually in the form of a piece of chocolate or something. Every night after dinner (and after girls are in jammies and have cleaned their room... I have to use any incentive I can to get them to do those things), we all open our mailboxes and enjoy our Valentine surprises from the day. All the Valentines go up on the fridge, and by Valentines Day we have quite a pretty red, white, and pink collage to look at. :) I love to see traditions take shape, and I hope that this one will stick around a while.


Since it's the month of love (I like to say love in a sultry kind of way... haha), I really liked this idea posted about HERE as a way to encourage kids to show kindness to each other and serve within their family. So, we're going to give it try! I imagine this is going to take quite an effort on my part to consistently remind the girls to do kind deeds for others... but hopefully these "heart strings" will be a fun motivator as well. Read the linked post for more details, but we'll be stringing on felt hearts for each kind deed that is done - I'd like to do this for the entire month of February and see how many heart strings we can fill up!



Our sad, empty heart string hanging from the china hutch... I feel like telling the kids, "quick! do something nice for each other so we can fill it up with hearts and make it cute!".

Speaking of cute...



Oh, and today was Groundhog's Day! Phil, the groundhog, says an early spring is on its way. A stat I ready today said that the groundhog is correct 39% of the time. Not impressive Mr. Groundhog... you'd think you could get it right at least HALF of the time. haha. As with Dangerfield tradition, we had breakfast for dinner to celebrate - with sausage... ground hog. You get it right? Well, I think it's funny.


And one last thing... we tried out Bountiful Baskets on Saturday for the first time. I was happy with the loot that Ben brought home from the pick up. I ate the strawberries and one of the cantelopes that first day... yum! We've been chipping away at the tomatoes and cucumbers in salads most nights, and I was feeling domestic to have chopped up my own big stalk of broccoli... I steamed them and they cooked up FAST and it was good! Better than the steamfresh bags of broccoli I normally buy, and most definitely cheaper. And it wasn't very hard either. I've always been intimidated by broccoli before now. So, I think I'll like doing this produce co-op every couple weeks... it gets me more familiar with cooking and preparing different veggies and fruits and we end up eating a much larger variety of it all as well.

100 Days, Chores, and Movie Night

Emma's 100th day of school was on Monday - the teacher requested that each student bring in 100 of something. Somewhat inspired by the Fancy Nancy 100th day of school book, we made a poster - 25 beads of 4 different colors to make a rainbow of 100 beads. Emma did all the counting with me as we made it and she chose the colors. I did a lot of hot gluing...



We have had many a chore system in our home, and from this I've learned that they need to be changed up often to keep the kids excited - and especially as the kids get older, their abilities to help out around the house are constantly growing - which is very exciting to me! Our latest chore system is pretty simple... this one was all Ben's idea. Each girl has 2 chores they do every day, 3 chores they do once during the week, and then a list of extra chores they can pick from. We're just doing this Monday-Friday. I know a lot of families do their heavy chore days on Saturdays, but for now I have a much easier time motivating the kids to work on school days than I do on our fun weekends when daddy is home to play. So, on Friday, the girls just need to have 15 points to participate in Family Movie Night! For now, that's the big reward for working throughout the week. The last few weeks we've watched How to Train your Dragon, Despicable Me, Nanny McPhee Returns, and last night we watched Shrek 4 (holy cow... why did they make FOUR Shrek movies?!). I think I'd like to have a little treat jar too, so for each point they receive above the 15 point goal, they can pick out little pieces of candies to have during our movie as well. Just to motivate them to do more than what's required, if they feel so inclined. :)

I've printed these out (and saved the file, of course, so I can easily change up the chores on the lists when needed), put them in sheet protectors and put them on the fridge where the girls can easily see them. We're using a dry erase marker throughout the week and then they can be wiped clean for the next Monday.

We're having the girls trade off each week picking a dessert to have during our movie night. Becca picked chocolate chip cookies for last night... always yummy.

I remembered that my brother showed me how easy it is to pop your own popcorn in a saucepan on the stove. It's starting to make me wonder why we all think we need popcorn poppers. So, if you don't have a popcorn popper - just buy a bag of popcorn kernels from the grocery store and on the back of the bag it gives instructions for popping popcorn on the stove. It took less than 5 minutes to pop plenty for all of us! We melted a couple tablespoons of butter to pour on and sprinkled on a small amount of salt... yum! We usually do microwave bags of popcorn, and this was definitely better - and much cheaper - oh, and more fun! So there's my tip for the day. haha