Stummy ache...

 After supper, Lena was eating a candy from her Valentine box and sat on the floor and cried a little and said, "I have a stummy ache."  Then got really silly.  She probably had a sugar high.  I'll be glad when the candy is gone!

Valentine's Party...

Making Gideon's lion valentine cards to match his box.

Jordan "helping" Lena make hers, meaning Jordan made the whole thing while Lena sometimes watched.

Lena's puppy box courtesy of Emily and her puppy valentine's made by Jordan.

Rebekah made a windmill.  It was her idea and her creation.  She spent a lot of time making each valentine individually.  She did a great job.

We found the lion box online at family fun.com and decided lion valentine's to match would be the thing to do.  Gideon was reluctant to spend that much time on it but in the end he was pleased to give something so nice.

Caleb and the monster.  His valentine's were just his speed.  He wrote who it was to and then signed his name! :)

Another creative child.  Isaac made a goat of his own design.  He's so neat at this stuff.

Moriah and I made this birdhouse for her.  She loves it!

Spelling Bee...

 We went to the spelling bee tonight.   These were the kids that participated this year.  They were all on the same group and competed against each other. None of them came in 1st or 2nd but they did a great job!

 I got to the spelling bee and tried to take a picture and I didn't have a camera card along so we took pics after we got home.

 Rebekah

 Moriah

 Gideon

Lena wanted in the action too. During the spelling bee she asked, "I want a turn."

Randomness...

 We tried to keep the babies in the living room.  They find every stray pencil, doodad, anything and it goes right in their mouth so we attempted to keep them in one big playroom.  D. ended up crawling right through the barricade. They love to crawl around.

 Playing with Lane.

 After school I tried out some new recipes for possibly selling at the Farmer's Market.  Here are Bread Bowls.  They turned out quite crispy on the bottom.  I'll try them with soup and see how they soften up. 

I made bread bowls, a whole wheat honey braid, and a new herb bread that has onions chopped in it.  We ate this for supper and it was wonderful.  I wasn't sure I wanted the onions in it but you couldn't even tell.  It called for marjoram and sage and I don't have those spices so I added basil, oregano, and garlic powder and it was great!

I send the kids out to the garage to put food away often and I keep finding things I told them to put in the freezer will be in the refrigerator so I'm trying to see if labeling it will work.  Of course, they will still have to listen to me which is the real issue.  I found a big bag of cut up green peppers in the fridge yesterday, last week it was a frozen pizza, there have been more.  We'll see what happens. 

Skiing...first time for most...

 We went skiing today and it was a great day.  We met another family there and here are some of the girls.  Jordan, Lydia, Hannah and Emily.

 Rebekah is getting some lessons on the bunny hill.  It's great that they have instructors so patient because I really need a lot of coaching too.  One instructor even went on the lift with me and tried to go down the hill with me but I went so fast (didn't know how to slow myself down yet), I zipped past him and then fell.  He gave me some pointers so I headed back to the bunny hill to practice slowing and stopping.

 Here's Isaac coming down the hill.   It seemed when he first started that he wouldn't make it to going on anything but the bunny hill but once he got on the big hills he was surprisingly coordinated. 

 Emily on the ski lift.

 Jordan, Lydia and Hannah way up high.

 Emily and Lydia!

 Caleb and Isaac getting on the lift together!

 Ethan spent a bit of time on the ground.  He decided to just lay down and eat it! 

 Jordan coming down a run.

 Rebekah sure got the hang of skiing.  Here she is coming down one of the difficult hills. Em is on the right.

Emily Anna!  She loved her first time of skiing.  I think she went down the bunny hill once before she went on the more difficult runs.

Isaac is at the bottom and Caleb is at the top.  Again this is one of the difficult hills because it is steep.  Amazing that they did so well the very first time.

A Happy Day...

 My washer died 4 weeks ago and we've made do with Kevin's mom, my mom, the laundromat, the place where I clean to get by with getting our clothes clean each week.  We wear things a long time and there hasn't been a whole lot of laundry but it was getting to be a bit of an annoyance, especially for a laundry freak like I am.  Every night I like to go to bed with the laundry all caught up and dried and folded and almost empty baskets!!!  I walked into my laundry room every day and it was piling up and it smelled because of wet towels and cloths!!! :(    The old washer and dryer were sent packing!

 Here is my over 19 year old dryer.  We bought it used when we moved to Wyndmere so I don't know how old it really is.

 My washer wasn't that old but we must have used it up past it's time because it broke last month and it was costly to repair and then the repairs might not have worked.  We called different numbers on Craig's List and I was determined to buy a newer used set.  I was sure that was the way to go but then I cleaned house last week and used her machine to do a couple loads and got to thinking "I like this washer!" and I was thinking maybe for our family a used machine isn't the best idea plus it never worked out when we did call someone.  So I went shopping online.  I kept my choices to Maytag and it helped to narrow down the machine for us.  I found that if you bought 4 appliances you got 25 % off and called my sister-in-law cause she'd mentioned needing a new set and we checked it out, they went and looked at them in town and bought 4 appliances.  We got the same washer and dryer. 

 Here the children are having fun watching the washer clean a load of clothes with the glass top.  It holds a bit more laundry and can do large quilts, comforters and sleeping bags.   We'll sure do that.

 They were just so fascinated and wanted to stay and watch the whole 58 minute cycle at 11 p.m. 

Here they are side by side.  How wonderful to have a matched set!

Em did a quick clean-up of the laundry room and took this picture.  

The new set looks so nice in our newly remodeled laundry room.