Ducati's Daddy Date

 Mike had the chance to go on an amazing and memorable daddy daughter date with Ducati on Saturday. They went to a father daughter dance. Mike loves these type of events.

Lily and I helped Ducati get ready for she special date. She put on her little kid makeup, all her special clothes and her gorgeous smile. ( all her special close are her Sofia the First dress, her cheetah flats, hello kitty headband, an her Elsa necklace) 

Mike went above and beyond to make this night special by knocking at the door for his date and presenting her with a  bouquet of flowers (fake so they will last the entire night) :) She felt so special that she couldn't stop smiling. 

She was so excited to go that they left our house a little early which meant they got to the dance early so they enjoyed the empty dance floor. This is where she brought out all her crazy dance moves. If only I could had recorded those moves :) Then they got some snacks, drinks, their face painted, some photos taken, and stood amazed by the real life disco ball...... Which according to Ducati was her life long goal. After enjoying everything Cati was ready to leave ( she's not a fan of big crowds) but when she came home she was all smiles for her special night with her first love, her daddy. 

Date night

It's nice when I can get some private time out with one of my kiddos. Last night Hailey and I went out to dinner at Applebee's. Not my top choice but we had a coupon :) 

It was nice to talk with her. Learn that she's a secret sports fan. She wants to be a vet still. She wishes to go to DisneyLand someday. She hates when Lily wakes her up in the morning. And to hear all about her live in cousins at her other dad's house. 

I just loved the special time we were able to have. I need to make sure to never be too busy to go on dates. 

Missed Truth

Mike gave me the wake up call that last year I only journaled 9 times. 9 times! Our life contained more memories than that.  We moved, then moved again. My stepdad left. My mom lived with us. Then she got her own play. My mom's new boyfriend. Broken down cars. Christmas miracle of family bringing the Christmas party to us. Holding a new nephew. Mike losing his best childhood friend, Wes. Losing a friend of mine, Andrew. The lost of family members, Alexander The Great. Meeting a new nephew, Jory, who's 19. Seeing my father in law, Brent, and making memories with our kids about laundry baskets. Our kids going back to school. Then back to homeschool.
I know there's more but at this moment it's all become a missed memory.
So I'm going to be restarting my journaling again.

I'm 31

Being 31 feels great. Honestly I love being in my 30's. I feel more comfortable and secure with myself. I have more confidence in my choices and where I am in my life. I still have dreams and goals but I feel great being this me right now. 

So for my birthday I woke up to lovely decorations in our living room. 

 I was fed oatmeal breakfast in bed, given the most beautiful drawings in the entire world, and got to do a little shopping for myself. This lady got herself a new pair of jeans, shoes, and a purse. Nice! :)

 For lunch I was treated to a sugar cake. (As a family we're cutting sugar out til March but Mike says that it's my birthday so I should get whatever I want. And I wanted a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. My fave flavor of cake.)

 I never want to forget how amazing this cake looked. Mike made it for me. His first cake he's ever made. This was a gift all on it's own.

 After getting the sugar jitters we headed out to Chuck E Cheese. This was the best place to be. It was empty so we had it all to ourselves. It gave all our kids a chance to run around like crazies to get that sugar out.

 We have a birthday tradition to win as many tickets as we can and give them to the birthday person so they can get the prize. So everyone did their best and got me over 500 tickets!

 Most came from Mike beating the high score on basketball. He'd win the bonus tickets which was about 250 of the 500.

 Ducati gave Guitar Hero a go. I really hoped she'd love it but she didn't. I mostly hoped since Mike and I played this game so much that she would cry if we didn't play the "Sex is on Fire" song that we'd play that song over and over again until she fell asleep. Which by this time made Mike and I master players that we could play that song with our eyes closed.

 Mike playing the rest of Ducati's game. Man I miss this game but we got rid of it since we were starting to get addicted to it.

 Our twins (Cati and Lily want us to call them twins since they are so close in age and do everything together) following Chuck E Cheese and dancing behind him

 At the end of their dance Chuck E. threw tickets in their air. After I got my prize (which was still toys for my kids which I will hide for their prize box) we headed to SubZero.

 We love this place! You can pick your base cream so we chose almond milk or low fast yogurt. Then you can pick your flavor then a topping. It's all liquid based so it looks like melted ice cream until the worker adds the nitrogen to it. Our kids love to see the smoke cover the counters and leak out from under the glass. All we hear is, "Mom it's so cold" or "Dad it's freezing my fingers". But they mostly love to see their ice cream being frozen in front of them. It's a tasty science experiment.

After this we headed home and enjoy a few Redbox movies, How to Train a Dragon 2, and , The Good Lie. <--- This movie is amazing. It will be one we will be owning soon.

Reflecting back on this day I had such a great day. My mom, mother in law, and sister in law, Daina, called and texted me Happy Birthday. It was great to spend the day with my family. It was such a special day for me that I'm glad I'm journaling it so I don't ever forget.

This is the Place Heritage Park

This summer was busy. But we did make some time to attend This Is The Place and we all fell in love with this park.

The kids played in a garden learning about how these plants and herbs helped families with healing.

 Made a cloth doll just like the pioneers did.

All our kids enjoyed themselves.

 Here's Cati's Dollie

 Listened to a Native American dance and song

 My kids wanted to be honorary Native Americans.

 Enjoyed a nice train ride to get to the next activity lot faster

 My boy, All grown up :)

 Helped print a sheet of a newspaper. This was more work than they thought

 Where we also enjoyed some crafts (non-pioneerish) in the room across from the printing press.

 But they couldn't resist making a foam animal

 After a little break our family went to the Native American tee-pees and learned all about arrowheads, huts, spirits, importance of eagles, brother bears, etc

 And this sweet lady shared her chair with us so we can try out Native furniture.

 And the best part was the pony rides. Our kids aren't natural cowgirls but they got to steer their fear.

We visited a blacksmith in his shop where Mason tried to lift up everything. He says, " Mason means strong hands so I can lift up anything".... he cracks me up.

 So this side story.... Mike's pocket knife was dull so I asked the blacksmith if he did side work like.... sharpen people's knives. And he does for a small fee. So Mike got his knife sharpened old fashion style.

 But even with the heat of a Utah summer Cati went to every one of these barrel water fountains since they look "so cute in the bucket".

 This was one of the many things we did this summer. And even though we were here from open to close we still didn't get to see everything. This is our new family favorite place.

Christmas Service Projects

During the Christmas season Mike and I try our best to teach our kids the true Christmas spirit. So we do end up doing so many acts of service so 1) our kids can feel the spirit and 2) they aren't distracted with all the material things.

So besides our cookie making for neighbors, secret santa gifts, homeless shelter donations we wanted to try something new. 

So this year I contacted Salvation Army about bell ringing. So as a family we went bell ringing for 4 hours. To pass the time we sang Christmas carols and had a contest on who could say, "Merry Christmas", to people waking by first.

 I do have to say that taking along 4 cute kids does help with people's donations. I guess the cuteness warms their hearts even more so instead of $1 bills they are dropping in $20 bills.

 Our second big service project we did was collect food for the Bountiful Food Pantry.

 We wanted to show our kids how blessed we are to have our own pantry filled with foods. So I posted a note on my facebook page to all our neighbors that we were going to be coming around in a few days so to be ready for us. So on the big day we walked around our neighborhood for 4 hours and collected over 240lbs of food. That's amazing!!!

Our kids were smiling ear to ear when we went to the food pantry to drop this off. They were so proud of themselves and honestly Mike and I are even more proud of them.

And... if you haven't noticed Lily is such a photo bomber :) ♥

BYU Museum of Art

My dream as a mom is to instill the love of the arts into my children so yes I am one of those parents that take their kids to gallery openings. So when I heard that the BYU Museum of Art  opened their new exhibit, Sacred Gifts, I booked tickets ASAP! 

 But of course we needed to see the new Provo City Center Temple. Even though it's under construction it was still breathtaking to see.

 When we pulled up to the museum the parking lot was completely packed. (Side note: our kids were the only kids there.) Good thing we arrived 45 minutes early. We checked our coats in, did potty breaks, rented our iPad's for all those fun facts that the little art plaques can't hold and had ourselves an amazing time.

We were actually told by a random person that our kids were very well behaved. They have seen at museum and act "like children" (duh! they are kids) but she was happy to share this experience with our kids. Thanks! I'll take that compliment.

 Anyways when people exit the art showing there is a table with cards for the patrons to write a thank you note to the person or museum that loaned the BYU museum the art work. So each kiddo picked their favorite (which was harder than they thought. How can you just pick one?) and wrote their thank you notes.

  I was only able to take these few pictures since there was security everywhere and signs saying,"No photography". So I had to be extra sneaky to even get these pics. But the art work was amazing. Some pieces actually brought the spirit to our hearts. Our kids loved it that we talked about it for the next hour on our way home.

I love it when I can share my passions with my kids.