Valentine's Cookie Party

To celebrate Valentine's Day, I hosted a Valentine's cookie party at my house.

I made lots of cookies and my friends brought frosting, sprinkles and candies for toppings. I do mean  A LOT of cookies: 103 to be exact. 

 As soon as I started putting out cookies and toppings, Connor climbed into his seat. 

He was sooo ready to start eating cookies.

He was very good with spreading the frosting.

And we only had to remind him a few times not to lick the knife.

The kids made some really clever creations. My favorite was the cookie sandwich.

And the "everything" cookie.

Some of the kids avoided the chaos in the kitchen and played with toys.

 There were lots of happy faces.

And lots of messy faces too.

She reminds me of the Joker from Batman.

Connor, after shoving his third cookie entirely in his mouth.

 Dallin was really upset when I cut him off from eating frosting.

He's whining and saying, "I want more frosting!"

Remember those felt hearts I was cutting out earlier?

I made a heart garland to hang in the kitchen. I sewed one long line of pink embroidery floss through the felt hearts and hung it up. Super easy and super cute!

I hung some felt hearts from the ceiling by the front door.

I also made cute Valentine pictures of the boys.

These were really easy to make using PicMonkey, my favorite picture editing website.

I'm so in love with this picture of Dallin.

Because I didn't want to be left with tons of extra cookies, I had plastic bags out for people to take home their creations.

Between the 27 people, we managed to polish off the cookies pretty well. I have less than 2 dozen leftover:

I would have taken a picture of the glorious, pink aftermath in the kitchen, but my wonderful friend Deidra cleaned and swept up all the mess. It's nice to have friends. And it also helps to use disposable plastic table covers.

 Dallin was looking forward to this cookie party all week. I told him we were having a party and his friends were going to come. He loves a good party.

And he loves his friend Millie. They love each other a little too much. We have to keep an eye on them or else they get a little *too* close and comfortable. And we have to break them up when they try to kiss in the middle of church.

Ahhh, young love!

January

January 2014 in Indiana broke all kinds of records for cold negative temperatures and snowfall. School was cancelled several days. Even Purdue cancelled for 3 days. Universities RARELY cancel class so this was a big deal. Our January was spent like this:

We shoveled a lot of snow.

We got about this much snow every week, and it never melted in between so it's really piling up on our grass.

Dallin and Connor love playing in the snow and we've found that sand toys (shovels, pails, etc) also make great snow toys.

And then sometimes I just give them a spoon and cup from the kitchen. Equally as fun.

 One time after shoveling, Mckay used the snow to cover our big green electric box and cable box in the front yard, and he made a cool sculpture out of it.

Connor was amazed.

It was a snow train!

Mckay wins best Dad of the year award.

We've spent a lot of time indoors and I'm running out of fun activities for the kids. We've done Play-doh a lot. 

I'm not good at selfies so I had Connor take a picture of me and Dallin.

We're working on his photography skills.

 Dallin's picture-taking was a little better.

We've also done a lot of art projects. Sometime they are as structured as using glitter glue and making cards for people. And then sometimes I just let the kids cut up junk mail with "fancy" scrapbook scissors.

Dallin and Connor still manage to get a little exercise while being trapped indoors.

Connor is saying "Come on Tookie." I don't know how he came up with it or why he's calling Dallin "Tookie." Connor is entering a fun stage where he makes up words. We never experienced that with Dallin.

You might also be wondering what Dallin and Connor were carrying in that video. That would be foam insulation tubes for water pipes (which they played with like pool noodles or light sabers). These frigid temperatures (-13 degress F was the coldest in January) are causing our water pipes to freeze. Luckily, the pipes are plastic so they don"t burst, they expand with the ice. But having no hot water (or any water at all) in the winter really stinks. We've been spending a lot of time here in the garage:

Running a space heater on the pipes for a while usually does the trick. And hopefully the foam insulation will help, because waking up to take a shower or make breakfast only to find no water comes out is not fun. It's happened about 10 times now. I'm SO ready for spring.

Other fun thing we've been up to:

 The Denver Broncos made it to the Super Bowl. (Yes, I know this was actually in February.) We don't really watch football, but we're fans of all things from Denver, so we had to show our support.

Conveniently, orange and blue happen to be the only nail polish colors I own...

Connor really didn't want to wear this adult size orange shirt. We made him keep it on for a picture, but it was ripped off seconds later.

Too bad the Broncos didn't win the Super Bowl. There's always next year!

We're hoping February is a warmer month. Even just above freezing would be welcome. I'm working on some Valentine's decorations to brighten things up. I'll let you see them all when I'm done.

Any guesses as to what I'm making?

Money Saving Monday: Weekly Planner

You may have noticed I've been in a little of a blogging rut lately. The month of January was cold and miserable snowy, and I felt little motivation to blog. 

In an effort to blog more this year and to share some of the great ideas that I have, I'm going to start a series of posts on the same topic. This particular series is called "Money Saving Monday" in which I will blog on Mondays about some of my money saving habits and practices. Mckay has been a college student for all 5 1/2 years of our marriage, so I've learned how to keep to a budget and stretch our money. Now, this will not replace our regular child-cuteness posts or ones about our exciting adventures in Indiana. And I'm not going to promise any sort of weekly regularity with these posts, but occasionally, on a Monday, you might find some helpful tips here to save you some extra cash.

My first tip is to get a weekly planner. Planning ahead and writing things down can save you a lot of time and money. I'm mostly going to talk about how using a planner saves me money on groceries, but I also use it for other things as well.

I got this planner for $8. It doesn't have to be a super fancy, expensive planner. In years past, I've usually gotten cheaper planners around $4-5, but with this year's selection, I found this planner to fit my needs the best. You can easily find one at Target or any similar store. It's about 5x7 inches and fits easily in my purse/diaper bag.

What specifically do I look for in a planner? It needs to have a monthly view so I can see an entire month on one (well...two) page.

On this monthly calendar, I write down Dr. appointments, any activities or meetings, birthday parties, times I'm babysitting for friends, etc. Pretty much anything that varies from our regular daily routine is written on here. Many people have a big family calendar at home to keep track of such things. I like that I can take this with me on the go and write things down as they come up.

My planner must also have a weekly view. I chose this planner because I liked the way this weekly view was arranged. And the boxes are lined to keep my crooked writing on track. Very important.

Every week (usually on Monday), I sit down and plan our dinner menu for the week and write the menu in the "Saturday" box on this weekly page. I plan our menu around food we already have that needs to be used up and foods that are on sale that week that I plan to buy. I also plan it based on our activities that week. For instance, I'll plan a crock pot meal for a really busy day. Or you might notice "fondue" planned for this week pictured above because of Valentine's Day. Mmmmm, I'm excited about fondue. I write down the ingredients we need to purchase as well as any other items in the grocery sales ad that we need to stock up on. My grocery list goes in the "Monday" box. 

Then, because "Monday" is usually entirely full of groceries, I write down coupons I might use on this trip in the "Tuesday" box. I do almost all of my shopping at Kroger, and they have lots of great online coupons that load directly onto your shoppers card. Most of these coupons are the same as ones you would see for printable coupons on other couponing sites, so it saves me the trouble of printing out coupons. And the digital coupons are redeemed automatically when you scan your shopper card and purchase the qualifying product, so there's no chance of forgetting to hand over your coupons at check out. The downside is that because the coupons are digital, I don't have them all in front of my to verify product names of sizes, so I write down the digital coupon information to help me remember. If you can see in the picture above, one of my coupons is written as "$2/1 Bounty 6 roll big." This coupon was for $2 off 1 pack of Bounty paper towels, a 6 count package of big rolls.

(I'll write more about my couponing habits in another post.)

Now I'm organized and ready for a shopping trip! I always have at least one child with me at the store, so it helps to plan as much as possible ahead of time so my grocery trips can be faster and the kids don't get hungry/grumpy, need a bathroom, or get lost looking at toys and candy machines.

Throughout the week, as I'm cooking and run out of an ingredient or notice something we need, I write it down on the next week's Monday. Then when I go to shop the next week, the needed items are already on the list.

 Other features I like in a planner: tabs for each month.

It makes finding each day a lot easier.

 My planner for 2013 didn't have tabs. 

It got pretty beat up with all the thumbing through pages to find dates. And the kids touched it. And I'll often write recipes from online in the planner because it's easier to keep the planner by the stove while I cook than to bring the laptop into the kitchen to read the recipe. So yeah, my planners look well-loved by the end of the year.

 For non-grocery purposes, I often use my planner for writing down lists. 

It might be a list of things I need to do that week (pay water bill, schedule appt, mail birthday card, organize closet). When we're planning a trip, it helps to have all my lists in one place. I make lists for food/snacks to bring, clothes to pack, toys for the boys, things to do before we leave, odd items not to forget like phone chargers, etc.

Having a busy schedule and two kids/pregnancies that have sucked all my brain cells, I often forget things I need to do, so I really like to have my planner with me at home and away to quickly write something down when I think of it. If you don't already have a planner, get one! I bet they're discounted right now with it already being a month into the year.

Cost: $8 per year.

Money Saved: $52 per year

(Ok, so it's hard to measure so this is totally a guess, but I'd say I save at least a dollar a week by being organized and having a planner, whether that's money saved by less gas spent on driving to the store several times, or through saving me time.)

Mckay, the book lover, upon seeing my new planner purchase at the beginning of January, said, "I should get to buy a new book too if you got to buy one." I tried to explain how much money this planner saves us each year and that my purchase was really getting us money back. I don't think he believed me and he's been spending a lot of time at the bookstore...

Snowmageddon

We left Denver On Saturday, January 4th, knowing that a big snow storm was about to hit the east coast and the midwest. As we prepared to leave the night before and checked the weather forecast, we saw that snow was expected to hit Denver starting at 6am, with the storm heading east along our planned travel path. So we left at 5:30am as snow was starting to come down. It took about 30 minutes of driving before we got completely ahead of the snow and onto dry roads. The rest of our 12 hour drive was dry, but anytime we stopped for gas breaks, we could see snowflakes starting to fall as we finished each break. It reminded me of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" where the big "freeze" is following right behind them. We had to keep breaks short and keep driving to stay ahead of the storm behind us. We got to Grace's house in St. Louis about an hour before the snow hit.

Sunday was a very relaxed day. We had no intentions to attempt driving home in the snow storm, so we stayed with Grace another day. In anticipation of the weather, Church had been cancelled for much of the St. Louis area. We stayed inside all day and watched the snow fall. That day happened to be my birthday, so we celebrated.

Grace made me a cake and helped all the kids make Birthday cards for me.

I felt very loved.

We played games and snacked on food all day long.

By Monday morning, the sky was clear and we figured the roads would have been plowed and salted enough that we could slowly and carefully drive the (normally) 4.5 hours back home to Indiana.

This is the view out Grace's front window. Her husband, David, braved the negative temperature outside to shovel a path to our car and clear the mountain of snow off of it. They loaded us up with snacks, water and an emergency candle just in case something happened. I thought for sure that everyone was overreacting about the severity of the storm and that we'd be home by that afternoon.

How very wrong I was.

Leaving St. Louis, the roads weren't too bad. They were mostly clear, with patches here and there, but we could drive about 40-50mph safely on them so we were feeling pretty good.

It's hard to see in this picture, but this is the Mississippi River, frozen over......

In all the years and winters that I've spent in St. Louis, I've never seen the mighty Mississippi completely frozen. It was ridiculously cold!!

 We kept going on I-70 through Illinois. The road conditions were getting a little worse, but still drive-able.

We passed several cars and Semis that had slid off the road. Rarely was there a person inside the car (Thank goodness they had already been taken to safety), but there was no way to tow a car out of a ditch in all this mess. Many of the semi trucks had flipped onto the side. It was starting to dawn on us how severe this storm was and we said several prayers during the drive of gratitude for our continued safety.

Just before Effingham, IL, we reached a traffic standstill. (The trucks and our car in the picture below are stopped on the highway. We would never be following that closely behind if we were moving.)

You can see how bad the roads were at this point. You could not see a single patch of road; it was entirely covered in packed snow and ice.

This is what we were driving on. Scary.

After not moving for quite some time, we turned on the radio and discovered that there had been an accident further up the highway and we had to wait for the road to be cleared. We waited in that exact spot for almost 3 hours. Cars as far as we could see in front of us, cars as far as we could see behind us.

 Luckily, the boys slept through most of the down time.

We finally got past the traffic. By this point, it was 4pm. It took us 7 hours to travel what normally takes 1.5 hours. And we were still very far from home. Knowing we wouldn't make it home before dark, and knowing how dangerous the roads were even when it was light out, we stopped in Effingham to get a hotel.

So did thousands of other people.

All the truckers and all the travelers were occupying every single hotel. We called and/or drove to over 15  hotels and not one of them had a room for us. I called my Dad who looked up some hotels in the next town down the road. We called several places and finally found a Day's Inn who would book a room for us. Now we just had to drive 30 miles to reach Mattoon, IL. At a speed of 15-20 mph, it took us a while, but we made it.  In the 130 miles from St. Louis to Mattoon, we passed 31 semis and 61 cars that had slid off the road. And I'm sure I missed counting several cars when I was on the phone trying to find us a hotel. Yes, we counted. It became a game of sorts to count and find all the cars buried under snow drifts.

We grabbed some Taco Bell for dinner (Thank you for being open!) and parked at the Days Inn. Finally! The day is over right?..... right?....

Even though we had called ahead to book a room, we still had to wait in a line of several other people who also had a room booked. Our kids ran around the lobby making friends with everyone.  After 2 hours in line we finally got to the desk, checked in and got a key card. We walked to our room, unlocked the door... and there was already a family in our room. What?! Mckay went back to the desk to sort the mix-up out while I tried to keep the kids in line again. I was so grumpy, tired and fed up by this point. About 15 minutes later, Mckay led us to our new room: an exterior (meaning a drafty door with all the wind and -20 degree temperature) smoking room (we booked a non-smoking) that had not been cleaned from the previous occupant and had "used" sheets. And yet, despite the sub par conditions, I was so glad to be "safe." After cranking up the heat, we said a prayer as a family, thankful that we had a safe, warm place to sleep and that our car was fine and working.

We spent all day Tuesday in Mattoon. We checked road conditions online throughout the day and everything indicated that Indiana highways were not quite safe for travel yet. We got groceries, watched a lot of TV in the hotel, and prepared to hopefully leave Wednesday morning. On Wednesday, the temperature was in the 30s (a heat wave compared to the days before!), Indiana highways were looking clearer, and we needed some clean clothes to wear, so we drove home!

After all the time we'd spent in the car those past few days, the boys did really great for the last leg of our journey. Though Connor got grumpy if you denied him snacks.

Over the next 150 miles of road, we saw 28 more semis and 80 more cars off the road. We made it home in the early afternoon and we were so excited to finally eat lunch in our own home again.

After we got home, there were some minor things to deal with, like shoveling the 18 inch snow drifts off our driveway so we could get in, and thawing the frozen (but not broken, thank goodness!) pipes so we could use water. And there was the flat tire on our car that mysteriously showed up only after we made it all the way home.

That's the epic tale of our journey home. But we did finally make it home, and that's the most important thing. 

And it keeps snowing, so we haven't left our house much ever since.