February 2024

 The Harry Potter obsession continues! Brooklyn and I took a trip to the dollar store and got supplies to make a ton of Harry Potter crafts from ideas we found in library books. We made wand pencils, Pensieve dishes, Mandrake pencil holders, potion bottles, and Marauder Map mugs just to name a few.

Brooklyn has been asking if we can renew our Conservatory pass and we finally did it. Her and Richard spent a day there one Saturday when I wasn't feeling great and the other girls had other things going on. 

That night Kaylee went to her second church dance. Richard stayed as a chaperone and tried not to embarrass her too bad but one of the boys in our ward also had a dad there who had no qualms about taking a picture of his son and Kaylee dancing together!

Brooklyn wanted to make a monster Valentine's box and for once I did hardly anything on it! I thought she did a great job. Kaylee got her first Valentine from a boy and we teased her endlessly about it. We did our traditional mixed up menu, which is loved by all of us. I tried to make it extra themed this time by buying heart shaped food or cutting things into hearts and roses. 

Kaylee got into the Junior National Honor Society! It is a big deal here and is not just based on grades. She had to get a minimum number of service hours, fill out a huge application, get signatures from teachers, church leaders, and community leaders for service projects she has done, and write an essay! We were proud of her for working so hard on it. 

Brooklyn loves planning parties and asked if she could have some friends over for a Valentine's party. She had 3 friends over and McKenna and her friend joined in too. We played MASH, unscrambled Valentine's words, did a version of musical chairs with hearts that had little things to do written on the back, did a version of Apples to Apples called "Hearts to Hearts", and she gave a little bag of candy to all of them. She had way more planned that we didn't have nearly enough time for!

Richard took the kids sledding with one of our neighbors. First they went to our favorite spot with little hills but then they decided to go to new hill. They said it was fun but was long and steep so by the time they had gone down the hill a couple of times, they were ready to go!

We did our annual President's Day debate but Kaylee decided not to participate this time. I'm pretty sure Brooklyn was Kamala Harris but I can't remember who McKenna was! We asked them a ton of questions about what they would do as president and were very impressed with their answers.

Kaylee got invited to go to a skating party that was put on by her friend's orthodontist. I think we have been going to the wrong orthodontist!! Our kids haven't been skating a ton but they are all actually pretty good at it.

January 2024

 Our whole family has been loving watching a YouTuber named who does squishy makeovers so we decided to try our own! We found a bunch of not so cute squishies at the dollar store and attempted to make them better. I thought we did pretty good for our first time! I only did one and decorated it with my favorite Moriah Elizabeth characters but McKenna did a lot! And Brooklyn did a few as well. It was fun to watch them be so creative.

Kaylee did an FHE lesson that I thought was so clever and really stuck with us. She had us all pick quotes from General Conference that meant a lot to us or stuck out as memorable sayings and then we wrote them on paper and cut them out in a creative way that symbolized what the quote was about. We put them on our wall and they are there to remind us constantly about what the prophets have taught us and keep them fresh in our minds. I thought it was such a great idea and we had a lot of fun trying to come up with ways to cut the paper. 

We wanted to go sledding but there wasn't much snow at all this winter. When we finally did get a dusting, it was freezing cold and we knew we wouldn't be out for long so we just went to our trusty spot by the dollar store instead of a huge hill. We always make it fun wherever we are!

Richard is always involved in our stake kickoff for the new youth theme and I think they do a good job in presenting the spiritual aspect but also having a fun activity for the kids to come to. This year, Richard was in charge of the devotional part at the beginning. He did a great job embarrassing his daughter's by trying to bring in teen slang and having the kids do an activity where they tried to mirror each other with and without having their hands connected (to try to show that even though you can follow either way, it is much easier when you are closely connected, just like following the Savior).

Brooklyn has been so obsessed with Harry Potter and has checked out every single book the library has to offer. She has gotten a few HP cookbooks and wanted to try out some ideas so we made a Harry Potter dinner with snake breadsticks, a Fluffy creation of baked potatoes and Hogwart letter quesadillas. She wanted to go full out and even had a Harry Potter sandwich for lunch!

She also asked Kristi to print out vinyl letters that say Lumos and Nox for her light switch and wants to eventually turn her whole room in to Harry Potter.