Ethan's 4th Birthday!

I'm sure there are holidays that are hard to share a birthday with. But Valentine's Day is not one of them. You get to wake up to pictures like these...

Including this one of Tyler's 4:30 a.m. temple trip.

Your cute husband buys you flowers.

It's also not hard to share a birthday with this guy.

Or a birthday month with these fine folks.

Especially when you get notes like this from Carly.  

Snow Daze

We've been hit with some heavy snowstorms in the past couple of weeks, and apparently a couple of small earthquakes, that I slept through. On February 6th, an early morning storm dropped well over a foot at our house.  I waited out the worst part of the commute, and then decided to head into the office around ten. I made it to the end of our driveway - almost - before I was good and stuck.

Fortunately, some of the young men in our ward were roaming the neighborhood "sledding" on their snow day, according to them, although none of them had sleds and all of them had snow shovels, which I found to be a bit suspicious.  I think they rather enjoyed coming to the rescue of the Sacrament meeting chorister who drove herself into a snowbank.  And, yes, that's me standing and watching.  I gave up trying to be helpful pretty early on.  (At least I wasn't sitting in the front room taking pictures, like Kaylene was.)  At one point, one of the older boys was giving me very detailed instructions on how to turn the steering wheel and when to punch the gas the next time I tried to move the car.  He seemed a bit shocked when I said, "That sounds right.  You try it" and handed him my keys. But after his buddies confirmed that he was 17 and did have a license and probably would do a better job than me at trying to unstick my car, he slid behind the wheel and was able to safely pull it into the driveway. To all of our relief and delight.

At that point, I called into work, and stayed home and baked cookies and read my book -"Educated" by Tara Westover, which is one of the more haunting memoirs I've read, I think because Tara is just younger than me and grew up in a Mormon (and I use the term loosely) fundamentalist family just a couple of hours from here near Malad. Her upbringing could have been so similar to mine - but was so radically different - I just can't get over it. Anyhow, it was a much better way to spend the day and I think I'll skip straight to the reading and baking cookies part the next time we get this much snow on a work day.

Who's ready for spring? 

Midway IceCastles

Jason and I "ran away" for an overnight trip to Midway to see the IceCastles.  

We started our adventure with dinner at Simon's, one of the restaurants at the Homestead.  Jason had pot roast and I had a delicious chicken sandwich that our server reluctantly brought to me with rice and not the mashed potatoes for which the restaurant is apparently well known.  I almost told her I had a life-threatening allergy to potatoes, just to make her feel better.  Because it would have made her feel better to know I could die from eating those potatoes and that was the only, only reason I was even considering not getting them.

The ice castles are spectacular. You can't really capture how immense they are in pictures.

It was fun to go at night when everything is lit in fun colors.

My favorite was the fountain and wishing well where you could donate change to help build wells in communities that need fresh water.  I thought it was a nice touch.  We had such a fun time, we almost didn't want to come back.

Important Firsts

We've been so excited since the Church announced that 11 year-olds could go to do baptisms beginning in January. Dahlia got her recommend and went twice her first week.  She and Jason went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple to do baptisms together. This picture warms my heart.

Also heart-warming, Theo missed me so much that he talked his parents into moving back to Utah.  We had his first piano lesson on Sunday before the Super Bowl.  We focused mainly on not eating the music.  I think the kid has real talent.