Happy Germy Valentine's Day!

Yup, we're going through another round of sickness here. Grrrr! Oh, well, No one's throwing up this time around, so I count my blessings. Per the previous post, I was making dinner that night and glanced outside to see the sunlight streaming through the girls "diamonds". Behold!!
When you can do this with your hair...
...and this, I think it's time for a haircut. So these are the "before" shots and...
...this is the "after". -sniff- Now he looks like a little guy, not a little baby!
Saturday was a big day for Ginny--her first friend b'day party without any other siblings. She was in heaven, esp. as it was a princess party and she got to get fancy for it. Adam took Sharra and Sammy shooting with a friend of his and his son up the canyon. Sam is getting pretty good with his cricket--he got to shoot a shaken pop can from a tree which he nailed on the third shot. He told his friends about it later and how it "exploded"! I think they were more impressed that he got to shoot a real gun than that he actually hit anything with it.


Friday was Sharra's manners party at school (which was good for two reasons--I could help with both kids' parties and that Sharra was still sick on V-day and had to stay home) that I got to help with. We got to play a quiz show-style game and then some other little games. To start the party off right, the fire alarm went off. Ginny and Aviendha were shocked and that's all they talked about all weekend around here--how loud it was.

Sunday Adam got to sub in Elder's quorum and I ended up taking sick and grouchy kids home after sacrament mtg. Sharra ran a high fever all day, then through the night, and into Monday. Some time Monday night it broke. Sam came home from school today sick. I'm hoping for a lighter case of it with him.

Sam's class Valentine's Tea was Monday and I helped with that one, too. He got to escort two girls from his class from the classroom to the party room and I have some adorable video of it. If I can figure out how to upload it, I'll see if I can get it posted here. We made homemade ice cream for our family Valentine's day celebration. It turned out ok; we all decided Papa's ice cream is much better-tasting and Ginny asked if we could please borrow his ingredients to make ours better next time. :)

I live in a lava lamp

...or at least I feel like I do. I woke up this morning to multiple balloons drifting aimlessly up, down and all around my kitchen. The mylar baloons we got for Ginny's birthday bash are finally losing their helium bit by bit and when the heater turned on this morning it set them adrift. It was a bit of a surreal experience to fix breakfast among them. :)

Whew! I can take a breath and relax for a minute now that January birthdays are through. There's just two--Ginnny and Sam, but with a family celebration at home each, a friend party each, and then a family party...again, whew! It was very fun and I can't believe that Ginny's FIVE! That's huge. I'll have more in school this coming fall then I'll have at home. ;( She's definitely NOT excited to have to go, so we'll see what we can do these next few months to pep her up for it.

And, Sam being seven.. that's practically eight and I am so not ready for another child to be baptism age. He really enjoyed his first friend party that was all his own. He told me like twenty times throughout the day and even a few days after thanks for the fun day and all the work we did for it. :) What a sweet guy he is!

We've enjoyed the sunshine the last few days. It's not even close to being warm, but the rays shining through my windows do wonders for the cabin fever! Yesterday we did brave it for about a half and hour though. I was afraid that Stephen would hate it and want to go right back inside, but he surprised me by running back and forth across the back yard the whole time. I had to carry him back in when all us bigger girls were frozen.

Ginny and Aviendha spent their time digging for rocks to paint and then discovering a block of ice in one of their sand buckets. They carried it up to the patio to smash it and see what was inside. Well, really, there wasn't anything, but they were thrilled to discover that it was full of "diamonds" once they broke it up.