Passing Through Winter

I'm looking back through my photos and finding a bunch of fun stuff we did over the past couple of months as we did our best to survive the winter months - I think I'll post a whole bunch of pictures so we can remember the fun days.

We had our church's annual chili cook off in February. Right now Skippidy has the absolute cutest Primary Teachers. One of them kept hearing from her how much she loves cooking. And so she invited Skippidy over to help her make chili. I forgot to warn her that although Skippidy loves cooking she very rarely eats the things she cooks. Just because she loves chopping vegetables does not mean she loves eating them. So that picture is a big fake. She's never going to put that chili in her mouth. That night, however, I tried the chili and it was delicious. It had sweet potatoes.

At the end of February came one of my favorite holidays of the year - Oscar Night with The Becky. How we look forward to this one Sunday night a year, even though more and more often we have seen very few of the movies up for awards. That's ok. We're there for the spectacle. The montages. The outfits. All of it. We plan our menu far in advance - this year it was ramen with all the fixings. (If you've never had it, try adding sliced roast beef, basil, bean sprouts, a poached egg, lime juice and sriracha sauce to your ramen. It's AWESOME.) We shooed the kids away, curled up in our jammies, sipped fizzy drinks and watched all four hours. Like I said, one of my favorite holidays of the year.

We had a lovely visit from the St. Georgians over their spring break, which comes a wee bit earlier than our does. In St. George it is already spring when we still have winter. If they waited to do Spring Break until we do it up here it would already be summer there.

Peter and I visited my mom. This was such a long time ago now and she's changed so much since these pictures it's kind of crazy to see her. She was talkative, smiling, and still loved getting up and around. That's all changed a lot now. I'll post more about that soon. I promise.

Also my friend Elyse had the MOST delicious baby. She's just a round little num num.

Bitty had the chance to meet an author at her school, and I'm kind of mad at myself for not going too. There wasn't a huge group there, just these kids, and it turns out I've read a few of this woman's books and really loved them. Her name is Jennifer Nielsen, she wrote the Runaway Prince series, and those were great books. I'm so happy Bitty got to go, wish I had too.

Also in February was the Pinewood Derby. We have long since stopped having a scout of our own at this event, but we were there to support for a couple of reasons. For starters, I have been called into the Stake Primary Presidency, and the breakfast that morning was up to me. It wasn't too bad except that I set my alarm incorrectly and ended up waking up one minute after I was supposed to be there. I can't believe I got there as quickly as I did and actually pulled off the huge breakfast anyway. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough. I am getting tense shoulders just thinking about being late that morning.  Secondly, Troy always helps one of our friends' kids with his car. The kid has done well every year that Troy has helped him but never won the whole kit and caboodle until this year. Tate finally took the trophy - it was great! 

So there you go. I have not perished, I'm sill around. Things have been a wee bit stressful lately and so blogging has not been upmost in my mind, but I will get caught up.