Alyssa took on the job of planning this year's New Beginnings program for the young women in our ward. The hours she spent preparing and caring out the event fulfilled the requirements for one of her Personal Progress projects.
Together with Linsey, they decided on a theme, ideas for the decorations and elements for the program.
In all honesty, this was a great deal of work for me as I helped her through the process, but everything turned out great.
Though I did all the painting and potting for these favors, she did all the lettering by hand.
We felt a little guilty seeing another Jim Gaffigan show without Caleb. We missed having him with us, but we had a fun weekend with lots of laughs at Jim's show in the Yakima SunDome.
It was a fun way to end our otherwise uneventful mid-winter break.
Caleb was due to be home from school right as spring break was starting. Jon and I decided we really wanted to go somewhere as a family. We posed this hypothetical question to each of the kids separately: "If you could go anywhere for spring break, where would it be?" We were somewhat surprised when Disneyland made each of their short lists.
Jon was able to find some cheap flights to LA, so we were soon planning our trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. Because I love surprises, I wanted to keep it from the kids for the time being. In fact, for a moment I thought about trying to pull off one of those tell-them-when-it's-time-to-leave-for-the-airport kind of surprises. But I decided that while that might be fun, it would deny them the joy of anticipating the trip, so we decided to give it to them as a Valentine's Day gift.
I made a yummy dinner and individual chocolate cakes, with a card at each place setting.
During dinner they opened their cards...
When we called Caleb to open his via FaceTime, we woke him from a late nap. It took him a long time to comprehend what the surprise was. Maybe because he was so drowsy?
Snow days in Seattle are blissful. Everyone loves a day off of school, but because it gets cancelled for snow so infrequently, our kids know how to make the most of it.
These particular snow days, however, began with quite the headache at our house.
It was Saturday night and I went into the den to get something from the desk. As I stepped on the carpet to reach something on the top shelf, my stocking feet became soaked.
"Jon! We've got a problem!" I shouted.
We moved the TV stand away from the wall and the water-logged baseboard peeled effortlessly away, revealing mold underneath.
Because the hot water heater was located in the garage on the other side of this wall, we determined that it had a slow leak that was sending water through the wall and onto the carpet of our house.
I made calls to our insurance agent and a plumber who was able to come out within a couple of hours. Though the plumber offered to replace our water heater on Sunday, we told him we felt better about him coming back Monday and we would do without hot water until then. He showed us how to turn the water off so that we could leave it on for a hot shower before church in the morning, then shut it off.
The McInellys invited us over to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, so we hardly missed the hot water. We were much too busy eating delicious food and watching the Atlanta Falcons blow their 23 point lead. Each time a commercial came on, we'd peek outside to see if the snow that had started in the early evening was still coming down. The large flakes were falling fast and they were accumulating!
When we finally got the call that night that school would be cancelled the next morning, we let out a cheer louder than any football play had elicited that night. Elation for kids and this teacher! It was 10:00 at night--and Sunday--when the kids went out to sled on the street and we didn't even try to stop them.
I measured nearly 7 inches of accumulation when we arrived home that night:
The snow continued to fall through the night, reaching 9 inches by morning.
Thankfully, our trusty plumber was still able to make it to our house by 8:30 am on Monday, though he told us it took him 20 minutes just to get into our neighborhood.
Jared was busy being the ultra fun dad while Jon and I were dealing with various workers tending to the damage done by our water heater.
Since I was essentially homebound, I made a dinner of chili and potato soup for the snow-loving bunch to enjoy once they'd eked out every possible moment of their time in the snow.
