Happy St. Patrick's Day

I normally don't do anything special on this day, but I stepped it up a notch and bought the kids Lucky Charms to eat for breakfast. They loved that change!

Zoe, Emily, my mom & I enjoyed a pre birthday lunch at Applebee's today. Here are Zoe & Emily posing with their green Sierra Mist.

We did some shopping before lunch. Zoe decided that she wanted to pick out a few of her gifts this year. Tune in tomorrow to see what she got. :-). Zoe & Emily are staying with my parents this evening. The next time we see Zoe, she will be 13!

It was a warm, sunny, beautiful day today! The softball/baseball gloves and balls were dug out. This will be Eleanor's first year playing in the softball league and she is very excited!

Stickers & Christmas Colors

Zoe has already made a parenting decision. After seeing a sticker on our Yukon window that Noah put there, Zoe declared that none of her kids would be allowed to put stickers on the car windows...EVER! She is not going to budge on that. There is a car around town that has stickers all over the windows and Zoe does not like it at all. I'm not a fan of the stickers either, which is why usually we don't have stickers on our windows. :-)

Zoe is also not a fan of red and green together (Christmas colors) when it is not the Christmas season. I thought of this when Noah told me that I would be red and he would be green while playing the game Sorry today because they are Christmas colors. :-)

Moments to Remember

Noah & I spent some time together outside today. He loves being able to swing all by himself now!












Zach & I went to Walmart this evening to get his hair cut and to get his picture taken. Then he spent his gift card and some of his birthday money. We had a fun time!

I started reading the 1st Harry Potter book to Eleanor & Zach this evening. I'm excited about this because a) I love the Harry Potter books and b) it is a fun way to spend time with Eleanor & Zach.

When Zach is 100 years old

He will go to the store and by a cane. He will sit on the couch. He will woch TV all day. :-)

New Skills

It was fun to see Noah swinging with Kate this afternoon. :-)

We signed out a trumpet from the high school yesterday for Zoe. She is going to take lessons at school to help her learn how to play it. She wants to play the trumpet in the jazz band next year. Emily wants to play her saxophone in the jazz band as well. We'll have this trumpet until June and then we'll look into buying one if Zoe is still interested in playing it. Learning to play the trumpet is fulfilling one of her personal progress goals. :-)

Bringing Florida Home

It was in the 60s today! The younger kids were so excited to go outside without a jacket or sweater! It was so nice out!

Zach stayed home today from school because of a sore throat. Kate's throat was sore a few days ago.

After Matt got home from work, he went outside to push Noah on the swing while I prepared dinner. It was a sweet sight when I looked out the window and I saw Noah swinging all by himself!

I've never been one to get into St. Patrick's Day, but Zoe loves it (because her birthday is the next day)! She picked out these whoopie pies for our Family Home Evening treat.

For our lesson, Zach (with Matt's help) read an airplane story that was told by President Dieter F. uchtdorf during a past General Conference. Zach is looking forward to hearing President Uchtdorf (Zach, Kate & Noah pronounce it Ufdork)
speak in a couple of weeks. He is hoping to hear another airplane story. :-)

Goodbye Florida

Your rainy, cool weather made it easier to leave today. We went to all 3 hours of church in Sanford and then we went to the airport. I watched a video on Facebook of Matt's nephew, Jacob opening his mission call. He is going to England! We spent 3+ hours on the plane and now I am home. It is good to be home. :-) I bought some DVDs and CDs in Florida, so we watched The Making of Jimmer this evening. We enjoyed it. :-) Matt only saw a little bit of it since he had a conference call with the stake young men's presidency at 8pm.