Happy 40th Anniversary

On Friday was my Mom and Dad's 40th anniversary and we had a party at their house to celebrate! Leah and the girls made a cake for the party and Mom and Dad had even found the cake topper from their wedding.

This is how the boys felt about the next part of the night. We got out Mom's wedding dress and Layken tried it on because Mom only weighed 95 lbs when she got married!

So pretty!

Dad got out his army uniform and it fit Jaysson!

Aunt Lele held Tucker all night so I could take pictures, this child loves to be held.... all of the time!

Mom used to wear this wig and the hairpiece Ainsley has on she wore at her wedding.

Presents! The kids worked really hard on a card for their Grandma and Grandpa!

We also got out albums to look at old pictures, the girls all loved it. Seeing their Moms when they were little and Grandma and Grandpa's lives before they came along, especially the outfits! Ainsley loved Grandpa's high socks and when he had a mustache!

Tucker wore his tie for the party.

It's so fun to look at old pictures and remember, maybe that's why I take so many now.

Our pretty setup.

I love the cake topper.

Mom even still had their invitations.

And looking through their wedding album was really fun! Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! We love you!

Jack's first game

Jack was very excited for his first basketball game on Saturday. It was fun to watch him play again this year, Luke says next year he will play too.

I love this picture.

Is there anything better.....

than when your baby starts smiling at you?

Snowshoeing

We all got snowshoes for Christmas and on Saturday we took everybody to try them out. Tucker liked it, he just looked around until he finally fell asleep.

How sweet is he?

Selah loved it too, her and I mostly stayed on the hiking trail, we didn't get too crazy.

The boys took off, I couldn't keep up.

It was really fun, it's like hiking in the winter!

Our Nature Reserve

On Saturday morning when we woke up everything was covered with frost, it was so pretty.

Brad has started calling me the bird lady, while I'm nursing Tucker I sit and watch them outside on our feeder. I am convinced the only good thing to watch anymore on tv is house hunters, or maybe if somethings on Discovery. So, now we go through 30 lbs of bird seed every two weeks to feed the birds so I can watch them.

And... we have a TON of deer who also love to eat from the feeder, tonight after dinner I counted 8 in our backyard!

This may be why we go through birdseed so fast. I have to admit we have started letting Jack go out with his bb gun when they come. It can't really hurt them and without Shiloh what else can we do?

Building a quinzee

On Wednesday we went on a field trip with Leah and her kids to build a survival shelter in the snow. Jack was especially excited. We got the lowdown on how to build it at the nature center from Laura, she was really great. She was the one who recovered Jack's lost coat from the last field trip!

Aunt Lele had Tucker inside so I could venture out with the kids. To build a quinzee.... first you pile up a ton of snow, at least 4-5 feet high depending on how big the people are who are going to be in it.

Luke ate snow most of this time.

He really was having fun!

Selah and Ainsley worked hard.

Of course the girls would stop for a picture.

When Laura asked where the best place would be to put the door, Jack piped up. He always had an answer for her questions and was raising his hand all of the time. He even described how you could make a trap for a rabbit with a rope and a carrot. Apparently Jack is very confident in survival situations.

The final mound, you need to leave this for an hour or two to set so all the snow sort of packs itself together. So we all went in for hot chocolate and cookies and to hear about how to put together a survival pack. Jack has already made his since we've been home. The funny part was when I was telling Brad what was all in it including this foil sleeping bag thing you can fold up to the size of a card he told me he has one in his survival pack, in fact he had almost everything she said! Like father like son.

Jude came out the second round to help!

During the digging out part you can only have a few kids doing it at a time so Jack and a few of the other boys started a snowball fight.

The sticks coming out of the side were about 12-18 inches in and were there to be sure they didn't dig the walls too thin. Once they saw the sticks from the inside they knew to stop.

Layken did a LOT of the digging, this is my best picture of her from the inside. I want her with me if I ever need to build one of these for survival.

The boys all ended up here playing king of the mountain.

I'm sure we'll have one in our yard soon! Maybe we will do some winter camping!

The Zoo in Omaha

Brad had some time off last week so we went to the zoo in Omaha. The kids (especially Luke) have really been into polar animals lately so we thought we would go see some up close. He has really been reading up on them and even got some Zoobooks and other books all about penguins for Christmas. They also play Mr. Popper's Penguins where Jack is the admiral and Luke is one of the penguins. It is a really cute book they thought was hilarious.

Luke has learned so many details about penguins that he was confused when a well meaning mom was told him that what were actually the king penguins were the emperor penguins. She heard him ask me where the emperor penguins were. They actually don't have emperor penguins there. How do you handle that nicely?

I miss this zoo so much. Jack sort of remembered all of the exhibits and I told him for the three years we lived there him and Luke were at this zoo every other week! The best part was going with Roberta and her kids! Next time Roberta, I will call in advance and we can hopefully go together.

Luke is about the size of an emperor penguin (his favorite of course because of Mr. Popper's Penguins).

Did you know you can watch them live too? http://omahazoo.com/index.php?p=animalsexhibits&s=penguinwebcam

Shiloh deer hunter

At night we have had some deer come to our bird feeder to eat, this last week we watched Leah's dog Shiloh who went crazy barking at them. She is such a tiny and timid dog we thought it was funny to see her act so fierce so we let her out to see what she would do (she is scared of everything). To our surprise this is what little Shiloh did.....

The end of an era

After 15 years Brad is letting the Camry go, we both feel really bad about it, it's been such a good car. No, it's not because the window leaks on him when it rains, he can use a towel and is getting used to the musty smell. It's not because the door handle fell off, he got used to that years ago, along with the volume knob on the radio being gone, those are minor things! The dents and scratches are really character and the oil leaking out has saved him countless oil changes. The snow and our driveway are the reason, sorry Camry, you've served him well.