Charity Never Faileth, But I Might

This week's blog might be a bit of a cop out.  I have been unbelievably busy with church stuff (more on that in a sec) and this left little time for the fun things I typically like to blog about.  Anyway, a few weeks ago our ward (the group of people, based on geography, who meets together for church) was divided.  That means that those in charge have been scrambling to assign all new jobs and positions to everyone.  Last Sunday I was asked to be the secretary for the Relief Society (the group of all the women in the ward).  Turns out this is a job that comes with a lot of work and responsibility and I have spent every spare moment of the week working on that.  Couple that with the fact that Jeremy had to work yesterday, and you have a recipe for a really boring blog post.

The only fun part of the week was meeting some friends at the park on Thursday to enjoy our unbelievably beautiful day.  Hopefully in the coming weeks we will have more of that and less of spending the day at the computer trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing for Relief Society.

Family Fun Expo

Yesterday we attended the family fun expo.  We had seen tickets for it on LivingSocial and, without knowing much about it, thought it might be fun.  It ended up being different from what I expected, but we all had a good time.  They had tons of booths from local companies that cater to kids and families.  Everyone was handing out swag and candy.  They also had bounce houses, crafts, face painting, wild and domestic animals, trampolines, soccer, you name it and they probably had it.

For my family the highlights were the bounce houses, the paintball shooting, and the "stunt jump" where you jump from a high platform onto an inflated cushion.  C.C. also really enjoyed the scrap art craft where she could glue, color, cut, and repeat to her heart's content.  Jeremy and I also signed up to listen to a time share presentation in exchange for a Disneyland trip (including flight, hotel, and tickets to Disneyland).  Now all we have to do is stay strong and practice saying "no" and we will be home free.

Valentine's Day 2016

Today is Valentine's Day and the festivities have been going on for several days now.  It all started last weekend with making our valentines for school.  This year, Merrick went for a Star Wars theme (shocker) and C.C. had an elephant valentine to go with the mini bubbles she passed out.  I think they both turned out cute if I do say so myself.

As for today, we started the day with our traditional "love hunt".  Those of you who read the blog regularly are probably familiar with what we do, but for those who aren't, each year we plan a scavenger hunt for the kids where at each stop they find candy and a note telling them something we love about them.  At the end of the hunt they find a small gift.  This year the clues where accompanied by caramel kisses and in the end Merrick got a set of 10 board games and C.C. got a Doc McStuffins puzzle and a Sophia the First Book.  This biggest change for this year's hunt is that this is the first year Merrick was able to more or less read the clues on his own (yay!!!).

Because the way to my family's heart is through food, I made homemade soft pretzels (they were really good for my first ever attempt) and cheese sauce for lunch today and this evening we are going to Ben and Becca's house for dinner, games, and strawberry cupid floats.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Mr. Bear

This week we have all been fighting off varying degrees of sickness.  As the weekend approached, I had planned on a very low-key weekend consisting of lots of Netflix and Hulu.  Unfortunately my plan was foiled when I went to help in Merrick's class on Thursday and his teacher told me that Merrick is "star of the week" next week.  That means that this weekend we had to create a poster about him for him to take to school and display.  It also meant that we had Mr. Bear (the class mascot) for the weekend.  We had to take pictures of our time with Mr. Bear and then Merrick had to journal about it.  So much for my weekend on the couch.

We started out the weekend strong.  We took Mr. Bear skateboarding and riding Heely's.  We read to Mr. Bear, worked on our poster with Mr. Bear, and went produce shopping with Mr. Bear.  We went to the library and Lego club.

We had plans to go to a really cool winter light festival downtown in the evening, but we all hit the wall.  Instead we went home and worked on our Valentines with Mr. Bear.

The finish projects turned out well.  I am not including pictures of our pages from the journal as they are the same as the pics above but with captions.  Instead I am including the cover page of the journal and Merrick's finished poster.

So this weekend is in the books.  Maybe next weekend will be the relaxing one I was hoping for.