Happy Heart Day

Aren't these cookies amazing?  

We thought it would be fun for the kids to make some sugar cookies.

But, what happened was that Emma, Jewels and I had a lot of fun decorating these.

Don't worry, we saved some for the kids to decorate too.

I think they did about one per plate.  Okay, probably more than that, but theirs got eaten pretty soon after they were decorated.

Also, it was Sean's brilliant idea to cut a smaller heart out of a bigger heart, which I thought looked very cool.

On Sunday night, Jewels & Eric came over for dinner,

 and afterward, Eric started a crazy balloon war.  Pictures don't really do it justice, but I can tell you that we were all in the fray, and it went on for quite a long time, resulting in opening the doors and turning on the fans to help us cool down.  Nothing like a Valentiney Balloon War to help you feel the love.

These pictures are from Hayden's playgroup which was at our house this week.  I thought we would try out this new idea I got from a friend and make Oreo lollipops.  The idea is that you insert a white lollipop stick into the oreo filling, and then dip it in chocolate (we did white chocolate) and then dip it again in sprinkles and let it solidify.  Then you have these darling little Oreo Lollipops.

Well, I went to three stores and couldn't find those little white sticks, so I figured I'd just use some wooden craft sticks I have at home.  They were a little too big and kept breaking the oreos apart, so we just dipped the oreos without sticks.  It worked fine, even if they didn't look quite as cute as I'd imagined.

Besides, half of them got eaten before anyone had a chance to see them anyway.

Happy Valentine's Day!  

More snow days

Well, that first snow day was followed by three more. There wasn't any more snow.  School was cancelled on Wednesday because it was too cold, and then Thursday, the buses wouldn't start, and by Friday, there was a state-wide natural gas shortage, so they had the kids stay home again to reduce the use of natural gas for heating.  As a result of the cold temperatures and people turning the heat down, pipes all over town have been bursting.  Our church building was among them, which is another story entirely . . .

So with four days off school, the kids did lots of playing with friends and with each other.  We made cinnamon rolls one day, and valentines another day, watched movies and just enjoyed the slower pace.  Here are some pictures of the fun.

Jen's Delicious Cinnamon Rolls

Making Valentines

Okay, I'm including a picture of this, but I have to warn you, it's a little disturbing.  See that dark red spot on Hayden's picture?  He painstakingly created that red spot with a red marker that is pretty much out of ink now.  And he told me that it was a picture of him "with lots of blood at his head."  Hmm.  I'll admit it made me laugh, especially since Hayden thought it was hilarious.  Maybe he has a twisted sense of humor.  Or maybe I should look into therapy? 

I'm grateful for my friend Amber who thinks of such fun and creative things for these girls to do together.  Daphne had a blast making this cute conversation heart wreath and frosting Valentine cupcakes.

Snow Day/ Tamales

One great thing about living in Albuquerque is that it rarely snows here in town.  So when it does, they close the schools and call it a snow day.  You can imagine the jubilation at our house when there was an early morning phone call telling us that school would be cancelled for the day.

Since it was so cold, and everything we would normally have had on the schedule was cancelled, we decided it would be a perfect day to make Tamales.  Julianne had written down some instructions from mom, who learned from someone who really knew what she was doing.  So Jewels brought over the ingredients and we went for it.

First we made the red sauce: Here are the chilis boiling in some water with garlic cloves, allspice cloves, and whole cloves.  I would never have guessed those two spices would be included in a red chili sauce.

Julianne's husband, Eric was awesome and went to Pro Rancher's Market to get this special prepared Masa.  He got 16 lbs of it!!!  (Just for the record, if you go to get prepared Masa, you don't actually need that much, but we felt safe knowing that we definitely would not run out. :)  He also got us a bunch of corn husks.  

Here's Emma with darling little Caleb, because I know mom and all the sisters are probably wanting to see pictures of him.

So you take the the boiled chilis and blend them up.

Make sure the lid is on tight, or it will jump out and burn you.  

(sorry, Jewels, for posting this picture, but your expression really makes me laugh.)

Here's Julianne getting the lid on very tight. 

You strain the sauce to remove the skins and seeds.
(don't actually eat that stuff.)

Meanwhile, your corn husks are soaking in some water.

So then you take a nice big corn husk, and spread a thin layer of Masa on it.  Julianne had brought over some shredded pork that she'd cooked in the crockpot a day or two before. We added our pork directly to the red sauce, and spread some of it onto each layer of Masa.  The tricky part is wrapping up the corn husk.  We started out pretty amateur but got better by the end.

Then when you have a ba-jillion tamales assembled and wrapped, you put them into a gigantic steamer end-down, and squish them in there vertically.  You let them steam for two hours.

When they are done, you take them out and eat them, or bag them up to freeze them and eat them another day.  

Here I am holding up one of our beginning amateur tamales, and then a bigger, better one as a result of us perfecting our technique. (Well, perfect enough for three white girls, anyway.)

And here we are with our beautiful bags of Tamales.  That's only half of our finished product. We made about 50 pork tamales with red sauce and 30 chicken/green sauce tamales.  They take forever, but they are TASTY!!!  So all you Albuquerque friends, if we have some more snow days, and you're wondering what to do with all your spare time ;)  Give me a call, and we can make some tamales.

What a Birthday!

We celebrated Arthur's birthday this past weekend, and it really was a celebration all weekend long.  

Thursday night we left Emma with the kids and Arthur and I drove up to Farmington where we stayed the night en route to Durango Ski Resort.  We went skiing the next day and even though the snow was old, the weather was PERFECT, and the lines even better.  Purgatory is now one of my favorite ski resorts.  Fun terrain and great food--(the burrito we shared was about as big as my head, and I thought about my brother Reed when I saw it.  I know he'd appreciate a burrito that size, and could probably eat the whole thing himself!)  We had such a fun day!  I told Arthur that it was one of my favorite days that we've spent together.  We drove all the way back Friday night to find that the kids were in bed, and Emma had survived.  ;)  Thanks so much Emma!  (we forgot the camera, so no pictures . . .)

The next day, we had tickets to the sold-out BYU/UNM basketball game, thanks to the family who rents our other home.  He is an assistant coach for the Lobos, and since he knew we were BYU alumni, he asked us if we wanted some tickets.  He was able to get us 4 tickets, and what a great game!  Sad for us, since we didn't win, but it definitely kept us on our feet for most of the game.

Here is the back of the famous Jimmer Fredette--very fun to watch.

You are probably thinking how lame we were not to wear BYU apparel, but trust me, it's not because we were afraid of being the only blue in a sea of red (holy cow-I've never seen so much red!)  We weren't sure if we should wear blue & white since we got our tickets from a UNM coach.  (We should have made Emma a shirt that said, "Marry me, Jimmer!")  Despite our lack of BYU apparel, when BYU scored, we definitely stood up and cheered.  And it felt like we were the ONLY ones cheering when BYU scored.

Here's the score at half time, when we were still ahead.  

We were sad BYU didn't win, but it was still a GREAT game to watch, even if it got painful towards the end.

But the party wasn't over, because that night, we drowned our sorrows in Lettuce Wraps and a Great Wall of Chocolate at P.F. Changs.  We went with four other couples and had a super fun time  eating and talking and laughing.  When we got home, I couldn't believe how long we'd stayed!

By Sunday, Arthur had had so much fun, it basically overwhelmed him.  He was sick in bed all day.  He managed to make an appearance for his birthday dinner the next night, though, so that was good.  We had Jewels & Eric and their family over to share the cake and ice cream.

Daphne made this special present for her Dad, and wrapped it and decorated it all by herself.  She put a lot of work into it.  It was a book she'd written.  (she put it in an unnecessarily big box. :)

Happy Birthday, Arthur!  We love you!