Valentine's Day

My niece Taysom decided to come down to SLC from BYUI, and her parents and sister decided to come up from SG! It was a fun, quick distraction from reality. :) They took us to the Body Exhibit at the Leonardo museum in SLC. The kids have had such a fun time learning about the body this year. I was a little nervous to take them because it might be scary etc, but they loved it. No pictures are allowed inside that particular exhibit, but we took at a few as they played around the other cool areas of the museum. We also had our fancy Valentine's Day dinner, complete with chocolate dipped strawberries. Jenn, Mike and Ilah took off Sunday night. Taysom stayed until Monday afternoon. We decided to picnic at a park, but headed home once it got too cold. The kids were so sad to see everyone go. So were we!

The rest of January!

*FYI, there's another separate post after this one about Miles' birthday.

Daddy and kids sledding. Maybe it's the St. George girl in me, but sledding is not one of my most favorite things to do. It's fine I guess, but I'm always super glad when Richie volunteers to take the kids out. This year it's especially appreciated because we only got the opportunity to go a couple of times! Crazy, mild winter this year.


Swimming lessons! Grandma and Grandpa Crosby's Christmas money they sent to the kids went to buying them their first ever swimming lessons. Miles ate it up. He's ready for the next level and is using the money he got for his birthday to pay for it. Gwen loved her time there, but is still a little timid in the water. We'll work on it.


Super cute Sunday kids. Man, am I crazy, or do I just have the cutest kids ever??


I know this picture is a little gross, but it's also super cool and a big part of our lives lately. Just in case I haven't written about it on the blog, Miles has this thing called "convergence insufficiency". Basically, his eyes don't work well together. So this January we started once a week physical therapy sessions for his eyes as well as almost daily home sessions where we do a couple of exercises with him while he wears his patch.


The studious Richie. Shout out to this awesome guy. I almost don't even realize he's working on his masters. Almost. He wakes up before 5 every day, teaches class until about 2, and then studies for 3 hours and gets home around 530. That's 12 hour days ladies and gents. He's Dad until bedtime, then cleans up the kitchen while I go to the gym after the kids are in bed.

Here's another. If he has any down time at all, he's playing his uke. I'm taking a few photo workshops, so in the near future get ready for a bunch of "artistic pictures." On this particular day, I took about a million of him laying on the couch playing and singing. :)


Miles has been asking us a lot lately if he can paint our nails. Gwen adores him for it. Last Sunday, he painted mine, Gwen's, Amanda's, Helen's and Grandma Garner's nails! When they asked him if this is what he wanted to do when he grows up, he said, "Yeah, sure. I want to do everything when I grow up."


One of those "artistic" pictures. Couldn't resist sharing cause her eyes are just so darn pretty.


Cousins came over for a late night while their mom and dad were at the temple. Cuties.


I'll post more school documentation on the school blog later, but just to show a tid-bit here: Gwen's joy school group was studying the ocean this month. So for the field trip we went to a Scuba Diving shop and then watched some scuba divers in their deep pool. Pretty cool stuff!

Miles turns 6

This sweet boy of ours turned 6 on the 30th. We decided to go with a family party this year, instead of a big friend one.

On his actual birthday he woke up to a small present (he's starting to get really into legos) and pancakes with Nutella for breakfast. Pretty special!


We happened to have friends over that day and they were sweet and brought some finger painting for him that all the kids had fun with.


We also shared ice cream with our homeschool friends when it was our turn to host on Wednesday. (Miles and Ava)


On Saturday, Ross and Amanda took Miles out to get a special birthday present. He named him Mr. Finnigan. :)


We had the family over on Sunday for his family party. Miles requested hamburer sandwiches (the morning star patties:), and chocolate cake. He wanted about a billion things as far as themes go, but he finally settled on an iron man cake and a captain America cake. I feel bad we didn't take more pictures!


Miles has always been special, but he's really turning into such an amazing young person. I'm really starting to be able to rely on him for things that are actually helpful and not just "made up jobs" and such. :) He has such a strong desire to be helpful and kind. He continues to be Mr. Empathetic. He blows me away with his creativity sometimes. In fact, as we've been dealing with a lot of eye physical therapy stuff, we've found his visual spatial relation ability is off the charts. He loves quiet time in his room and that uninterrupted time to build things with his legos and create story lines for all of his toys. He has become very aware of what things are healthy for his body, so on his own, he's decided a lot lately to do his yoga video every day, with no shirt on, so his muscles can get strong. He loves his sisters and treats them so well. He can make Lindy laugh more than anyone else. He has his first major crush on a girl in our homeschool group. Her name is Ava and she is a sweet, 8 year old girl. He is her shadow during homeschool group, often holding her hand and putting his arm around her. He draws her pictures and letters all the time and has told her and her mother, multiple times, that he wants to marry her some day. When I remind him to not hold her hand the entire time, he says, "But mom, I love her! She is the beloved of my heart!" :) He is very full of love. It's not uncommon for him to come up and kiss me and tell me he loves me randomly throughout the day and I sure love it! He always asks for snuggles at bedtime. Yes, I am bragging on my boy. But if you're gonna get bragged on, why not on your birthday, right? We sure love him.

The Fireplace Saga

This post has been 2.5 years in the making. We finally finished our fireplace remodel, and here's the documentation to prove it.

This is the morning after we moved in. Not the best shot of the fireplace before we demo-ed it, but it gives you an idea. Not a bad looking fireplace at all. Just not really functional.


Ah, here's a better one.



The beginning stages of the demo...and Gwen's bum crack. :) At this point the mantel, step and tile were all gone.


Again, not the best picture, but you can see the progress in the background. At this point the actual fireplace was gone, we had ripped up some carpet, and backer boarded the hole to fireproof it. And when I say "we" I mean Richie. :)


Here come Dan the brick man. This guy was probably in his 80's and still goin strong. He was such a fun guy.


How many men does it take to lift "the beast"? All of these guys right here. Once the hole was bricked, we moved the fireplace in although it was still unconnected. We were short sighted and wanted the project to be done and cost less money, so we thought it would look fine and be plenty functional sitting right on the brick floor. At this point, we had a guy building a special piece to connect the flue and the hole on top of the fireplace stove, since they happened to be different shapes. It took FOREVER.


Functional, but still looks like a mess.



Then we decided that the fireplace looked dumb on the floor and was extremely inconvenient to build fires in. You had to practically be on your belly. So we had our wonderful, strong, manly family come back and move the fireplace out. Which was trickier this time because the connecting piece had been welded on. Then Dan the brick man came back and bricked us a step. Then our strong family moved the stove back in. Whew.


Then we spray painted the flue and connecting piece all black so that it wasn't all mis-matched. Then Blaine Parry from Richie's home ward created our mantel for us. This guy is also in his 80's and is still a rock star. He chopped down the tree, let it cure, and then crafted this one of a kind mantel. We painted it white, then he came and installed it earlier this week. What's that? Did you hear something? Oh it must be the angels singing the Hallelujah chorus, cause it's finished!!!

Richie says is looks so stately and regal that the thing that would really finish it off is an oil painting of our family in smoking jackets and pipes. :) Next project I guess. This past fall I found a dresser on ksl and re-vamped it. Then maybe a month ago I found some curtain panels for sale on a yard sale site for $8! We randomly found curtain rods in our water heater closet left by the old owners. They were rusted and disgusting, so I painted those, Richie hung them up, and then the kids hung on the curtains by the couch and bent the cheap curtain rod. It was a team effort.


When we started this process we thought (or at least I thought) "oh, this will be simple. Take the old fireplace out, pop the new one (which we found on ksl) in." HA! HA HA HA!!! 2 1/2 years and a couple thousand dollars later...We finally have the fireplace we were imagining. Just in time for the state of Utah to debate outlawing wood burning stoves during the winter completely. To be fair, if it passes we could burn as much wood as we wanted during the summer, so there's that. I sure hope it doesn't pass because we have loved cozying up in the family room next to this beauty.