Valentine's Day Weekend

We began our Valentine's Day celebrations on Friday with a visit to Shazer's school to have lunch with him.

 

You can't really tell by the picture (I didn't think to get the camera out until after he'd cut into it), but Sally and I made Shazer a homemade pizza shaped like a heart with Italian sausages (his favorite)spelling out his name. He was very pleased and appreciated the gesture. The girls thought it was great going to his school, eating lunch with the big kids, and playing on the playground with their big brother. Sally is anxious to be able to start school :)

That afternoon, Jon and Shule went to the Boy Scout camp out for 11 year olds and their dads. Shule really had a blast and Jon said he was a hoot during the campfire skits- Shule's always trying to ham it up. Meanwhile, Shazer and I had a great time at home with the girls. We watched the newest Harry Potter movie and in the morning we played racquetball at the Y. It was nice being able to spend one on one time with him and I need to remember to try do that more often with all my kids.

When Jon and Shule got home Saturday evening they quickly took showers and we all went out to the Chandler Fashion Mall to hang out together. We had wanted to treat the kids to the Cheesecake Factory because they'd never been before but we didn't have the foresight to make reservations and when we arrived there was a 45 min wait- which is totally not worth it with little ones. So we headed to the food court instead and let the kids pick where they wanted to go and we literally had every person go to a different place (except Sophie, she just kind of ate a little of everyone else's food). Shule went to Panda Express while Shazer chose a different Japanese food place, Jon went to Rubio's while I ate a cheese steak, and Sally stuck with her trusty favorite- McDonald's. Afterward, we made stops at the Lego store, See's and some comic store. We also caught the fountain show in the outdoor courtyard- which ended up being the highlight of the night because Sally was hilariously into it. They have a kind of Bellagio style fountain synchronized to music and lights (on a much smaller scale).

 

For some reason, Blogger isn't allowing me to post a video but we got a pretty hilarious one that I'll try to post later. Here's a picture of Sally swaying to the music with the water. This is where we were when we got a call from Jon's mom informing us that Lorin & Brenda's son, Stevie, had broken his arm while jumping off a bed at Kelby and Daina's. Ouch! We're hoping the poor kid heals quickly.

Afterward, we stopped at a frozen yogurt place near ASU that has the awesomest yogurt with mix-ins ever! It was a great night :)

Unfortunately, the wonderful evening ended abruptly when we were awoken to some serious Sophie vomiting around 2am, which led to Sally waking up, both girls in the bath, a serious wipe-down of the crib, a major load of nasty sheets, blankets and such being washed, and even emergency carpet cleaning. It was seriously disgusting and not at all fun but I was super glad to have my sweetheart right there with me to help clean and calm down baby. We ended up staying up until about 5:30 with the girls until they were ready to get back to bed. Exhausting!

I did manage to wake up before noon to make a Sunday brunch of heart-shaped pancakes. Jon was pretty much busy the entire day playing catch up with homework he had gotten behind on because of the camp out. I made some cute rice krispie treats for all my Valentines that I'll post about soon. 

We enjoyed an extended weekend because of President's Day, which ASU doesn't give its students the day off for but my school and the kids' schools do, so I took all my kids to the Kiwanis park and we made sand castles on the playground, blew bubbles, threw a frisbee, had a picnic lunch, walked around the lake, and fed the ducks. When we got home we had some serious weekend mess to clean up, so to give the boys an incentive to clean their room fast, well, and without bickering I made a friendly wager with them; if they could clean their room faster than I could clean the girls' room then they wouldn't have to do their regular chores for the rest of the week (don't point out to them that the week is shorter because of the holiday) and if I was faster then they would have to do double chores. They won, of course, and were thrilled with their reward and I was thrilled that they didn't take all afternoon fighting and bickering to get the job done :).