Cheesecake!!!!

To celebrate our February birthdays, Melissa and I threw a cheesecake party with a few friends. Let the deliciousness speak for itself and let it be known I will be working out a lot this week!

Carrot Cake Cheesecake made by Melissa (I would have helped but things got crazy around here--I think she did an excellent job and I would have only ruined it)

Brownie Swirl Cheesecake made by Amelia (she claims it was her first time making a cheesecake but it turned out yummy and very good-looking!)

Pomegranate Cheesecake Bits (top plate)
Melissa having fun eating (don't kill me--I didn't take it:)
The girls (big or little I don't exactly know) got my camera so I got lots of silly pictures on my camera so I have no responsibility for them.

The dancing divas (we love Just Dance 2!)

Valentine's Day

As many of you know and as I've written in this blog before, I'm not the biggest fan of Valentine's day. This year though I thought I'd spend some quality time with my "loving to craft" daughters and created some homemade Valentine's cards for their class parties. Here's what we came up with and the idea came from here although I modified it a little bit. For those who even think I'm remotely crafty, I admit the Internet is the wealth of knowledge for me and I don't come up with anything craft-related on my own.
We also had to make a Valentine's box for Elizabeth so she mod-podged a whole bunch of Valentine's scrapbook paper to make this.
My kitchen is somewhat back to normal after all the paper and glue everywhere and I might just do it again next year which is saying a lot for me :)

Birthday Time

I am not ashamed of getting a year older. I have to say I am loving my 30s! This year was a great birthday. I woke up to a delicious breakfast in bed and the girls were so excited to surprise me. I went to Elizabeth's classroom to volunteer and as I walked in the class one of the students gave me a huge hug. Then the whole class sang to me--so cute. We went out as a family to dinner and then Melissa and I went indoor skydiving (Melissa's birthday is the 21st so we celebrated together a little before she heads of to Honduras, sniff, sniff). I ate way too much chocolate cake but loved all the pampering of the day from my family.

So indoor skydiving is a huge funnel of air and the experience is pretty cool (I'll post a video later if I can figure it out). We didn't do any flips or big theatrics, I was just lucky I didn't stay on the floor or bump into the window the whole time. It was fun watching the experienced go like our instructor who zoomed up the shaft and then fell, spreading out just before hitting the ground to bounce back up in the air and walk up the walls. Definitely a fun experience and maybe Melissa and I will have to try the real thing out sometime.

Pics of our lovely convict orange jumpsuits.

I was in a very silly mood, giddy if you will, and this certificate did go on the fridge!

The potty's taking a shower!

Elizabeth ran downstairs the other day chanting that plus "the door's taking a bath!"

We decided to take the carpet out of our master bathroom (who in their right mind puts carpet where water is?) and had tile put in. I think I've decided on bath mats so I can take the tags off (yes I have problems buying then returning because I can't make up my mind) and the tile looks great.

Ice Skating

Last Saturday we thought we'd get out and embrace the snow and slightly warmer temperatures and go ice skating. Melissa, Elizabeth, Rachel, and I skated while Eric and Evelyn looked on. I've taken the girls roller skating before but they never really got it--come on just step and glide. Yeah, they pretty much just held onto the side and walked around the whole time. This time ice skating they found a bucket to push around and I think got the skating thing a little better. It helped that snow was piling up on the ice so it wasn't so slippery but they didn't mind falling. If not this season, we will definitely be going ice skating again as it was a fun time!

My little skaters. Yep, the snow was piling up and the "zamboni" was a golf cart with some contraption on it but they hadn't pulled it out yet.

Oh what do YOU do when it's sub-zero outside?

Around here, we finally get motivated to redecorate the main floor bathroom! It's only been over two years since the girls started stripping the wallpaper off but now it's completely gone! Do you see the strip missing in the lower left corner of the picture? I don't know why but it also got really dirty under the medicine cabinet.

Melissa and I were wallpaper masters stripping it in an hour and a half. Taping and painting was the next day and took another 3 hours with a break to let it dry before recoating. If you can't tell colors from the pictures well, the bathroom went from a blue beach/nautical theme to a sage-ish flower/leaf theme.

The scrapbook paper that inspired it all modge-podged into pictures.

It feels good to accomplish something when the thermometer only wants to show negative numbers. I hope the girls enjoyed watching their movies as it was a snow day and we completely ignored them to get this done :)

Monday night was also a good time to spend together as a family drinking hot cocoa in front of the fire watching a movie.

Ahhh! Aren't my cuddle bugs so cute with Melissa? No pictures of all that happens during the day when they aren't so sweet to their aunt.