A very full day.

Saturday we spent the day in Utah with family. Both sides of the family - one in the afternoon, one in the evening. My girls were in heaven. Gray and Zander just rolled with it.

We got to spend time with Grandpa who is a photographer and loves to teach the kids how to take pictures.


The cousins we spent time with first have lived back east for 8 years, so it was a lot of fun for my kids to get some quality time playing with them. They only live two hours away now!

My redhead brother holding my redhead son.

Having ice cream at the same place my partner and I had our first date. The girls thought that was so exciting and romantic and .... "Wait! Does this mean that I have to marry Grayson because we're having ice cream together here?!?!" No, sweetie, you're fine.

We went by the big Mormon temple there to get a picture taken with a Flat Stanley we're hosting and the kids rolled down the HUGE hill before I could stop them.

It *is* kind of an irresistible hill.

I have no pictures of the girls playing with their cousins at the next house. We got there, I was surrounded by dance costumes and giggles and then they all disappeared for two hours.

So Zander and I played with sidewalk chalk ...

and I tried to breathe and stay calm as Gray zoomed down the driveway over and over on a skateboard.
I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom.

Grayson joins in.

I now have three superheroes in training. THREE! I'm creeping up on Professor Xavier's school.

And with that, I'm going to leave you with the awesome cuteness that is Grayson in karate class.

Valentine's Day

Ainsley has Chinese New Year, Hannah has Valentine's Day. A day to celebrate love - she was born for that. So her Daddy has stepped up to the challenge. Every year he gets all of us flowers and last year he made us heart waffles for breakfast.

This year, though, he went all out. Decorated the house with the girls and then quarantined us in my bedroom for two hours. Two. Hours.

He had Grayson come get us one by one and give us the flowers.


Matt lit the candles. (Ainsley was the only one of us who dressed for the occasion.)

Zander laughed at all of us.


Then we got to sit down for dinner.

All of us girls love seafood so he made us a dinner with favorites for each of us - pan fried lemon shrimp, halibut, garlic mashed potatoes, and bacon asparagus. And sparkling cider, of course.

So very good.

The girls said thank you and he said "I like to spoil my girls once a year and make dinner." Which is funny because he loves making dinner, so he does it every night that he's home. Which worked out better for me when he wasn't working nights. I'm just saying, making dinner wasn't unusual for him - making such a fancy dinner, though, was. I'm not a big one for romantic Valentine's Day celebrations. He's winning me over, though.


(Hannah's picture of us. It was a close-up.)

And Zander just laughed at all of us.

10 pictures quick post.

Today was...

Playing under blankets.

Making 'old' paper.
Making pompom bunny tails.
Pulling Zander on a blanket. Everyone's new favorite game.
Checking on the tadpoles.

Trampoline and train play.
I can't even explain this one.

Visiting the South Pole. It's cold down there. If you don't take your own votive candle, you could freeze to death. True story.

Weaving.

Crafting. Zander's even got a seat at the table! Mostly he just giggles, but sometimes he throws stuff. Hannah tried to glue his hand to a piece of paper. We like to make him feel involved. He likes to try to eat paper.

Our day in 10 pictures.

Karate!

About 6 months ago I decided that I wanted to start aikido. There are no aikido places around here. There are a few martial arts places, but the one I loved is in the city, 45 minutes away. That's $40 a week just in gas, forget the price of the class. So I looked closer to home. Not as high of quality instruction, but more reasonable costs.

Then Matt started working nights and, well, I can't swing a twice a week class parenting on my own. It's too much to ask of friends to watch the kids that often and I couldn't have 4 kids running around the waiting area while I tried to concentrate on class. But the girls found out that I wanted to do it and they were *so* excited. You can't be a superhero without martial arts knowledge.

So the girls started karate two weeks ago. They love it. They're in superhero training.

For Ainsley it's specific water-bending training.

Hannah likes to keep her options open. She could join the Justice League, she could be Wonder Woman's protege, she could get her skills up before her mutant genes kick in in puberty, she could train with the Earth Benders ... Who knows where she could end up if she just gets her skills up where they need to be.

I hope to get Gray going ... I almost had him talked into it the other day.

I didn't set out to have a breastfeeding board on Pinterest.

But I do. When you have pictures popping up on your feed of roller derby moms breastfeeding, motocross moms breastfeeding, women breastfeeding while talking to the president of Venezuela ... what's a girl to do?

And then these pictures come across my Facebook feed and must be pinned also.


I'm just waiting for someone to tell that mama to cover up.

I ended up with enough pictures that a breastfeeding board just made sense.

ETA:

Aboriginal mama

Sleepy. Soooo sleepy.

We've had guests staying with us for almost a week now. Last night it all caught up with everyone.

They started dropping like flies around me.

I was stepping over bodies.

I only moved the ones that fell asleep on the floor. Those on couches or beds stayed right where they were.

They needed the sleep. They've been playing hard.

niū jiǎn chū detective agency

The name combines China and detecting, perfect for her.

妞 niū "little girl"

检出 jiǎn chū "to detect / to examine and discover / to sense"

Inspired by a pin I saw on Pinterest, this was my gift to Ainsley for Christmas. Her own detective kit. She's always asking if we have a mystery for her to solve and saying "Trust me. I can solve this."

I made up business cards for her with her agency name on them. They say "International Private Investigator. Based out of Idaho and China." I also made up a Detective Pass for her to wear at crime scenes. It has her catchphrase printed on it.

Other things I included were brushes, evidence bags, fingerprint lifting tape, a magnifying glass, and a flashlight.

Also, a fingerprint stamp pad, homemade fingerprint cards (our entire family has now been finger and toe printed), evidence swabs, a pen, and a detective journal.

She loved it, but it took awhile to grow on her. The Chinese calligraphy set took up most of her time for the first week after Christmas, but then she became a full-time detective. So much so that a week later I put this up on Facebook: "I made Ainsley a detective kit for Christmas. Today she came up to me and said "Mommy, I wish I could go back to the good old days when I wasn't a detective and everybody in the entire world and all of China didn't want me to solve their problems. 'Just find your own stuff', I want to say! It's just exhausting, Mommy. EXHAUSTING!" And she falls on the floor spread-eagled. Which you can't blame her for because she's exhausted. I really shouldn't have asked her to find my camera two minutes later."

Now it's down to a more manageable level. And she needs a new notebook.

Our house looks a little bit different.

Ainsley loves China. A lot. I've been told that she was born on the wrong continent. By her. So it's not much of a surprise that the Chinese New Year was going to be a pretty big thing here. We hung up some Asian stuff that we got at the party store. Not authentic, but fun. Lots of red!


And construction paper Chinese lanterns.


She has her own 'China desk' where she keeps her favorite Christmas present - a Chinese calligraphy set - and she's got Chinese dragons taped up all around it. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of those because they might lose their luck - don't ask - so you get a side view.

Those are her calligraphy pens hanging from the board.

On Sunday night we added to the ambience with good luck posters that we painted and bowls of oranges the kids cut out of construction paper.

Sunday night we had dumplings and today we had noodles, for longevity.

The kids got red envelopes with money in them and a little present. Gray thought his Buddha was worthless, so I traded him for a Twix bar. We were both happy with that. Hannah got a monkey figurine (she was born in the year of the monkey and is proud of that). Ainsley got a 'Chinese waving good luck kitty bank'. I'll have to get a picture of it for you because she's going to make me. She is in heaven.

When I get my sewing machine back from the shop, they'll each get a new article of clothing that is red or orange.

What else? Oh, yeah - Hannah decided a party wasn't a party without a pinata. So she made one out of construction paper and packing tape. It took twenty minutes to break that thing.

And Ainsley wants me to show you her origami 'China girls'.

Technically they're 'Japan girls' because they're wearing kimonos, but we're not much for being technical around here. Our house has a distinctly Asian vibe right now. It's not a traditional holiday for us, but it is important to Ains, so we did what we could. It's been fun. I kinda hope she's still into China next year.