Spring Break?

We were lucky enough to get a whole week for "Spring" Break this year, but I would call the weather anything but "spring". I think it snowed two days and the days it wasn't snowing either the wind was blowing really hard (typical Idaho wind) or it was like 25 degrees outside. At first I still attempted to brave the weather and try to do something outside. Kenzi was the only one I could talk into going to the park with me and this is the one and only time she went down the slide: Poor girl was just freezing, but trying to make the most of it since it was like a date with mom: (This little excursion lasted about 15 minutes.) The rest of our break was spent indoors with sleepovers in the living room every night and lots and lots of movies! We also took a little expedition with their cousins to Blastoff, an indoor play area, which was a huge hit and totally wore them out: Kyler's been quite the mommy's boy lately. He thinks he needs to be held all the time and can throw quite the fit if it doesn't happen right away or if the wrong person dares to pick him up. So Nate figured out a way to get him to stop crying...

My Junk Food Eater

Kenzi is my junk food eater. She would eat nothing but junk all day long. This is her at a typical dinner at our house. I should have zoomed out on the camera so you could know that she's the only one at the table. This is probably about an hour after everyone else has finished eating and Kenzi's still at the table not eating her food. If you'll notice her plate looks like it's almost empty, but that's just because I only give her a very small portion for dinner to try to get her to finish everything on her plate. I've tried everything I can think of to get her to eat her meals. Any suggestions for my little junk food junkie? This is what happens when I force her to take a bite. She'll just leave the food in her mouth for another hour and maybe every once in a while chew it. It's a good thing she's so darn cute, right?!! Kyler obviously doesn't have the same problem. He'll eat almost anything put in front of him and LOVES every second of it. I just wanted to tell everyone thanks for such an awesome birthday! It makes getting older feel so much better when I feel all the love from you! This is a little surprise party Nate put together on the night of my birthday:

Cheerleaders & Welcome Home Tyler

Nate was so excited that his girls can now do their cheers for his high school! This is the girls at cheerleading camp!! My baby brother got home last Wednesday from his mission! I can't believe it's already been two years!! We are so happy to have him home! This is most of the family (minus one brother-in-law, a nephew, and a niece). It grew by 3 people while he was gone:

Still deciding...

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time deciding whether to go private or not. I guess most of it is not really understanding, so I'm asking for some help understanding: Tell me why you have decided to or not to have a private blog. Thanks for your help!

Going Private

Hey everyone! After some consideration of the whole internet that I don't feel like I really understand anyway, I've decided to go to a private blog, but I don't want anyone who's been reading my blog to be left without an invitation to read, so I thought I would post this and tell anyone who wants to send me an e-mail in the next couple of weeks I will invite you: if your obviously someone I know or someone who isn't crazy or anything. Ha-ha! Like I said, I don't really know anything about the internet and when my friend left me her e-mail address the other day on my comments, she did it all tricky so that's what I'm going to do, so hopefully you can understand my psycho babble from this post: My e-mail address is jnloftus and it's a hotmail e-mail dot com. Got that? I really want to hear from all of you, especially the ones that don't leave comments, because I know that not all of you do...PLEASE E-mail me!!!!

My One Time of Being a Creative Mom

I'm not a very creative mom and especially when it comes to doing any sort of crafts with my kids, so I just never really do any. But one day I had this great idea that we were going to do a craft. I got my idea out of this fabulous book I have called: "Unplugged Play" by Bobbi Conner which is a wonderful book for uncreative moms like me...Anyway they had this idea in there to make hats out of paper plates and then let the kids decorate them. Well, Katelyn decided if we were doing a craft then she wanted to paint, so I was a really brave mom and decided to let them paint too. Of course, we decided to do this wonderful project right "after" they got out of the bathtub. Not the best idea but they did pretty well...I think we only got paint on their hands and the counter (which was easy to wipe up), but the bath also explains why their hair is pretty crazy. But I wasn't letting their messy hair get in my way of documenting my first creative mom moment. Ha-ha! If anyone else enjoys reading self-help books (if that's what you want to call them) I have a few favorites that I just wanted to throw a shout-out for: The House That Cleans Itself" by Mindy Starns Clark This is a great book for the house-cleaning impaired (like me) "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" by Dr. Laura Schlessinger And my all-time favorite "The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ" And I also love hearing advice from other people. I love to hear little random tricks that other people know too, so I thought I'd share some tricks with you: * If you get deodorant on your shirt a nylon works great to get it out * If you want to sharpen a pair of scissors then cut a piece of tin foil with them * Clothes, towels, sheets, and blankets fold much flatter if you fold them on something hard, rather than in the air Some people might think all this is useless knowledge, but I LOVE little tips that will help me be a better person and do my "jobs" better. I hope everyone reading this leaves me at least one little tip...thanks!

Let it Snow!!

We got soooo much snow over the holidays. It was pretty crazy! My girls had a ton of fun playing in it. Here's a couple of pictures of them: So, I've been trying to do a little bit of facebooking lately, but it seems like I need to check it more often than every couple of days to be able to keep up...Any tips on facebooking? I've been even worse at blogging than facebook. Sorry! I was also wondering if anyone had any good web-sites on hairdos. One of my blogging friends (Becki) decided to get an invitation only blog and didn't invite me, so now I can't get all of her cute hairdo blogs. (This is just a hint for Becki to invite me on her blog. ha-ha! She's probably getting ready to have her baby any day and won't even read this.) My goal is to update my blog about once a week. I'm definitely trying to find balance this new year too, Amber. Have you ever heard the quote: "Too much of a good thing is wonderful"? I don't think that's true. I think that we need to find balance and remember that our family is "the most important". I love my family and I'm going to find a good balance this new year for them! Here are some of my goals: 1. Remember that my husband is and always will be my best friend and needs extra attention that I sometimes forget to give him when the day gets so stressful and busy 2. Remember that my kids are going to grow up faster than I think and I need to make sure and spend time with them now 3. Go to bed by 10 every night and up by 6 every morning (getting enough sleep truly does affect everything about us)(isn't it true that you can get done in one hour without your kids, what would take you all day with kids, so my goal is to wake up and spend one hour every morning doing the things that are easier to do without kids) 4. I'm going to go to the temple at least once a month, hopefully two...We had a good reminder lesson on Sunday about attending the temple. Someone made the comment that even if we don't feel like we have enough time to do a session we can still do other things there or even just go feel of the spirit. 5. Remember that my Heavenly Father loves me and wants the best for me and my family Now that's it's past 10 and I'm already starting to break my goals, I better stop now. I hope everyone has a great new year and finds a good balance in everything!!!