The Jackson Eight

We have meant to have all eight of the Jacksons over ever since we moved in. {We've had a few of them over at different times} Tonight was our lucky night! We were able to have them all over to make scones with us. So much fun!
Glory was so excited that she spent like 20 minutes in the window waiting for them. Silly girl!
The weather was amazing so the older kids spent most of the night out on the tramp. I tried to go take a picture of them in the dark. They were so hilarious acting like I was melting them with my flash. LOL In their defense--- it was SUPER bright! :)
The rest of the girls had a blast making scones and playing together. Abby was cracking us up with her "knuckles" and her destructive toddler behavior. Gotta love that kid!
The adults got to just sit (beside chasing Abby to rescue the kids craft projects!), snack and visit for hours. What a darling family! Thanks guys for coming! We adore you!

P.S. I totally forgot to get a picture of Kyle & Heidi while they were here. {What is wrong with me? ;}

I decide to just steal their photo from the dance last night. It's so stinkin' fun anyways. Perfect!

Couple Valentine Dance

The 5th Ward threw their annual Valentine Social/Dance tonight. We love an excuse to get together with our last ward friends. Plus, they asked if I would come do the Photo booth again. We had a fantastic time! And have I mentioned how much I adore pictures???? LOVE it!!

Here's all the brave souls that got their pictures taken. We are stinkin' adorable, don't you think?:

Here's ones that Brett & I did:

And here's a fun group shot we got to be involved in. I love these people! Fun times!!!

P.S. At the tables, they had games set up for people to play. 

Look at the Valentine that Ross made for Janet. How cute is that?? 

Sampson's Valentine Party

We have some new friends that just recently moved into town. Glory & Sampson hit it off right away. So when Sampson planned a party for his new school friends, he also invited Glory to come down. She was super shy at first but ended up having a fantastic time. It was such a cute little party!

Hailey and I are made out of the same mold when it comes to Holidays and party planning. (I know... who knew there was someone else as fun & crazy as me. LOL)  She had soooo much food and it was FANCY not to mention delicious! She had lots of adorable airplane treats as well. She way outdid herself! She played Hot Heart with them downstairs. {The Valentine version of hot potato} She let them decorate airplane cookies. They made paper airplanes and tried to fly them off the deck. What a fabulous party! Thanks Seedalls for inviting Glory to be a part of your special day!

After the party, when everyone left- Sampson showed Glory his fort. They have such a great time together!

What a LOVEly Family!

We've had a love-ly time leading up to Valentines in our family.

The kids always LOVE the Mailbox Treats that are left for them each day! 

The younger girls enjoyed their School Parties. Victoria LOVED the Owl Box to collect all her Valentines. It turned out super cute!

The girls wanted to help decorate our home with more LOVE so they Heart Attack- ed their room.

To show my LOVE- I got up early and made a special Valentine Breakfast for the family. I made red-velvet-heart pancakes with raspberries and whip cream, eggs, and bacon. Yum! We even made it a candle light meal.

The kids made a special Treasure Hunt for him to find his Valentine treats with things written on them that we LOVE about him.

 I am so in LOVE with Brett! He is such a thoughtful, romantic man! He made this Heart Candy Dish from wood for me and wrote me a poem.

 A whole lotta LOVE was sent in Packages & Letters from the Grandparents. Thanks everyone! We LOVED them!

And to top it all off, Brett made us a Candle Light Dinner and some Fancy Desserts. Man, we LOVE it when he cooks. He's amazing!

I have such a LOVE-ly family!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Great Dalmuti

We got to hang out with the Fife Family for games tonight. They have this great game called The Great Dalmuti and some AMAZING hats to go along with the fun! I so want to get some for our home. 

Let's just say that Shay spent a whole lot of the night dressed up as the Lesser Peon. Shoot! LOL 

The younger kids disappeared and played Yu-Gi-Oh and Wii games. Fun for all!

P.S. The teenage girls spent some time locked out on the roof. Oh my! These girls are gonna be so much fun as they get more independent! ;) Wish us luck!

8th Grade Ski Trip

Liberty went on a 8th Grade Ski Trip today. She is really taking to the slops and loves it!
The weather has been warm and they were worried there wouldn't be enough snow for them to enjoy the day.
But luckily it worked out.
At some point, we may need to become a Skiing Family! ;)

3rd Grade Valentine Craft

One of the perks of being a stay-at-home mom is that fact that I get to eat lunch and volunteer every Tuesday with the little girls at school. The girls have the same lunch time so it works out great!  They love it when I come. I also rotate weeks to help out in Victoria's class twice a month. On the other weeks, I am in Glory's class. I love doing things for their teachers and also being able to meet their friends. {Side note: Last week, I made 3906 copies for the 3rd grade teachers. Holy Tree Killer, Batman! LOL}
Last week when I was volunteering, Mrs. Sharbono- Victoria's teacher- asked if I had any brilliant, inexpensive ideas for a Valentine craft to do with the kids. Since I have been collecting TP rolls for a couple months- I did a little research and came up with these super cute Valentine animals to make. So fun! I went in today to make them with the class. They are all so creative and every one came out different. I love it! Happy Valentines!

How much Water?

Justice won 1st place in his 6th Grade Science Fair.

He did his Science Project with Kidney beans that we sprouted. He wanted to test if  the amount of water made a difference in how well it would grow. 

Every other day he would water his plants.

Plant A- 1/4 c water

Plant B- 1/2 C. water

Plant C- 3/4 C. water

Every day he would record what was happening to the plants. Pretty quickly we could see a difference in their growth. Plant A always seemed too dry. Plant B definitely grew the fastest. Plant C got water-logged pretty badly. We had to add a bowl to catch all the excess water.  It was fun to watch them. 

December 30th

Jan 2nd

 Jan 15th

February 6th

The flower buds were cool to see:

The bean pods got to be over 5 inches long:

And with the excess water in Plant C- it mutated it's roots to try to compensate. Crazy!

Now he is onto Regionals in Butte. We'll see how that goes. Great job, Justice!





P.S. So.... once Justice's school had their Science Fair- I stopped bugging him about watering them and keeping track. Unfortunately that meant that he didn't water or keep track. ;) Oh kids without their mother!! ;)  It only took a couple of days and his once beautimus plants started to turn yellow and shrivel. Oops! Hopefully we can revive them some before the Regional Science Fair but they're looking pretty sad. Well... except Plant C that has been thriving on it's excess water! LOL

When Life Gives You....

Make Electricity

Liberty and her friend Shannon did their Science Fair Project together. They tried to make a Lemon battery to run a light bulb but it never quite worked out. So instead their tested the voltage of different types of lemons. It was interesting and a titch dangerous. LOL {For your own safety, we recommend that you do not FRY a lemon}

Beware of the Dragon

Victoria has been busy doing research and working up an insect report on the Dragonfly. She had to hand-write it all in cursive. She did a great job! (And may have had a bit of help from her mommy as it was super late Saturday night when she finished it up so she could keep the Sabbath Day Holy ;)
She even presented it as an oral report on Monday as well. Mom got to come see her in class. Way to go Sis!
Here's her poster- Beware of the Dragonfly:

No TV/Screen Week

Our family participated in a No TV/Screen week. Monday through Sunday they could only use screened things for basic homework. At first, I thought it would be impossible for us but it turned out to be a really great week! Everyone got along. They had lots of playdates. They played outside. They played card games. They cleaned the house. And the week flew by.

On Monday of the next week- the kids turned in their sheets and got tickets to place in a drawing for prizes. Justice won a Gift Certificate to go bowling. Victoria won some Sand Art. All of them got to pick out a free magnet, bookmark and a new book to read. What a fun way to spend our time!

Primary Scones

January flew by so fast with "Christmas Recovery" mode & then a flu bug that the whole month felt like an anti-social month. [inert sad face] The kids have been buggin' us that we haven't been doing our Sunday Scone night. I have missed having people over. And I'm a little bummed that hardly anyone got to see how cute my house was decorated. Bummer! 

Tonight we got on the ball and invited over the Primary Presidency (including the darling music people) & their families. We see each other every week but it was so great to just hang out! Fun people! I adore them. {The boys went out to play on the tramp and I never got a picture of them. Oops!}

We are almost finished with our Primary Bulletin Board at Church. I have been taking pictures of all of us for weeks. Then making them look like Polaroid photos on my scrapbook program and adding names. It turned out so fun! I love that we get to see all the awesome people we have in our Primary in one place. Plus it is extra helpful as some of my Presidency learns the names of all the kiddos. I love pictures!!!! (Below) Here's the picture we took of our Presidency. We giggle every time we see it because of our drastic height difference. LOL Granted that I had to sink down a bit to hold the door open with my foot but it made for a pretty awesome picture. I love these ladies!!

LOVE-ly Decorations

I cannot believe that February is already here! Where in the world did January go? 

We did get all the January decor put away this week. 

And decorated with our LOVE-ly Valentine decor. 

I LOVE it!!!

Guymon Girlfriend Temple trip

Liberty's good friend, Katelynn just turned 12. For her birthday, she told her mom that she wanted to go do Baptisms for the Dead at the Billings Temple. AND she wanted Liberty to go with her. How special is that!?! Kaysie (Katelynn's mom) invited Liberty and me to make it a Girl's weekend.We had such a fun time!!!!
We got the girls out of school and took off Friday after lunch. Once we got down to Billings, our first stop was the Temple. It worked out perfect because they had a group of youth from Cody there already. The girls just joined them and got in right away. A member of the Temple Presidency took us aside and spoke to the girls about feeling the Spirit in the Temple. It was so kind of him to take an interest in our beautiful girls. It was so fun to watch the girls participate in the Temple. I am one lucky mom to have such a special, sacred opportunity to share moments like this with Liberty. Both girls didn't want to leave because of how peaceful they felt. I hope Liberty always remembers moments like this and continues in her desire to be at the Temple often.

Then, we took the girls to Barnes & Noble. They are both CRAZY readers so they were in heaven! Katelynn almost had her book done by the time we made it to dinner. During the rest of the trip, she read it a total of four times. See? CRAZY readers these girls are!!! Liberty was in a Sherlock Holmes mood and came home with some S.H. books that she's in love with!

We ate dinner... ok we STUFFED ourselves at Texas Roadhouse. It was so delicious!!! The joke for the weekend started here because Liberty confiscated ALLL the sugar packets they had at the table and anywhere else we went this weekend. Sugar Freak!! And Katelynn pretty much opened her mouth in every picture we took. These girls crack us up! They are two peas in a pod!

We headed to our hotel for the night. The girls read, swam, ate popcorn & hot cocoa and stayed up until wee hours of the morning!!! The alarm clock went off way too early for these late sleepers. LOL We did drag them out of bed for some breakfast though. It was yummy even if they were pretty much Zombies and a little short with their manners. ;)  

After packing up and checking out, we went shopping at Kohl's and then dropped the girls off to the Big Horn Waterpark. We were glad there was lifeguards because we weren't exactly sure if the girls would fall asleep and drowned somewhere while we were gone. LOL Despite the lack of sleep they were feeling, they had a blast!! But when we picked them up they were so zoned out we had to laugh. Oh, the price teenagers pay for late night partying! ;)

While the girls swam, Kaysie and I went and did a session at the Temple. It has been a very, very long time since I have done a session so it was extra special. I so needed to be there! How fun to be in the Temple and with good friends. Loved it! When we came out, it had snowed. It made the Temple grounds quite glorious! But it was so freezin' cold! Brrrrrr! Luckily, we picked up the girls and headed out so we could drive most of the way back with some daylight still left. We drove slow but got home safe.

What an amazing weekend! Thanks Guymon girls for including us on your special day. We luv you ladies! Happy Birthday Katelynn!

6th Grade Snowshoeing Trip

Justice got to do a SnowShoe Trip with school today. He said they had a great time. They learned to make a fire and then went on the trails in their snowshoes.