Valentines Day

 Per usual we celebrated Valentines Day with a surplus of festive food.  The cookies above were for Katelyn's class party.  There are a whole bunch of parents in Katelyn's class that like to plan parties so I opt to do other types of projects with them and volunteer to bring what they need for parties.

 We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast to start on day off on a sugar high.  I made one that was a large heart and the rest were individual hearts.  You couldn't see the cuteness of the individual hearts once the pink frosting went on, but they were delicious all the same.

 For lunch I packed the girls a decorate your own cookie kit, a heart shaped pb&j sandwich, arrow pepperoni and cheese snacks, apples, and yogurt with strawberries.

 For dinner we had heart shaped pizzas and valentines jello.  The jello was a flop.  See the picture of how it was supposed to look below.  Our fancy drink was raspberry sherbet with 7-up over the top.

Happy Valentines Day to us!

Ridge During the Day

 While the girls are away, Ridge loves to play.  Legos, swords, tractors, trains, dirt, or anything else you can think of.  He always asks to get his picture taken, sometimes in creative ways.  I love that Ridge is still at home with me all day.

Ridge Turns 4!

 4 feels really old.  It felt old when Kyleigh reached 4.  It felt older when Katelyn hit it.  Now Ridge?  I can't believe it!  Like it or not, I don't have a choice and I do have a job, to make it special.  Rusty woke Ridge up in the morning so we could have breakfast before he and the girls needed to leave.  Rusty was singing happy birthday and dancing around.  Ridge told him, "ok, ok, settle down."  It was pretty funny.  We started the day with pancake men, as usual.  You will notice Mr. Pig is in the first picture.  Four might be old, but not too old for Mr. Pig.
Ridge had preschool at Holly's that morning.  Holly had her house all decorated for him and they even had "preschool presents" to celebrate.  Ridge wanted whale cupcakes to take for a treat.  We did our best at whale cupcakes.
Daddy came home to have lunch with Ridge on his birthday.  We all went to the school to watch Kyleigh in her class' play about Abraham Lincoln.  She did great.  After that Russ went back to work and I took Ridge to Pojos for the afternoon.  I have never taken him there alone.  He loved being able to decide how to use all the tokens and spend all the tickets himself.
We came home and worked on his birthday cake.  He wanted a John Deere tractor.  I was super nervous about this because Ridge gets very specific ideas in his mind about how things should look.  We had looked at pictures online and he had named features of several of them that he wanted on his tractor.  These included a trailer with strawberries, a tall "horn thing" in the front, and donut tires.  I kind of regretted letting him see the pictures because there are people out there that make really fancy cakes and I am not one of them.  I put his cake together using two loaf size pans with a cake mix in each one.  The bottom of the tractor is one loaf pan and the top and trailer are the other loaf pan split in two.  The sides of the trailer are kitkat bars and we did find some strawberries and donuts to complete the look.  When Ridge was a tiny baby I bought plastic hard hats and inflatable hammers at a garage sale.  I stuck them in the party box knowing they would come in handy some day.  I labeled the hats with everybody's name in the front.  On the back of Layton Construction hats everyone has the number of years they have worked for Layton.  I put everybody's age on the back of our party hats.  Kyleigh and Katelyn decorated with streamers.  They love doing that because they get to throw the streamers across the top of the room from rail to rail.  Ridge wanted spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner with lots of cake and ice cream for dessert.  He got just what he wanted with donuts and kitkat bars to top it off.
For his birthday we gave him a "worker bench" with tools so he can really hammer and screw things together.  He also got a giant Santa from Mike and Holly and the girls which he was pretty excited about.  He loved all of the gifts he was sent.
Happy fourth birthday to our Ridger-Man!  We love you!!!

Snow Saturday

 Daddy and the kids spent a Saturday building a giant snowman and a snow fort.  The snowman lasted for a couple of weeks.  The kids had a good time guessing how long it would last.  For it's last day or so it looked like an eagle sitting all alone in the yard.

Valentine Kickoff

 We were feeling a little let down with the Christmas Holidays being over.  I came up with a remedy in the form of a Valentine's Day kickoff party.  The kids each made a valentines mail envelope that tied around the back of our dining room chairs.  There was only enough fabric left for one more so Rusty and I shared one.  I had the envelopes all made and the kids cut out hearts and glued them on to decorate them.  I had also made a huge heart sugar cookie that we decorated with frosting and Rusty read the kids some of our valentines day books.  The kids spent the next month coming up with roses are red poems to put in each others envelopes and everybody forgot that Christmas was over.  Except Ridge.  We still listen to Christmas music every. single. day.

Rainbow Loom Creations

Kyleigh spent one Sunday afternoon working on her rainbow loom.  She got on youtube and found all kinds of instructional videos on how to make charms.  She made a candy corn, candy cane, and a fish.  She then decided to make a pair of shoes.  The shoe part is made of cardboard and duct tape, and the straps are from the rainbow loom.  Pretty creative.

Lego Creation

This lego creation is by Ridge and Katelyn.  It is a firehouse that can host fashion shows.