So Much Snow!! Now finally Spring!

My Organ broke beyond repair, so in order to fit the organ into the trash, we pushed it out to the driveway, and the kids took turns smashing it apart with hammers, and axes.  They all had a great time, and even helped clean it all up and dump it in the trash when we were done.  

Austin had taken Malachi outside to play in the snow, and when I looked outside Austin had drawn a heart in the snow for me, and she even helped Malachi draw a little one (Just to the left of where they are sitting)  So Sweet!

Samuel at the blue and gold banquet

Samuel helping to cut the blue and gold banquet cake with a sword

Malachi found a helmet!

Malachi loves cheese.  This is a picture of him stuffing a little pouch on Betsy's back pack full of cheese, so she can take it to school!  Such a sweet boy!

Caleb had a Dr. Seuss day at pre-school and made a "thing 2" hat.  He loves it!

Joseph and Samuel trying to see who can eat more green eggs!

Our St. Patricks day breakfast of Green Eggs and Bangers

Austin at her trash modesty fashion show at Young Womens!

So for the two weeks (end of feb, beginning march)  we have had snow I think every day.  It is cold, and I'm really ready for spring.  So the weekend of the 27th we were supposed to go with Travis to do a retreat up in Breckenridge, Colorado.  It had been snowing a lot already, but we were going to ride up with Travis and the soldiers in the vans they were using.  We were supposed to meet Travis at work at 1pm in order to drive up with him, so I spent the whole morning, packing and cleaning and getting ready to go.  Austin, Caleb, Malachi, and I got everything in the car and drove over to pick up Joseph from school.  I had called the school to pull Joseph out of class and have him waiting for me, as we pulled into the parking lot of the school, Travis sent me a text saying the trip was cancelled due to the weather.  So, I had to call the school and tell them I no longer needed to pick up Joseph and to send him back to class, and then drive back home, and unload and unpack.  Needless to say, we were all quite disappointed.
So Austin turned 12 officially on the 25th!  I can't believe she is a young woman now, she is growing up so fast.  She is very responsible, and is looking forward to babysitting for other people.  She has been babysitting for me for over a year now, but I don't pay her very much.  I posted to the Relief Society Facebook page in our ward, that she would love to start babysitting, and she got her first babysitting job, and did AWESOME!!!  She got her temple recommend this past week, so that she can go and to baptisms for the dead at the temple.
Travis told me that since I did such a good job making breakfast for 30 people for the baby shower, that he was going to have me be in charge of the breakfast for 100 people at his prayer breakfast on the 27th of this month.  So I have been busy making up the menu, and getting a price quote ready so that Travis can request the funds.  So I went to Costco, and wrote everything down that I would buy, and figured out the total, only to find out that I can't use Costco because the funds are paid with a visa credit card, and Costco only accepts american express.  So instead I had to hurry and go over to Wal-mart, and do it all over again, because Travis needed to turn in the request form that day. Anyway, I probably go to Costco way too much, because, later that day, when I was taking Joseph to the church for an activity, Malachi kept saying "Mom.....Mom.....Mom..."  after I had said "what, or yes" a couple of times he would say "Costco (well it sounded more like Coco)" and then I would say, "we're not going to Costco, we're taking Joseph to the church, and then going home"  and that point Malachi would insistently say "Costco, Costco, Costco, Costco, Costco".  He would finally stop for a moment, and then start the whole thing over saying "Mom".  He did this the entire way to and from the church.  Such a silly boy, he definitely loves going to Costco with me, maybe it's the samples.    
So I made pasta for the first time with my new pasta maker that I got for Christmas.  I made the dough, and then Caleb helped me roll the dough through the pasta maker.  We got it all rolled out and I set it on the counter to dry.  I left to pick up Betsy and Samuel from school, and Caleb stayed home with Austin.  When I got back, Caleb said "Mom!  Look at what I made for you"  while holding up a huge ball of dough.  He had grabbed all of the noodles we had just rolled out, and squished them all into a nice big ball.  I had to take a deep breath, then smiled and told him "thank you for the nice big ball, but now we need to turn it back into noodles again," so we once again rolled it all out into noodles, and let it dry.  It turned out yummy.
So one night Joseph was going up the stairs and Samuel just happened to throw a tube of chapstick down the stairs and somehow it ended up hitting Joseph right in the eye.  Poor kid, it hurt pretty bad, his pupil was a different size from his other eye, and it was really sensitive to light. after a while he went to sleep and we figured it would feel better in the morning.  Unfortunately, it did not feel better in the morning, so I got him a dr. appointment, for later that day to have it checked out.  But, for him to go to school, I quickly grabbed an old pair of black pants, and made Joseph a pirate patch!  I took him to school, where he quickly became known as patchy the pirate.  Later, I picked him up from school and took him to the dr., where the dr. determined that his eye was not seriously injured and would heal on it's own, so I took him back to school, and sure enough within a few days his eye was back to normal.  We did enjoy having Joseph as a pirate for a while though!
 So finally we have gotten some warmer weather, one day it was 80 degrees, of course the next day the high was 40, and it snowed, but at least most of the days have gotten warmer.  One day we walked to the park and played for a little while.  Betsy decided to play a game where she would bury her shoes, and Malachi and Caleb would go on a treasure hunt and find them.  Well, when it was time to leave, Betsy couldn't find her shoes.  I had to teach piano lessons soon, so we quickly looked around for her shoes, after digging around for them for 10-15 minutes, we gave up.  We had to get home quickly now, so we put Betsy in the stroller, and Samuel pushed her home, while I carried Malachi and helped Caleb go fast.  We barely made it home in time for my piano lesson.  So the next week at school, her class walked to the park for a picnic lunch, and she ended up finding her lost shoe.  She was so happy to have her shoes reunited again!  Betsy has started going to Physical Therapy for her back, and has some exercises that she needs to do every day.  The Dr. said to still keep her form physical activity for at least another month, to let her bones heal.  She will also need to do these exercises for the rest of her life.
  Austin is doing great in her online school, and has even done some babysitting during the day for a sister in the ward, and made some money.  Samuel brought home a note from his teacher the other day, saying how impressed she has been with his behavior at school for the past two weeks, and how well he is doing.  I was so happy, I made him a nice batch of sugar free fudge, which he loved.
We had a little fun for st. patricks day.  I made green eggs (made with spinach) and "bangers" (sausage) for breakfast.  Everyone loved it, and I even had to make an extra batch of the green eggs, they ate it up so fast.  For a snack we had popeye's ice cream (also made with spinach) and Irish stew, mashed potatoes and green smoothies for dinner.  I also made up a st. patricks day treasure hunt, where they had to search for the the clues, and each clue had a game or task to complete with it.  They loved it, we had to rush off to church activities, but it was still fun!
We had a family retreat that we did on Friday, at a nice place called La Foret north of Colorado Springs, it was in Black Forest so it was nice to be in the outdoors