End of February

Taylor and I always enjoy finding fun ways for the scouts to pass off their badges.  To get part of their Adventure in Science badge, we taught them some fun chemistry.

Elephant toothpaste!

 I wish I didn't have to blur their faces, because their smiles are really adorable.

Here they are gathered around to feel the heat come off the reaction.

We usually have just 5-6 Webelos, but we combined with the Wolf pack since their leaders are new.

Here's one of our Webelos with the dry ice experiment.

And Taylor and I had fun trying and creating some new recipes with sweet potatoes.

Beef and sweet potato pepper chili.  It was really sweet and savory!

Frying up some sweet potato chips!

Honey seared salmon on sweet potato, lima beans, and corn!

In other exciting news, we got a new table that won't rip up our clothes anymore!

We tried so hard to deal with our table and kept sanding down the rough edges, but after one of the chairs ruined my favorite shirt twice...I told Taylor we were getting a new table!  I figured it'd be cheaper in the long run than having to keep buying new outfits for us...

To fit the table in the car, Taylor had to sit up close and personal to the dashboard.  Haha!

New table!  It's always exciting and satisfying when we save up for something and buy it on a good deal!

The Colonel loves his new stand!  (He's pretty sure the table is all his, so we have to get his permission to eat dinner on it.)

We had a good time celebrating my Mom's birthday.  It was nice to visit with them since they came back from California for the weekend.

And I hurt my finger Wednesday night, so I've been wrapping it up.

Thankful for coban while at work.

And we had fun making Easter eggs with the Drake family!

Tay had to fill it with both peanut butter and nutella filling, mixed with m&ms. 

So much was inside the egg, it didn't close right and had to have more chocolate poured on top to seal it. 

5 pounds never looked so...disgusting...and amazing...or gave you so many mixed feelings about whether it was delicious or not...I don't know...I'm still confused...

Couldn't wait to eat it!

2016 Valentines

For Valentines Day, Taylor got me a bouquet of wooden shaved roses.

Because they last a long time, like his love for me...awww!

Then he took me to Painting with a Twist!

You sit side by side and each have a canvas that you paint.  Once you finish painting, you put them side by side to get the whole picture.

The beginning of the painting.

Adding the finishing touches on our painting.

Lot of paint everywhere!

In this pic, I'm fast-drying the painting so we can continue with the next set of colors (we only had 2 hours to finish it).

Finally done!

You make my painting complete....

We've also had fun trying new recipes this week, and putting on the Blue and Gold Banquet for the Cub Scouts.

We had a lot of badges to give to our boys and it was really fun!  We always enjoy seeing them shine.  It's also amazing at how much they've learned from us.  When we gave each boy his badges, we asked him to share something he had fun doing to get the badges, and their answers were super detailed.  One of the boys went step-by-step through the first responder aid protocol....almost without a breath! Haha!

And it's finally getting warm and not smoggy!  Valentines weekend was a bummer because the air was the worst I've ever seen it!  You couldn't see 20 feet in front of you sometimes because it was smoggy-fog.  Just being outside for a few minutes hurt my lungs and chest constantly, so I wasn't in the best mood.  Even Taylor had a hard time breathing and he doesn't have asthma!

I took Tannin out to see the other side of the window she's always perched on when inside the house.

I think she was a little confused at first....

"Is that....Is that you, my friend?"

She liked the sunshine and fresh air though!

But she got super scared when people started walking by, so she tried to hide into the wall.  Haha!

Tannin also decided she needed to lose some of her winter weight and asked Dad to teach her pilates.

"How hard can it be if I've watched Mom and Dad do it 50 times??"

 Because we didn't really get to go outside for Valentines Day, we spent this weekend walking around Murray Park.  And then took Tannin for a walk in the hoods of our sweaters around our neighborhood.

Murray Park.

Murray Park. 

We also went to the gun range this weekend.

I decided I needed to get over my fear of loud noises and the long trigger pull of Taylor's gun.  I get so nervous with a long trigger pull that I start to close my eyes and then my shot goes too low.  So I had to practice how I would react if an assailant was coming at me and I had my gun in my pocket.  

This pic is so cool because Taylor got the bullet's trajectory in it!

 And I finally got better at aiming when I kept my eyes open to shoot!  I even went really fast as if I had to shoot an assailant multiple times so they wouldn't hurt me.  I'm proud of myself!

I'm trying to point to my target on the left of the pic to show my improvement.  Taylor's is on the right.

Feb-Brrr-Airy

We had fun teaching the scouts how to prepare a fire by making kindling:

And taught them how to make a snow fort if they were stranded in the cold:

 All the boys fit into the snow burrow quite nicely:

Unfortunately, the "big kid" leader was too big:

The finished snow fort:

We also had a fire to roast snickers over.  We taught the boys how to start the fire using flint and steel and had them try it....which meant Taylor had to start the fire using flint and steel... ;)

Sparks!

The boys's commentary in this video is hilarious as Taylor is trying to start the fire.

All roasting snickers around the camp fire.

And even with a hatchet, a fire, and knives, and skewers to roast snickers, none of the boys got hurt!

Unfortunately, as I was putting everything away inside the house afterwards, the knife i brought (with a sheave!) fell on my hand, and as it fell the sheaf came off...

Glad it finally stopped bleeding!

Also, we took a stroll down memory lane as

Taylor pretended to be a teen again, calling me on the church phone during his brother's wedding...

Phone wire twirl and everything ;)

And seems like every other day it's snowing...but at least these snow flakes were cute!

Luckily, my dad gave us his spinner bike!  So we can get our heart rate up while staying warm inside!

Poor Tannin just has to look out the window at everything she's missing since the cold would hurt and kill her pretty fast.

 Seriously, she's adorable.

Speaking of adorable...

Tannin ALWAYS has to sleep on her hammock each night.  She's a creature of habit.  The unfortunate part is that the hammock sometimes falls...while she's sleeping on it...Haha! She won't sleep anywhere else, even if it's on the ground. Taylor and I couldn't stop laughing because Tannin refused to get off the hammock, she just laid there dejected.  (Don't worry--we fixed it after the picture and Tannin was happy to have it back up.)

And Michelle made these super cute baby face cupcakes for a cousin's baby shower.