Recent Family Activities

Last weekend we celebrated my aunt's birthday with a game of bowling. Going bowling together is a great activity for us, since we all can enjoy it!

However, my favorite moment of this bowling game was watching Austin between his turns create a dot-to-dot on his Magna-doodle. He then gave it to Great Gram to complete. I love watching his creativity...

This weekend was filled with some fun activities too. Since it has been snowing again, Friday afternoon we headed to a park with some good hills to go sledding. It was about time...we hadn't even been yet this season! Surprisingly enough, we had the area to ourselves.

And despite a wipe-out or two...

We had a really great time. I was so impressed that Austin was even brave enough to go down the hill on his own a couple times. Previously, such an idea has been out of the question.

I love how this picture turned out!

Then Saturday morning we once again headed out in the cold...this time for a hike with the Wolf Cub Scouts. Some of the boys needed to get a short mile long hike in before their birthdays. There are not as many good hiking options at this time of year, but we ended up doing the Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve Boardwalk Trail. This is probably not the best time of year to view lots of birds there, and going with a small group of noisy boys does not make for great wildlife viewing in any case. However, we did find what looked like an owl nest at the lookout tower, along with a number of owl pellets. We also spotted a Red Winged Blackbird.

Austin loves tagging along with the older boys, so he had a great time too. In fact, he always wants to be involved when we have the den meetings each week at our house. We are thinking he may have his Wolf by the time he is seven...

After the hike we returned to our cars and enjoyed some hot chocolate and doughnuts. I love having hot chocolate after outdoor winter activities!

Valentine's Day

This year I was in charge of our Valentine's Day date activity, and Nate was in charge of the dinner. We did our date the Friday before Valentine's day. Nate opted to go out for dinner instead of making something this year, so he made reservations at a restaurant, and he had flowers waiting for me at the table there when we arrived...which was very sweet of him.

Our date was partially determined by the choice of pictures Nate picked out. I had a series of pictures that were loosely associated with different date options. Nate ended up picking out a picture of a push pin...which meant we went bowling (with bowling pins). I am normally a lousy bowler. I enjoy the game, but I rarely do very well. I was therefore surprised that I scored 119 this time. I think that is possibly the highest score I have every gotten before.

After bowling, we headed to a city Valentine dance. They had a live band there playing classic old songs. There were also refreshments, raffle prizes, and photos. We enjoyed ourselves, and Nate won a car travel bag at the tail end of the event.

Of course, we spent a good deal of time on Valentine's Day delivering homemade cookie Valentines to our friends and neighbors as usual. Nate also attempted to make a fancy dessert: a chocolate mousse cake. Unfortunately, it didn't really turn out as it was supposed to. The mousse never set up, but it still tasted good even if it did look messy.

Before taking the unset top layers out of the pan

After taking the unset top layers out of the pan