My days started out as a normal day. Then Paul surprised me at school with flowers and a piece of cake. Looks delicious, but it has walnuts in it, so Paul and Eli enjoyed it when we got home.
Dinner was provided by Olive Garden. Can’t go wrong with asiago cheese filled pasta with alfredo sauce. Eli agreed as well.
Sunday Paul made us breakfast.
Donut pancakes.
This was something new and fun.
That evening my parents came over for dinner. Paul grilled salmon burgers and they were absolutely wonderful!
Dessert? Again, still working on it. The cake part this time turned out great so that recipe is a keeper. The frosting tasted great, but didn’t stiffen enough for piping so we will have to change up the icing a bit. The new piping tip was quite fun to use though!
But, first some spring skiing. I think this will be the last trip because the valley is heating up and the snow is melting fast. Paul and Eli had the mountain to themselves. Skiing in jackets is also nice.
Yup. That’s our boy 🙂
The sign of spring. Tulips! We brought these tulips home from Holland 16 years ago and they are still blooming. We have lost the Daffy Duck tulips and a few other special kinds, due to not separating them, but they are still doing well.
In our next yard we will order fresh tulips from Holland and make sure we take care of those. But we really enjoy our tulips because they look different and bloom a month earlier than the rest of the neighborhood.
The other day Paul stopped in the Bountiful store to see how it looks. Same machine but different front. Same everything. In the back, the same mop bucket in the same place along the side wall. Waiting to mop up the same water that leak from under the wall from next door.
Oh, my heart hurts thinking about all the work it took to keep these stores running. I don’t miss cleaning this ice machine!
Oh, the memories. This was a fun store to own and I enjoyed it. I learned a lot and will always value that. What is funny is the fan by the back table is still off. For 10 years I turned off that fan because a regular came in everyday for lunch. The fan created a draft so if the fan wasn’t turned off, he would turn it off. For 10 years every month when we saw our field consultant pull into the parking lot, one of my employees would dash across the restaurant and turn the fan back on so we wouldn’t be marked out of compliance. When our field consultant left, we would turn it off again. 🙂 Oh, I’m SO glad we sold. I don’t miss the games we had to play.
I am grateful to sell the stores and have the opportunity to be at school with Eli. He wrote this on my board in my room. I love that boy. He has a kind personality and is always thinking of others.
For school, Eli has to read a paragraph everyday and he is timed how fast he can read it. To get how many words he can read a minute. This morning I asked him to read like any other morning. This is how he read it.
I’m not sure where he gets his humor from.
but I’m sure it has something to do with Aaron 🙂
I love that Eli has so many great influences around him.
Eight years ago we were sealed as a family in the Salt Lake temple.
Today our eight year old chose which temple he wanted to go to.
I surprised Eli with a fun breakfast. Another day of celebration so I was at it again, trying to make a cake that is edible. Eli has been asking for a strawberry cake since his birthday, so for his special day I had to try. Again. 🙂 I put crushed dehydrated strawberries in the vanilla frosting. It tasted like strawberries! Although no one wanted seconds on the cake, I thought it worked out, ha!
Eli woke up to a fun table. I tried to find lots of fun decorations that were bright and glittery.
I quickly put cinnamon rolls in the oven.
Made fruit parfaits.
And blended a raspberry smoothie.
Perfect! Eli loved it! He also loved the flashy pinwheel in the center of the table.
After breakfast we jumped in the jeep and went to a movie. Eli wanted to see the Mario Brothers movie. I was pleasantly surprised. It was entertaining and I had a LOT of fun watching Eli sit at the end of his seat, giggling at everything.
After the movie Eli opened his gift. Our little fish LOVED his gift. With the Easter Bunny giving him fins, and getting a mask and snorkel, he is ready for the pool this summer. He drove like this to lunch 🙂
We went to Longhorn Steakhouse for mac n cheese.
After lunch we stopped at Culvers for cookie dough ice cream.
We had a wonderful day celebrating his day. We also ate all of Eli’s favorite foods. ALL. DAY. I’m so grateful to be the mother of this wonderful boy. It’s a blessing to have him in our family!
We don’t know where he get is. Did we teach him to be kind hearted? We think he came that way.
I’m embarrassed to say that a few weeks ago, I noticed Paul packing Eli’s lunch. Paul never packs lunches so I glanced in to see what he left. He wrote Eli a note. A note? Oh, I was quite upset. I’m the one who leaves the notes. With all the work I do for everyone, Eli gets one and I don’t? I left that morning quite upset. I continued to be upset all morning.
That afternoon, I visited Eli for lunch and I didn’t see Paul’s note. I asked Eli if he got it and read it. He said he did and he wrote back to Paul, and put the note in his backpack to give to Paul when we got home. That was so sweet of Eli. I now was upset with myself!
On the way back to my room, all I could think about was how my sweet little boy was thinking of others and I was too busy being selfish and thinking about myself. Instead of getting upset about not getting a note, I should have thought about Paul and slipped him a note.
When I got to my room and opened my lunch I saw this note. Paul and Eli wrote to me and slipped it in my lunch without me noticing. I’m terrible. I was so upset ALL morning for nothing. I need to learn from Eli and have his positive attitude and kind spirit at all times.
We started out the weekend with an Easter egg hunt. We have NEVER participated in a city egg hunt, or any city activity. We didn’t know what to expect. We arrived on time without a bag or anything to gather eggs in. I keep my car clean, even McGyver wouldn’t have been able to get us out of this conundrum.
Turned out the hunt was delayed by an hour. An hour! I wanted to leave, Eli wanted to stay, so we stayed. Apparently we didn’t get the memo, because an hour later, the entire city showed up ready to go. Is this a Utah thing to be late? Not sure. I know that this will be our last city Easter egg hunt.
We walked around. For and hour. An hour. During our hour 🙂 Paul spotted a bag from some boxes the workers were unloading. Works for me!! We are now set. The hunt finally started and lasted 2.5 minutes. 🙂
Look what Eli did. He is so funny! He put my egg in this egg feet thingy. I would never have thought of that! 🙂 He is so cute, we would live a boring life without him.
Easter morning, Eli found all of our baskets.
Eli tried on his fins. He is so excited for this summer.
Breakfast.
We needed something quick due to church starting early. Donuts and peeps that no one ate. I don’t know why I purchase these. I guess just for the looks. Every table needs a marshmallow chick.
Fruit and cream.
Strawberry parfaits.
Still wearing his fins 🙂
As we were packing the car to head out, Eli really wanted to bring his snow cone maker. The little kids had a great time making cones for everyone.
Today is a beautiful day to spend in the mountains.
Paul and Eli took the day off and went skiing. Looks like everyone had the same idea. You have to get up early if you want to go. They tried to go yesterday, but they couldn’t find a parking spot so they had to turn around and come back home.
Paul wanted to show me the layers of snow and the icicles of death.
I’m so glad Eli likes to go skiing.
On their way home, Paul took a picture of someone’s driveway. How did they shovel that?
He’s becoming a good little skier.
I don’t know how Paul can film and remain standing at the same time. 🙂
Paul and Eli spent the day to check out all the snow we received in the last week.
Normal ride, right?
It’s hard to see how deep the snow is. The trees look like they are only in a foot of snow.
Then you come to a sign and get a feel for how deep the snow really is.
He cracks me up!
The rivers are going to be roaring this spring.
Stopping for a snack.
Traveling higher up the mountain. It’s getting deeper.
Snowshoeing is needed for today’s ride. During the summer months, Paul has to stand on his tippy toes to see the meter. Not today. He can trip over it if he isn’t watching where he is stepping.
The layers of snow on that building is pretty fun.
A normal drive? Just how deep is it?
It’s incredible how much snow we have received in the mountains. It’s just beautiful.
First of all, what is this? How is he tall enough to touch the top of the fridge? When did this happen? He is growing up so fast!
We started out the day right with waffle balls. Paul and I haven’t had these since we were in Hong Kong. Wow! That brought back so many memories.
I have been craving cookies for the two weeks so today is the day to make them! It’s well known that I can’t make cakes, so I might as well add that I can’t make cookies either. But we had fun cutting them out.
What are these? They are supposed to be egg shaped cookies. Paul said they look like pancakes. Baking is just not my thing. 🙂
Eli said they tasted like cookies and that’s all that matters. A little over done, so we ate them fast before they went hard, ha!
Decorating is not my thing either. I’m not a Pinterest mom. I’m more of an Amazon Prime mom, and I’m okay with that. As long as Eli has memories of making cookies, eating them and having a fun time. That’s a win for me.
For lunch, avocado egg rolls with Cheesecake Factory dipping sauce. I purchased the sauce and didn’t make it, so this turned out to be a very delicious lunch! I’m not ashamed that I lack culinary skills 🙂 Next time I will season the avocado a bit with guacamole seasoning because it was a bit bland. It looks like I didn’t add any sun dried tomatoes, but I did. So I would add a few more for looks.
Ferelyn and her kids come over to the park to take advantage of snow we received over night.
You can’t have a sledding hill without a jump at the bottom of the hill. They have to make it dangerous one way or another.
The kids started making snow men. A little bigger than Eli’s man, ha!
This was heavy wet snow. Perfect for snowballs.
By the end of the day the sun was out and you would never had known it was a blizzard this morning.
