Happy St. Patty's Day!

Ever since I was little, the leprechauns have been visiting my house on St. Patrick's Day eve and magically turning all the sugar in our sugar bowl into candy. It's nice to know that even though I'm all grown up they have continued on with the tradition for my kids as well. Breckyn and Kaden were so excited, they have been asking me for over a week if it's the night the 'lepercans' are coming, so last night when the time was finally here they made sure that our sugar bowl was filled to the brim (they can make more candy that way).

Kaden said they were using their "magic" to turn the sugar into candy. Also, I promise my kids do actually have a drawer full of cute PJ's but for some reason Kade likes to wear ONLY bottoms and Breckyn has an addiction to her Dad's T-shirts...



Those sneaky little Leprechauns not only left us a nice stash of candy but they turned our milk green! (Which the kids thought was hilarious)



My crazy little munchkins... plus 1 cousin. The little ones ran around all afternoon trying to find the Leprechuans.




I came across this cute little Irish saying:
“May your thoughts be as glad as the shamrocks. May your heart be as light as a song. May each day bring you bright, happy hours. That stay with you all the year long.”
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Sun, Sand and...AIrplanes? Oh my!

The day we stopped at St. Maarten we really just wanted some good, relaxing beach time, so Mont did a little google search and located "St. Maarten's best kept secret" Sunset Beach. That's pretty much all we had to go on but we thought, hey let's try it. We located a taxi driver who-after some discussion-figured out where we wanted to go, and we started off on our journey. After a looong, 45 minute drive through I think every town in St. Maarten we drive up to the beach greeted by this sign:

And then a big ole airplane flew right over us and landed. The beach is literally directly behind the airport landing strip. Dusty and Mont had huge grins and could hardly contain their excitement while Britt and I were like, "I don't think so(Z snap)" and asked our driver if there was another beach close by. Of course not! The next beach is another 45 minutes away. So, to the boys delight we stayed at Airport... oh, I mean, Sunset Beach. We set up our stuff in the only uncrowded part of the beach and started to soak up the sun. A very nice lady then came over and told us that we were directly in the line of fire when the planes take off (which would explain why no one else was set up there) and that we and all of our stuff would get blown down the beach into the water So we picked up and moved over to the side. A little while later we were all hanging out in the water when we heard a jet plane moving onto the runway getting ready to take off. We looked at the guys and told them to hurry and go move our stuff over some more just in case it might still be in the way. For some reason we were just concerned about what was on the beach, Britt and I weren't thinking of what happens in the water when the plane takes off... So, anyway, we are just hanging out in the water, waiting for the plane to take off, when a great big wave comes into the shore and just takes Brittany down. It rolled her around a bit and when she finally popped up we were so caught up in the hilarity of the moment that we completely forgot about the plane. Apparently Dusty and Mont were yelling at us to get out of the water but we couldn't hear them over our laughing and the plane's engine. So, while Britt and I are in the middle of giggling about the wave we are completely slammed, and I mean SLAMMED, with sand. I have to admit that I felt a little bit panicked. You couldn't see and you really couldn't move and it HURT! Britt just kept grabbing onto me which was making me more nervous because I was like, "Is she okay? Is she drowning?"(she really just didn't want us to get separated). We tried to swim out of the way but that was impossible. Britt definitely was thinking more than I was because she kept going under water so that the sand wasn't hitting her while I kept my head above the water the whole time... I had some really cute sunglasses that I didn't want to lose... When it was finally over and Britt surfaced she got a kick out of my sandblasted face. There was like an inch of sand covering all my hair and the side of my face. I really wish we would have taken a picture. Anyway, here is the video the guys took of the plane taking off and you get a little glimpse of Britt and I in the water getting pummeled by the sand. And just as a side note, I lost my glasses. Boo.

My favorite bet loss ever!

Our cruise was very eventful and we have plenty of stories to share so I think I'm going to have to post it in installments. This first video has got to be my favorite bet loss ever. We were playing cards with Britt and Mont a couple of weeks ago and since we don't play with money we always have a bet attached to the game. The loser has to own up on the bet. This bet was that the loser had to wear a swimsuit of our (the other players) choice while playing miniature golf on our upcoming cruise. Well, Mont was the lucky loser so he had a few weeks to dread the event while Dusty and I had a great time shopping for the lamest speedo we could find. On our cruise the weather was not cooperating, it was cold and windy on our days at sea, so instead of playing golf, Mont got to strut his stuff down the promenade of the ship. The promenade is like the "mall" part of the ship, so everyone is pretty much in normal clothes, no swimsuits, which made Mont stand out even more. It was hilarious! SOOO much better than golf would have been! He was quite the spectacle. Everyone was staring and laughing and I think one group asked him if he'd had too much to drink already. You'll see him pass some older ladies getting a make-over and Brittany heard one of them say, "I think he looks cute in his little swimsuit." I think this may have backfired though because Mont seemed to get pretty comfortable in that speedo. I sure hope he doesn't show up in it the next time we take them to Bear Lake!

Sorry! If you didn't get to see the video it's too late now. But here's a picture.

SIt...

We babysat my brother's kids over the weekend and my niece is terrified of our dog. If Mia even looks in her direction she freaks, so I was a little worried what the weekend had in store for us. Well, as you can see by this video, it just took a little time for my niece to warm up to Mia.

Mia was fascinated with baby J, who was equally as fascinated with her. She wanted to be everywhere he was, and she was always keeping her eye on him. When my brother came to pick his kids up, she would strategically place herself between my brother and baby J., like she had to protect him from his dad or something. When Landon picked up J. she locked her eyes on him and followed him everywhere he went... I think she made Landon a little bit nervous. Well, that's not hard since he's the only one left in his family that's still scared of her. :)

I love Mommy the most!

Dusty and Kaden were talking the other day and Kaden told him that he loves me more than Dusty. He said, "Dad I love you 500 and I love mom 600" Yes! And then a couple seconds later he said, "But I love Mia (our dog) a million." Ah dang.

Bear Lake Chocolate Festival

The Florence clan all went up to Bear Lake over Valentine's weekend for their Chocolate Festival. We had never been before but we LOVE chocolate so it sounded like a great way to spend the weekend. Well, when you hear 'Chocolate Festival' you would probably think that it would be a festival all about chocolate, right? Wrong. There was a table or two of chocolate stuff and then the rest was just your run of the mill boutique fair; purses, jewelry, various crafts, etc... We were a little disappointed but that didn't keep us from getting our fill of chocolate!



We had read in the paper that... um, crap... I can't remember the name of the city in Idaho...Paris, maybe?... anyway, a city in Idaho at the other end of the lake was hosting an ice sculpture contest so we thought it would be neat to go check it out. It was about a 45 minute drive and when we got there we all started laughing (in our cars, where no one could hear us) because I guess we were expecting something different than this...

Now that's not to say that whoever did these didn't work hard and do a good job, but it certainly wasn't worth a 45 minute drive.
After the ice sculpture, my brother Landon really wanted to check out a frozen waterfall to see if it would be good for ice climbing. We thought that would be a cool sight, so we all drove up the mountain... to look at a pretty small waterfall. We actually drove past it and then a couple miles down the road stopped and said, "Wait, was that it?"

So, after spending the weekend driving around looking at stuff that really wasn't much to look at (don't get me wrong, we still had a great time) we got to celebrate Valentine's Day. The kids all wrote little notes to Grandma and Grandpa and then we decorated their door when they left to church so they would be surprised when they got home. (We all went to church btw, they just left before us)

It's a tradition at our house to have a special breakfast on Valentine's morning. We decorate the table with rose petals and candles and flowers and then we eat heart shaped waffles with strawberries, chocolate syrup, whipped cream and sprinkles. So, we brought the tradition up to the lake and had our special breakfast with everyone! Well, it was actually lunch because we ate it after church. Happy Valentine's Day!

Park CIty Ski Trip

A few months ago we gave the kids a choice for our family vacation. They could pick between Disneyland or a ski vacation and to my surprise they picked skiing. So, we joined up with our good family friends the Lewis' and rented an awesome house in Midway and spent a few days skiing at Park City. We had a blast! The kids are learning to ski so fast, Mady even went down a black diamond run... it scared the crap out of her but she did great! The little kids are fearless, they just cruise down the mountain and I think everyone's skills have bypassed Brittany's and mine. We've decided that we are too old to learn how to ski, we watched some footage of us and laughed our heads off because we look like two grandmas going down the slopes.





We didn't just ski the whole time. There was plenty to do at the house. We had a pool tournament, played various card games, and we played air hockey. One day we took the family tubing at Soldier Hollow. That was soooo much fun. It's great to go flying down the hill and then not have to walk back up it, they have a rope tow that just pulls you back up the hill on your tube.





We also went to look at the 'ice castle' in midway. It was pretty cool... literally.




During our down time at the house the kids got a little crazy sometimes...



They loved hanging out in the hot tub. Especially when it was snowing.



The theater room in the house was awesome! We watched plenty of movies in here and all the guys were excited to watch the Super Bowl on the 'big' screen (when we finally got it to work anyway). Everyone was cheering for the Colts so I decided to make things interesting by cheering for the Saints. Turns out that was a good choice!



The kids just couldn't get enough of the snow, so even when we weren't skiing you could find them outside playing in it.



We can't be at Park City without eating at Baja Cantina and after all that playing there's noth'in like a delicious meal that I didn't have to cook or clean up!