Valentine's Day

I woke up to this little note on the table.

Hey "Baby" (Baby Ruth) Whenever you're around my heart goes "crunch" and falls into a bunch of "pieces" (Reese's Pieces heart)  So please handle me with "butterfingers" and I will be your "sweetheart" (Gummy Sweettart hearts)

 And some beautiful pink roses.

 Then that night, he surprised me with dessert.  Ice cream and berry hearts.  I was very impressed with his creativity this year :)  It's hard to believe this was our 6th Valentine's Day together!  I love him more every year! 

 Friday night we had supper at Justin & Liz's with other young couples.  

 We each had our own chocolate name cards.  I love the burlap and twine wrapped around the cup.  We also had a box of chocolate covered strawberries at our places courtesy of Victor & Hope.  They were such a treat!

 Supper was fabulous!  We had a salad and Pineapple Raspberry Whip for an appetizer and palate cleanser.  Then steak, potatoes, and green bean bundles for the meal.  It was delicious!

 And any room we had left in our stomachs, was filled with this decadent dessert.  Liz made chocolate bowls using balloons.  You just melt the chocolate and using a spoon spread a little bit on waxed paper.  Then dip your blown up balloon in the chocolate and set it on the chocolate that is already on the wax paper to hold it in place.  Once it hardens, pop the balloon and wa-lah!  You have a chocolate bowl to hold this tasty triple chocolate dessert.  With chocolate sprinkles and a chocolate heart on top.  Did I mention I LOVE chocolate?

I kinda wish I would have eaten dessert first because by the time I got to the bowl, I had to just let it go.  We were so full!  After supper we played a game of Guesstures.  We divided up into men against women.  Sadly, the men creamed us.  But that's not what matters anyway.  We made lots of memories with our friends!  And that's what counts.

P.S.  We weren't going to count the points at the end, but us ladies were so sure that we had more that we made the men count them.  Serves us right! :)  Although, no one ever actually double checked their math...

Classified Pictures

My brother's family stopped by on their way to California for vacation so I got to spend some good quality aunt time with these two cuties!  One thing Aunt Krystal needs to learn though is to always have 2 dolls in the house.  Oops!

 So one got the singing Christmas pig instead.  By the end of the weekend, Porky was the one I needed 2 of!  Jake & I are secretly hoping these batteries go dead and we will never replace them :)  I wasn't fast enough with my camera, but at one time I saw them using the bottle to feed the pig.  So cute!

 We made pink camo cupcakes on Saturday.

 With pink cupcake wrappers of course!

 Kelsey loves to help in the kitchen and did an excellent job mixing the batter.

 And of course little sister Kaley wanted to do it too!

 We divided the batter into 3 bowls and colored them accordingly.  Remember the camo cupcakes I did earlier? HERE

 It takes a lot of time, but I didn't mind.  How can you resist the excitement in their faces?

 Before baking:

 After baking:

 We frosted them and Kelsey got to put the pink sugar crystals on top.

 Don't they just look like so much fun?

 Inside:

 I tried unsuccessfully to get pictures of the men eating pretty pink princess-y cupcakes...

 Kaley really enjoyed hers!

 Kelsey did too!

 These two little girls sure know how to weasel their way into my brother-in-laws hearts...  Each one took their turn at babysitting the baby dolls while the girls played house.  They would leave them with the "babysitters" when they went grocery shopping, to the doctor, etc.

 Nathan here was told he was the "Dad" while the other boys were the kids.  Kelsey informed him he had to call her "Hon" if he needed her for something.

Now do you understand why I titled this post "Classified Pictures"???  I am sure I could get demoted from the favorite sister-in-law status in a hurry if they ever find out about this!  Oh wait!  Right now they don't have any other one to replace me with.  So, I will continue to embarrass them until I feel threatened :) 

Road Trip Activity Box

My brother's family is planning to stop through here this weekend on a family vacation to California, so I thought I would put together a road trip activity box for his 2 girls.  They are ages 4 & 2.  The first thing I did was cover a couple plain clipboards so they would have something hard to color on.

Before:

Cut the scrapbook paper to size.  Brush Mod Podge on the clip board and lay the scrapbook paper over the glued section.  Make sure there are no air bubbles.  It helps to use a ruler to smooth it over.

Then brush a coat another coat of Mod Podge over the scrapbook paper.

One for Kelsey and one for Kaley

I cut out their names in vinyl.

And stuck it on the top.

Then tied some pretty ribbon around the clip.

I found some printables online HERE

And ran them all through my laminating machine. (Your Story brand)

 All the loot...

 Twist-up crayons, pretty pens, clipboards, and laminated games

 Magnetic doll dress-up, wet wipes, Shout wipes, Frog snack container

 Curious George mega book, white-boards, dry erase markers, notepads

 magnetic go-fish, hand impression with plastic needles thing (no idea what its actually called), stickers

 Heart sticky notes, learning cards

 and glowsticks for night time traveling!

And of course, snacks!!!

Bovine Babysitting

I get a call at work on Monday morning...

Jake:  What would you say if I ruined your electric blanket?

Me: Umm... well... that depends on what you are going to ruin it for.

Jake: A $1000.00 calf.

Me:  You BETTER ruin my $40.00 electric blanket!

This was a new first for this farm wife.  I have never had a calf in my shower before, or under my electric blanket.  We named him Jack Frost because he was born on a bitter cold morning and had to fight for his life.  Jake brought him in and ran through all our hot water, dried him off, put a plastic tablecloth over him, and then put the electric blanket on him to get him to warm up.  His temp was 70 degrees when he was brought in.  Normal is 101.5.  He was near death.  Jake had to go to work that night... my new job title became bovine babysitter.  Or you could just think of it as a farm wife duty.  Whichever you prefer.

 Jake even got out my hair dryer and blow dried him in all the small crevices.

 Then he built him a place on the floor at the bottom of the stairs in our basement.  I had a big fear that Jack would decide to get up in the middle of the night and be roaming around the house, or come lick my face in bed... I am being totally honest here!  Jake assured me this would not happen and left for work.

He set up a heater on the stairs, which made me extremely nervous given the close proximity to the hay.  If the calf got up and bumped our old rickety stairs and the heater fell over, I would have a problem.  SInce this made me so nervous, Jake said I could shut the heater off if Jack's temp got over 100.  So I dutifully used a rectal thermometer every hour.  I couldn't sleep anyway for fear of the fire, so I got a lot of reading done.  I shut the heater off about 12:30am and went to bed.  Jake got home at 6:30 and his temp was 100.8 so we took him outside to Mama.  Mama Bessie decided she wasn't all that interested and Jack was too weak to stand up and Jake needed to be leaving for Salina for a conference.  Jake didn't think this calf would still be alive when I got home from work.  I left work early since I was feeling extremely bad for baby.  Jack was still alive, but his temp was back down to 94.  I couldn't get anywhere close to him with Mama in the pen so I ran her to the chute and frantically called Jake to see what I needed to do.  Milk her??? What???  So, I tried.  And I tried again.  And again.  All I got was messy hands and an upset cow.  What now?

Call the father-in-law to the rescue!  Dad came over, milked her and fed Jack.  We set up a heat lamp and warm pen for him in the milk barn.  He got up a few times on his own and we thought it was promising.  He was still good this morning.  This afternoon Dad fed her a little bit, went to finish the rest of the chores and came back to feed him a little more.  He was dead.  This is not how I imagined this story ending and I will admit I got a little teary eyed.  We had bonded over those feedings and rectal temps.  I thought maybe, just maybe I would be that great farmers wife that had a special touch with the animals.  Alas... it was not meant to be.

Sorry this got so long and I commend you if you read the entire post!  Have a blessed day!