A Valentine's Week

Valentine's Day was quite the holiday for us this year. We always like to do some decorating and fun things for holidays, but this year we had a whole week of fun! The weekend before Valentines we had our first party to honor the day of love. This is a tradition that we had as I was growing up. We each got to invite one friend and their parents for a beautiful dinner made by my mom and some festive games. We altered a few things for our young crowd, and everyone had a great time. We even had Mark's sister, Annie, and her family here to celebrate with us.

 Playing the red hot game

Adriana had it down!

Abigail came up with her own version to this game. Traditionally you touch a conversation heart to your nose and without bending over you try to drop it into a mason jar. She shoved it up her nostril, bent over and blew it out! We loved watching and laughing.

Mark and Jamie having fun.

The Cupid Game - with a bag of supplies we dress up one person in each group.

Our line of cupids!

The next day all our girls and Jamie wanted to be cupids.

Then on Tuesday Feb 11 we got a snow/ice storm. We were so excited to get snow over Christmas and had no idea that we would get it two more times at home!! Adriana had snow days Tues and Wed. and then went right into her winter break so we had a fun week as a family. Mark tried to work here several days... but I think we were pretty distracting to him.

This is the snow/ice part of the storm.

Then we got another few inches of awesome packing snow on top of the ice. Here is our valentine snowman.

Adriana has so much fun with her cute sister.

Christine isn't quite sure what to think about the snow... or the boots that are 3 sizes too big!

Sisters

On Valentine's Day I decided to get a little creative (thanks to some of my favorite blogs) and have fun with the day. It was a fun treat after being home most of the week.

A surprise valentine breakfast. Hearts led the way to the table. I didn't get much of the food, but we had heart pancakes topped with strawberries and pink whipped cream and a smoothie.

Then for dinner we had a fancy, restaurant-styled dinner. The girls helped me come up with a menu which they decorated and placed at everyone's seat. We ate by candlelight, drank from goblets, used cloth napkins, and served it in 3 courses. (They took turns helping me serve each course). I think this is the start to a new family tradition!

Our main course: chicken pillow, roasted asparagus, applesause

This is to capture Christine's love for stuffed animals. She loves to give them hugs and hold them. These are some Valentine bears that some friends gave us. She loves them! If she sees one, she can't wait to give it a hug.

Mark and I had a great date to the Melting Pot to celebrate! Our first time there and hopefully not the last.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Christine 1 Year Old

Our baby turned one! We had a great celebration for her. She had her favorites for dinner, pizza and bananas. She is a great eater so hopefully it stays that way. She is such a joy to our family and so happy. She is pulling up on everything and crawling so fast. She loves to climb up the stairs too. Her sisters love her and we are so glad to have her in the family.

Playing with her friend Brooklyn

Presents (the girls decorated the wrapping paper)

Her very own cake

She loved it! Elena helped too.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTINE!!

From Catching Fire to Snow and Ice

When we went to the Atlanta History Museum in October we had no idea that Catching Fire was filmed there. They had a special day in Jan to show how it was during the movie and had some artifacts out. This is the Swan house and was used as the president's mansion. All of the shots inside were in the house and the wedding party held for Catnis and Peeta was here too. We loved the movie (and of course all the books) and it was fun to be where they filmed it.

I think Christine could be in the movies

The dining room where Pres. Snow sat

This was the room they made into his office, but they painted it white. (And then repainted it green, back to the original)

A room upstairs set up to be Snow's office.

A Japanese-looking decoration in the entryway.

Giving our speech

So now on to the cold...

On January 28 there were predictions for snow, but unfortunately no one thought it would actually stick. It did. 2-3 inches of it! Coming from the north you'd think, "What's the big deal?" But here in the south there are many factors that made it quite a disaster. First of all, there was no pre-treatment on the roads which caused it to turn to ice when the snow hit. Second, there are no plows to get rid of anything that accumulates. Third, once everyone saw that it was sticking, ALL of Atlanta decided to go home at the same time. Traffic here is bad on a normal day, not to mention the aforementioned snow/ice, with drivers that are not used to driving in it. That all combined with about 1-2 million people trying to get home all at the same time made for quite a mess. WOW! It was crazy. Stories on the news were unreal. Buses getting stuck, kids having to walk home, or spend the night at school, etc. The roads turned into a huge parking lot and myriad of people left their cars and ended up walking. Mark left work (12 miles away) at 12:30 pm and it took 3 hours to get home! He was quite distraught until he found out how long it took others to get home. Some more than 15 hours! He didn't complain after that. We were glad to have him home safely. Adriana made it home without any problems. Then we had the rest of the week to play in the snow and party! We were just glad to have electricity and heat, unlike in CT a few years ago.

We even pulled out some old snow pants of Adriana's.

It wasn't the best packing snow, so our snowman became just one ball. We made a joke out of it because while in Japan we learned that they do snowmen with 2 balls. So in the US (Northern states) snowmen have 3 balls, in Japan it's 2, and in Georgia it's 1!

The snow is all gone now, but we had a great time and the girls couldn't get enough. After this very cold winter, we are ready for Spring!