Preschool Zoo Day

On Monday, Zanya and I went to the zoo with Samantha's preschool. We had such a great time! Miss Peggy teaches the kids all about the animals before we go so that the kids can teach the parents while we are there. The day was perfect with nice weather and active animals. It was a perfect zoo day! Here the kids are singing "Zola the Zebra" after we ate lunch.

Pictures Galore

Danica and Hanna both recently decided to take some fun pictures with their friends. Luckily we have friends and relatives with excellent cameras as well as a talent with photography.
This is Danica and her cousin Kinsey, best buds. Photographs are by Greg Garn, a man of many talents.

Here, Hanna and her friends, Christy and Heather, decided to spray paint some t-shirts for neon day at school. It was a fun project and these girls are so creative!

Hanna's pictures with her friends Kathryn and Kylie. Photographs by Patrice Crandall, a very talented photographer. These girls have so much fun together.

My Mom is Home

Well, my Mom is home for good. She finished her missionary service in Berlin and came home last week. She got home on Thursday night and left Friday morning to see my sister and her new baby, Laney in Utah. So we haven't seen much of her yet, but we are glad she is home.

Welcome home Mom!

Teenagers are Awesome

There are many things that bring joy to my heart. Here are some from this week:

--Chandler's willing and happy attitude about running my errands. Amazingly, he cleans the toy room and mows the lawn with equal willingness, but not in the same time frame. Also, he got his wisdom teeth out last week and hasn't complained at all.

--Danica's amazing piano talent. Currently she is working on "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlson. She has not been assigned this song by her piano teacher, but she just wanted to learn it for herself. It is a beautiful song and it is incredibly moving when played by my own daughter on my own piano.

--Chandler and Hanna wrestling. Afterwards, I get the details from Hanna, victor in her own mind. Also, Hanna's seminary is doing missionary week this week so she has to live like a Missionary. One thing she has to do is cook for herself. I keep forgetting this detail until she is preparing something different for herself. This morning, she was making a bagel while I was making waffles. Of course, I forgot why, so I asked her what's up. She reminded me that she has to cook for herself--oh right, you're killing me, Hanna. Who is going to eat the rest of these waffles?

Cupcake Question

Ok here are the chocolate cupcakes with a hint of cinnamon. The frosting is flavored with maraschino cherry. I thought they were quite delicious but some my my children with unsophisticated tastes didn't love them. Who wouldn't love that beautiful pink frosting?

Now I have a question. I might be thinking about selling my cupcakes. Some of you have mentioned that you would buy them so I am checking to see if that is true. Cupcake stores, such as Sprinkles, charge $3.25 per cupcake so I would think about charging $2 per cupcake. My packaging is obviously amateur (paper plate?), and I would probably need some advance notice to make sure I have what you want. Plus you would have to come to my house to pick them up. The flavors I would consider are:

Tres Leche

Chocolate Orange

Peach

Vanilla

Coconut

Chocolate Maraschino

Chocolate Caramel

Cranberry Almond (in season when I can get cranberries)

And possibly other flavors that sound fun.

So, let me know!

By the way, I have a batch of coconut cupcakes that I am making for my Mom to bring to Utah but she doesn't need all of them so if you want one, they will be frosted some time on Thursday. Email me at danjanand7@gmail.com

More Cousins

Last week we had some visitors. Teichert and Booker stayed at our house while their Mom and Dad went to Boston. Actually Booker only stayed during the days and went with Callie for the nights. Teichert stayed day and night. Isn't he so cute? We just loved him and the girls couldn't get enough. Zanya and Booker were little buddies

MamaGinger even came for one morning to play with Samantha and Booker

All the girls wanted to feed Ike, so we had to take turns. Here is Sam's turn.

Andria and Ike

Brothers, Booker and Teichert

We became very fond of this baby boy and my kids want to know when we are having one of our own. What? When we drove away from family dinner on Sunday and Teichert wasn't with us, Zan said "Where is Teichert, we need Teichert!" We had to tell her that he was going home with his Mom and Dad. We'll miss him.

Valentine's Day

Ok, so it wasn't exactly Valentine's Day. It was Friday which was the day that we had all the Valentine parties. Here are the Valentine hair dos:
Andria
Maranda

Samantha

Zanya

Zanya loves Valentine hair :)

That night we had a ward dance/service project. Hanna thought it would be fun to have a LOVE t-shirt. So she spray painted one and it turned out so cute that everyone else wanted one too! So we pulled out whatever white t-shirt we could find and Hanna made them look like converstation hearts. They turned out so cute. Seaver is a lucky guy.

Funny kids!

(We missed Chandler and Danica that night. Chandler stayed home, sick and Danica went to a school dance with her friend.)