February 2011

This month has been a lot of fun! Started off with a HUGE snow storm and ended with a trip to the St. Louis Temple and the Gateway Arch.

First, the snow storm...I have NEVER seen this much snow in Missouri!! It was so much fun to watch the snow fall and then to take the kids out and play in it! Not to mention having Brevin home for a whole week with us, which the girls absolutely loved! Brevin and Aspen went out while it was still snowing to get a head start on shoveling and to play a little bit. Hadley and I stayed inside for a while so that it would stop snowing and so she could take a nap. We all went out and played together later on, but I didn't take the camera with me. We made a snowman and had a little snowball fight...LOADS of fun!!

A few days later my big brother, Jared, and his wife, Mary, had their first baby together!! His name is Spencer James Boman. He is so stinkin cute!! Aspen and Hadley loved holding him and kissing on him and can't wait for him to come to our house to watch him and his big brother Aiden!

We went over to Grandma Johnson's house the day before Valentine's Day for Sunday dinner. Aspen helped us make the pies....

while Hadley took a nap with Dad...

The next day...Valentine's Day...we had a party with the daycare kids. They had a blast! We made cookies and hats, had cupcakes, and traded valentines.

I thought that it would be fun to have everything we ate be red (or in the red family) or in a heart shape. So, for breakfast we had strawberry milk, bagles with strawberry cream cheese, and strawberries. For lunch we had red grapes and a cheese sandwich in the shape of a heart...

The older girls thought that it was fun...the rest of the kids could have cared less!

Just recently Brevin and I went to the St. Louis Temple...FINALLY!! We have been to STL before, but it has been a long time since we have made time to go to any temple. It was so nice to go back! Hopefully we can make it a more regular thing! While we were there we also made time to go to the Gateway Arch. I had so much fun because I had never been to it before! I was so surprised to see how many people go to the arch in one day! That place was madness!!

We had a little while before we could get on the tram to go to the top, so we walked through the museum and the gift shops, which were really interesting and had really yummy peanut brittle :) Then it was finally time to go to the tram. When Brevin told me that the cars are really small I didn't take him as seriously as I should have! There are five seats in each one and it is about the size of a bathroom that doesn't have a bathtub in it...maybe smaller and VERY short!! This is the door that you go through to get into one...

It takes about 4 minutes to get to the top of the 630 foot tall arch and then there are these little windows to look out. You have to basically lie down on this ledge and look straight down to be able to look out of it...at least I had to because I am so vertically challenged! These are some of the pictures that I took out of the windows...

This is a picture of some carriages that were right outside the Arch...I thought it was funny that they looked like ants...

We had some guy take a picture of us while we were at the top...

We saw this while we were driving home...

At first we thought that it was an anchor or something like that. Then we got closer and realized that it is a cross with a crown of thorns on the top. We aren't quite sure it if was a prop for a play or something or if this guy just liked the attention he got from having it in the back of his truck.

Overall, we had a fun month and got to spen a lot of time together as a family!