Weekend Wrap-Up

We had a fun but laid back weekend. It started Friday night with our trip to the mall. We walked around, shopped, ate dinner, and rode the carousel. It has been a couple of years since the girls have wanted to ride the carousel, but Ava saw it and wanted to ride. Elia acted like she was only riding it to be with Ava, but I think she secretly wanted to ride it as well.

Here is how they started out:

Here is how they ended up riding:

After we left the mall, we went for dessert at Sweet CeCe's. It is one of those new, do-it-yourself ice cream places. It was so yummy! You can tell Ava was pretty excited about being there!

Here is a picture of the girls in their new Abercrombie coats. They were having a big sale this weekend. We bought these coats for $30 each. They were originally $160 each! I LOVE a good sale!

We spent Saturday at Elia's basketball game. Then we went to the grocery store and stocked up for the next two weeks. Sunday morning we went to church. Then we got prepared for the bad weather that was coming our way. The girls tried to get their minds off the storms by losing themselves in the computers.

Of course, they slept with us that night and none of us got any sleep due to all the lightning and wind. Here is what I had to wake up bright and early the next morning:

Here is a picture of Ava trying to look like Justin Beiber. I had bought the girls some white capris at Justice and she got a little carried away.

January Theme Dinner- A Red Carpet Event

It is that time again! Theme dinner night!!! I struggled with what to do for the month of January. I want our theme dinners this year to be different than the typical holiday theme of the month. Sunday afternoon I realized the Oscars were coming on TV so I decided to do "movie night". We went to RedBox and rented 4 movies. Then we spent most of Sunday being lazy and watching movies. Once dinner time came, I started decorating for our movie night.

I had some help from Elia rolling out the red carpet.

The girls thought the red carpet was the most fun! Of course, they had to walk it a couple hundred times. Cami had come over to play while we were getting ready so all three girls had a blast playing movie star!

Elia was a "gangster":

Ava was a "princess":

And Cami was a "cowgirl":

Then Miley had to get in on the act:

After several walks down the red carpet and lots of laughs, it was time to start dinner. I found this recipe in a cookbook. It is called Tortilla Lasagna.

First I had to cut up a zucchini, onions, and tomatoes (shocking, I know!). Then I mixed it all together.

Next, I added black beans which Elia helped mix together.

Then I mixed the salsa and the southwest sour cream. I put a layer of the sour cream mixture. Then a layer of tortillas. Then a layer of the bean and veggie mixture. After that came cheese. I repeated the layering several times.

Here is the finished product:

Kevin, Elia, and I thought it was very good. However, Ava had a completely different opinion about the food. I made her take at least one bite to try it, and this was the outcome:

After we cleaned up from dinner, we finished watching our movies and enjoyed dessert which was popcorn of course!!!

Stay tuned for our theme dinner next month!

1st Week of 2012

The first full week of 2012 and has been pretty uneventful which can be a good thing. We had to go back to school Tuesday which was a challenge to get everyone up and out the door by 7am. We had been sleeping in every day until about 11am over the break.

Elia started basketball practice this week, and her games start up next weekend. She loves to play basketball!

Miley got groomed this week. Here is her before picture:

And her after:

The weekend brought some much needed down time. This was the first weekend we did not have one thing planned. It was very boring but also very nice. On Friday night we ordered pizza and the girls entertained us with their tricks all night. The rest of this weekend was spent going to the grocery store, doing laundry, and going to church.