January

 Shortcake's hair is now long enough to braid!  they are little, but we were able to do "Princess Anna braids."  I thought it looked so precious.

 Bucko had his last pack meeting as a Webelo.  He received several pins.

 We had Start the Art night at the elementary school this past week.  The kids like me to go so they can show me their artwork.  It is always so packed with people, though, we went through as quick as we could.

We also had New Beginnings this month for Young Womens.  This year the mutual theme is D&C 4:2, "Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." The YW Presidency decided to go with a cruise theme.  The decorations looked great and we had a nice baked potato dinner.

Answered prayers through a MOUSE

I mentioned in my CAM session yesterday in my Foundations Capstone that I had a prayer answered this week through a mouse.  Sister Williams wanted to hear the story so I shared this story on the "good news" discussion board, since it was good news for me!  
A little background:  a few years ago I bought an Ergo Baby carrier.  These things cost about $140 and I haven't seen mine since this summer at family reunion.  We even bought the infant insert when we had our last child, which cost another $30.  I have searched everywhere for this thing.  And I have been praying for help to find it for months as well.  I am pregnant again and due in July.  I was finally at the point where I thought I would never find it and I would have to buy another one.  I really didn't want to do that.  So Sunday night, I was praying hard to find this thing.  Well, Monday morning as I was getting my oatmeal, I noticed the packet had a hole in the bottom.  I thought, "Oh great!" I check the pantry and sure enough, there were several packets chewed into.  We had a mouse.  (We live in the plains outside Colorado Springs, so it's not unusual for a field mouse to find its way inside in the winter, but we have lived here for 3 years and have never had a problem before.)  So I start checking and there are a TON of things in my pantry chewed into.  Apparently, this mouse loves chocolate.  I was grumbling pretty much all day as I cleaned out my pantry. I ended up throwing away a whole trash bag of food.  The other factor in this story is that my garage was stinking something awful.  We thought it might be a poopy diaper but we had taken all of them out to the trash bin and it still smelled really bad.  So our next thought was that the mouse had eaten so much food, he had gone to the garage and died.  So we start looking.  We knew where the smell was the strongest, which was right where we have a deck box for the kids toys, helmets, etc.  We decide to dump it out and make sure he isn't dead on the bottom.  (I am totally grossed out at this point and everything I pick up, I'm scared I'm going to find a dead mouse and throw up all over everything!)  We start pulling out all the toys and guess what we found on the very bottom all wadded up?  No, not the mouse, but my Ergo Baby carrier!  I was ecstatic! I had looked in there a few months ago and didn't find it.  The only way I ever would have found it is if we dumped the whole thing out like we did and we never would have done that except to find a dead mouse.  I was so thankful that Heavenly Father sent us a mouse!  So the smell ended up being from a mop we had used to wipe up spilled milk. Apparently, it didn't get rinsed out as well as it should have.  So the smell was taken care of.  We set mouse traps in the garage and the mouse was dead even before we fell asleep that night.  I am so grateful for Heavenly Father who hears and answers our prayers, no matter how small or meaningless they may be.  And I am grateful I was able to see the blessings that come in the form of a little field mouse.  Hope you all have a wonderful week and can recognize the many mysterious ways the Lord answers your prayers.

MLK Day

I love days off of school, especially when they are bright and sunny.  We decided to head out to Homestead Ranch park for a little hike with the kids.  It was beautiful.  There was still some snow on the ground, but it was in the lower 50's by mid-morning.  Later in the week, however, we got over 7 inches of snow!  

Groupie before the hike

 That evening we celebrated Nana's birthday at our house.  We had ranch pork chops, mashed potatoes, homemade crescent rolls, corn on the cob, and triple chocolate bundt cake for dessert!  Yum!