Happy Anniversary!!!

I know, I'm looooooong overdue on this.
The girls have officially been home over a year.
We celebrated Gotcha Day by playing hard and working hard.
We went camping on friday night.  Well, ok we went cabin-ing on friday night.  We squished it in after play practice (oh, yeah, in case you hadn't heard, Caleb is in the play Aladdin at the Middle School,  good experience but he doesn't get home until 6:30 at night).

We went to Zion's Camp and rented their cabin for one night.  I made dutch oven stew. We woke up and had pancakes, sausages and eggs.  Then we had smores.  It rained the whole time we were there but the kids played like crazy, got soaking wet and begged us not to leave.

Think he is a true Washingtonian?!?!?  Soaking wet, playing in the rain, and he finds another source of water to play in.

Then on Sunday, Valentines Day, the official Gotcha Day, I gave everyone Valentines candy (though that was anti-climactic when they had been eating candy for several days) and reminisced. 

Then on Monday we planted trees that we bought from Costco.  Some were where we had holes already dug and didn't have trees and two were from trees that died last year.  Then we started clearing land for blueberries.  Costco had some for $6 a plant (a steal!!) and we have been threatening to expand our bluleberry patch for a long time.

Tuesday, I had a bonus day with the kids.  They didn't have school (Mid-winter break or some such excuse).  So, I challenged the kids to see if we could get the rest of the blueberry patch cleared and surprise Dad.  They worked soooooo hard!!  We didn't quite get it cleared but it was nice to see the cooperation.  We had some pretty deep bushes to dig out.  They worked hard and long.  We were exhausted!

Then for the icing on the cake we took the kids out to the movie The Lightening Thief. 

So like I say, we worked hard and we played hard.

Then, last sunday, Kristina happened to mention to our Home Teacher that we on thursday we would celebrate the first day the arrived in America. (We weren't going to "celebrate" it-- officially, as there are many days here to celebrate-- Metcha Day, Court Day, Gotcha Day, Physical Gotcha Day, America Day-- and we chose to celebrate Gotcha Day).  But Brother Von Forell and his sweet wife brought over this cake for us to celebrate.

(Sorry about the smooshed part, Elijah got a hold of it)