My Brothers...the Examples

Glen received his temple endowments on March 10! It was such a special experience to be able to be there with him and to enjoy the time together as a family. 

Before recieving his endowment, Glen was going to the Rexburg Temple a lot to do baptisms for the dead. It was almost every week, I think! What an inspiration to me he is! I have a hard time getting there once a month. Now that he is endowed, he has been going to the temple still once a week and has been using it as a source to receive answers and understanding! I'm so thankful that he is my brother and has/is taught/teaching me so much!

All the Bros!

We also celebrated James' 26 birthday! (2 yellow candles make 20...the 5 uhh makes 5... and the black one is 1...Yep...we are creative!)

Glen and Jacob...James new little boy!

Happy Birthday, James! Thanks for trying to be my big brother when you really are younger me! I love that I can count on you to help me with anything that you can! And that I can always depend on you to support me!

Who Knew...

that food storage made such good play toys? 

My kids sat and played with these for about an hour while I finished preparations to go to Grandma's house for the weekend. 

So glad that I invested into such a good toys!!

All Tietjen!

I like to tease Anthony that Matthew is all Tietjen...He can sleep anywhere and any in position! He DEFINITELY didn't get that from me! I totally need a nice bed (or lease a good couch) to sleep on!

What We Did in the Winter Time

Peter and Andrew made their first snowman without any adult supervision! They were really excited...I was sad...they don't need their mommy anymore...*sniff, sniff*

 

We had a fairly mild winter so I took a lot of pictures that looked like this...aka melting snow

With the start of the new year, we now have church at 8:30. It has its benefits (I'll have to think some before I can list them) but it also has its problems. Our biggest is trying to help our kids stay busy for the better part of the day. We took a lot of walks around the neighborhood and went on a lot of drives. Something my husband assures me is a Tietjen Tradition. 

Some of My Projects

So this is one of the project that I/we have been working on. I determined at the beginning of the year that my children had little idea of how much work it required to keep our house clean. That and I was tired of doing it alone. I browsed the internet and discovered this! I have loved it!  Every children has a chore to do in the kitchen, upstairs bathroom, and a room that they are responsible for (ROR). Every week we turn the wheel and everyone gets a new set of chores. It has been fairly effective. Every one knows that they have to chores and are starting to be better about picking up after themselves. 

This is my second project. We need a new FHE chart...the old one only had Peter, Andrew, Anthony, and I on it. I added Julia and Matthew and they have been thrilled to be able to be part of FHE now. 

Crazy Sock Day

Peter  came home from school one day with a note saying that they would be having crazy sock day the following day.  They encouraged parents not to go and out buy anything just have them wear mismatched socks. Peter instantly was upset because I only buy white socks for them (makes laundry day and matching socks go so much easier)...

So I put my thinking cap on and after raiding the craft supplies, this is the what we came up with...

We had a lot of fun putting them together and Peter felt extra special the next day because he had the craziest-coolest socks!

February Activities

It seems like every time that we have a holiday break from school and work, someone in our family gets sick! It happened Spud Harvest, Christmas, New Years, and now President's Day. A bit discouraging! Hopefully it will be better next year and we can do all the fun stuff that we planned! President's Day we had planned on going swimming but had to cancel where three out of four of our kids got fevers. We ended staying home and attempted to have a movie day filled with lots of fun treats. 

Peter got a free fry from McDonalds from school and so we all enjoyed a change in after school snacks. 

One day we had fun doing this....

I love Matthew's tongue in this one!! 

Andrew preferred doing this instead...

We also spent a morning doing this one day...

I definitely needed to get the puzzles out more often...