Keekee!

Fun times!

Hearts, hearts and more hearts

All week long!

 Creating personal valentine's cards to mail to friends and family

Khloe's own creation

Celebrating Lowe's style: swinging a hammer and building a spinning wheel of love

My own yummy concoctions, thank you very much! Oreo cookies (stuffing removed and sacrificially eaten by yours truly), re-stuffed with vanilla bean lactose-fre ice-cream and rolled in valentine heart sprinkles. Wait till the girls see these! What a fun after-school snack!

 Kayla sewed two heart-shaped felt mini pillows to give away as Valentine's gifts!

 Twenty-one hand-made Valentines bags filled with sweettart hearts. I love that Kayla added a double exclamation mark smiley face!! :)

Thursday was Kayla's Valentine's Day party at school! This was no small party, it was a 3 hour party! I don't know how Mrs. Prout does it day after day.

There were Valentine's crafts, games, a Clifford movie, Valentine exchange, ice-cream sundae's and cupcakes. I was glad to be there helping out!

I Corinthians 13

 "And  now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love".

Reason to celebrate

It's the 100th day of school tomorrow! To celebrate, Kayla has to bring 100 items to class; she choose to  bring 100 beads. Not only does she get to celebrate her 100th day of school, but Kayla is also the Leader! And that means she got to put something of hers in the Secret Bag. Being the Leader is a very BIG deal! And, as if tomorrow wasn't already great enough, it's pizza day, school spirit day, they're decorating their Valentine's bags, and they get to have treats to celebrate Travis's birthday. Really? My day is not nearly as exciting. I just might have to join her Kindergarten class tomorrow!

The next generation

 iPad Girls

A slice of heaven

"The best cookies are uncooked cookies"

In honor of Kayla, and her 23 year old twin, Kristi

Hitting the slopes

Yea! The Faust's are back on the slopes again, and this time with Kayla!

This was such a fun family mini-vacation! (back in mid-January). We were soooo excited to get back to skiing again. Even pulling our skis and ski bags out of storage and going through them was exciting; it's been a long time since we've seen that equipment. Three years to be exact.

Really, this trip was quite symbolic more than anything. It felt like a portion of our "old" life was coming back and we were able to get back to the winter activity we love so much... and what a better way to experience it than side-by-side with Kayla!

Kayla was VERY excited for this trip. She talked about it nonstop for two weeks straight. She couldn't wait to ski with Molly, and we couldn't wait to see them ski together. I think Marnie and I even said to each other at one point during the 4-day weekend, "Who would've ever thought our daughters would one day be skiing together!" It brought so many smiles to our faces!

They're quite colorful amd bright, aren't they? They were easy to spot pretty much anywhere. I called them snow bunnies, but they asked to be called Rainbow Snow Fairies.

There was lots of warming up needed, either by a mountain-side bonfire bar or in the lodge

Even Khloe warmed up by the fire too

 Molly's a great, independent skier! It almost frustrated Kayla too much that she wasn't instantly as good as Molly right away. 

 At one point on the lift, I was riding with Molly and Aaron was riding with Kayla behind us, and Molly yells out "KAYLA, YOU'RE MY  BEST FRIEND!" and Kayla yells back "YES, I KNOW! YOU ARE TOO!" So, so, sweet. 

Our digs? Otsego Club, Gaylord - In all of our bazillion trips to Gaylord enroute to visit the Jensen's, we never knew there was a mountain in Gaylord! It is a beautiful, private, family-oriented resort where Chris and Marnie are members. We had great ski conditions all weekend - no wind, blue skies, sun, and fresh powder every morning. We couldn't have asked for anything better!

So, this is how a beginner skier starts - with a hula hoop. It allowed Kayla to ski up and down and across the whole mountain with us.

Kayla did start her ski career with a private ski lesson first thing Saturday morning, and then we kept her momentum going with ski school in the afternoon. She loved it!

And what did Khloe do all weekend? She hung out inside, warm and toasty, with Baby Britton and the babysitter, Krysten. (One of my mom's favorite piano students, ever!) Having Krysten there allowed us to have adult-only night skiing, dinner and evenings out. It was the best of both worlds.

Our favorite hangout - and we made it our own - was Snow Bar. Mid-mountain. If you ever needed to know where any one of us were at any given time, it was here. There was shelter, provisions and fire. We attracted quite a crowd!

Chillin' at Snow Bar

Sleds: the quickest mode of transportation throughout the resort

 Every afternoon was Khloe's moment to shine. At 4:00 they shut down the bunny hill and turned it into a sledding hill. Talk about going fast! That's sledding down a real mountain! It kind of freaked me out. And what's better, you get to ride your sled up with the tow rope. Khloe would've gone for hours if hadn't been for the fact that her fingers were about to fall off from frostbite.

Riding the chair lift - she never fell once. (That's better than Aaron and I did the first time we ever tried skiing!)

 Yes, we had that much fun!