Basketball

This basketball season was Nick's coaching debut. I coached Brady's team and Nick coached Grant. Let's just say that Nick's season was slightly more successful than mine. Brady played about half the season on Grant's team too since one of their players hurt his knee.

That's Brady under the basket watching to see if his shot went in. (it did)

Grant catching a pass from Brady

Basketball Party

We celebrated another fun basketball season with two team parties at our house today. Bethany Call made these awesome cakes for our parties, and they tasted amazing!

It was fun for each of the players to have their own star.

Grant's team

One of the players on Grant's team missed the last 4 games of the season, so they needed an extra player. Brady was quick to volunteer for the job, and he spent the last month playing with both teams.

Yummy!

I think having a kid that is old enough to cook/bake by himself ROCKS! And it's a definite plus when what they want to cook is desserts. Grant made up this recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip brownies and everyone in our family gave it two thumbs up! Yummy!

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. I just love celebrating the ones I love! Nick and I had a great Valentine's date the Saturday before Valentine's day, and it was the first time that Grant was our babysitter while we went out. He did great and more importantly his brothers actually listened to him. They were all playing legos together when we got home.

On Valentine's Day, I was in charge of Drew and Grant's class parties at school. Drew's class partied in the morning with heart shape donuts from Krispy Kreme and chocolate milk. Grant's class had an ice cream sundae bar that afternoon. Both parties turned out really well, but I was too busy to snap any pictures. I got to attend Brady's party later in the week.

On Valentine's evening, we went on a family valentine date. We had dinner at Genghis Grill and dessert at PeachWave. It was pretty much a perfect evening until Drew threw up multiple times at PeachWave. I guess a donut party in the morning at school, sugar cookies in the afternoon at school, lots of candy from the valentines that his friends gave him, another sugar cookie at swim lessons, and finally frozen yogurt didn't agree with his tummy. Who would have guessed? After throwing up, he felt much better and went ahead and finished his yogurt. Why not...Valentine's Day only comes once a year. Pretty sure he ate enough sugar in that one day to last him for months!

We had fun in the days leading up to the holiday making lots of valentine crafts and treats. Sugar cookies are always our favorite!

Pinewood Derby

Once again it's the time of year that the boys and their dads bring out their competitive spirit and compete in the pinewood derby. This year Grant is in boy scouts, so Brady was the only cub in our family to compete.

Brady won 1st place racing against the kids in his den, so he got to move on to compete in the finals. Brady ended up coming in 3rd overall. He was pretty happy with that. Trent came in first and Alex came in second. Trent or one of his brothers win every single year. They seriously must have a giant collection of 1st place pinewood derby trophies. It's unbelievable. Since this was Trent's last year in cub scouts, and Brady will still be able to race one more year, the Famuliners FINALLY shared their secret to winning with us. Watch out next year...we might just be unstoppable.

The best part of the pinewood derby is the time Brady and Nick got to spend working on the car together.

Donuts

We were going through some of Mimi's things, and we found this donut press that she had had for probably about 60 years. She used to make delicious donuts for us when we were younger. Grant and Brady thought it was really neat, so my mom gave it to us. The very next morning we were ready to put it to use.

All three boys helped cut out the donuts, then we deep fried them. (I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've EVER deep fried something)

The boys are always building contraptions out of legos and kinex, and they had just built this conveyor belt. They thought it would be great to carry the donuts from the cooling rack to the bowl of cinnamon and sugar. It worked like a charm.

Our finished product. They were so yummy!

Cooking with the boys is always fun for me. It seems like we've done a lot of baking and eating during these snow days.

Sledding

The snow has stuck around for an entire week now, so we've gone sledding with friends several times. Even though it feels like we're never going back to school (today was the 6th snow day in a row), it's been a blast to play in the snow since it never snows like this in Oklahoma.

Drew followed his brothers' lead and learned to sled standing up.

Grant and his friend Ben were having a sledding contest.

Brady and Drew were having so much fun together. It makes me smile to see them laughing and having a great time with each other.

More Snow!!!

This was the scene from my front door on Friday morning...more snow was falling! Since this was our 4th snow day in a row, we were starting to get a little cabin fever. We loaded up and finally left the house for the first time since Monday. We met some friends for lunch, then brought a couple of friends home for the boys to have someone to entertain them. Getting out for a little while and having some new faces at our house was just what we needed.

Brady, Ryan, Grant and Joe had a pretty elaborate nerf war upstairs.

Drew got in on the action for a little while, but he spent most of the afternoon building legos.

Playing in the snow

All these snow days have given us plenty of time to play in the snow.

We don't have any hills around our house, so we made our own little sledding hill. Grant chose to turn the sled into a snowboard.

And ended up with a nice face plant.

Brady decided to play it safe and sit down.

He toppled over too.

And whacked his head on a hard piece of ice snow.

Ouch!!!

Below is a picture of him throwing that piece of icy snow as far away as he could get it.

His next trip down was much less eventful.

And much more fun!

Drew got in on the action, too.

Drew loved every minute of sledding even if the hill was tiny.

They also built a snow fort.

It was pretty cool. You could climb all the way inside.