Chinese New Year

We always love a good Chinese New Year celebration.  It's become a yearly tradition with the Altmans.  Don't let Little Guy's expression fool you.  He ate more that most of us combined.

Cooking Club

Little Lady and BB decided they wanted to participate in Cooking club at school this week.  I'm fairly positive it's because they got to make cinnamon rolls.  They're main complaint was that it moved super slow, and no one knew how to bake.  I told them they should be grateful they have some skills in the kitchen and enjoy the rolls.  We'll see if they want to try it another time.

January Dates

 Little Guy had his date with Daddy.  He chose to go to Snooze for breakfast and then walk around temple grounds.  He even ran into Grandma and Grandpa Thompson on the way into their temple shift.

BB wanted to do mini golf and eat dinner at Chick-in-Waffle.  Dad wanted to try this place, so BB invited him to come along on our whole date.  

I'm not sure if we had more fun playing mini-golf or taking dramatic pictures. 

It was a lot of fun!

Do.Good Stitches

January and February blocks: I really liked piecing the citrus fabrics together while it was snowing outside.

 

Winter Blues

 January sometimes just feels so long and dreary.  To help counteract the blah of January I always keep all of our Christmas cards up for the whole month of January.  It makes me smile every time I walk by it.

Restaurant Week

 I always look forward to this week in January every year.  It's so fun trying new restaurants and spending time with great friends.  

Val and I tried Zero Zero Handmade Pasta.  It's tiny and so good!  The foccachia bread was to die for!  Joel and I had a lunch date at the Plaza at Ocean Prime.  The ambience is fantastic with a great view from the top of the hill, and everything was delicious.

Rebecca and I went to Thai Orchid.  The soup was the show stopper - scrumptious!!  It's called Tom Kha Soup. It has a coconut milk base, and I need more of it in my life.

Melissa and I went to Aqua Penny's.  It's Thai infused seafood, and it was also really good.  The massaman salmon was delightful.

Restaurant Week actually spans 2 weekends, so at the end of it Joel and I went on a date to Piropos.  It's an upscale Argentinian restaurant, and it was definitely my favorite place of the week.  The single best thing I ate the entire experience for the week was this butternut-squash soup.  It doesn't look like much, but let me tell you - it was heaven in a bowl!  We loved everything we ate there including the empanadas.  The ambience is also stellar.  The restaurant is on the 2nd floor, so it overlooks the city.  It was gorgeous and an added bonus to the incredible food.

It's such a fun experience in the middle of dreary winter around here, and I would go back to any of the restaurants we tried.

Special Night

BB attended the temple for the very first time tonight.  It was so absolutely lovely.  Little Man got to perform baptisms for the first time as well since he's now a Priest. He started with Joel.  Joel joked that if Little Man could baptize him then he could baptize anyone. I loved having us all together.  We were just missing Little Guy.  

Cleaning Out Memories

 I decided to tackle my closet this week.  Even though my clothing gets organized, I have boxes and a bucket full of things I've conveniently ignored for years.  One of the boxes had all kinds of treasures including a handmade list of names we were considering when I was pregnant with Little Lady.  My friend had made a countdown chain to our trip to Tulum 4 years ago and I found one of the links.  I also found a bunch of pictures and items from when I taught middle school in Pennsylvania.  For some reason I also had a bunch of pictures from Joel's mission.  So fun!

My Heart is Full

Today was a special day.  Little Man was ordained a Priest and then he helped ordain BB a Deacon.  They're growing up so fast.

Volleyball

Little Lady had fun on her church volleyball team.  They won both their sets today, and they had a great cheering section.

 

You've Got to Be Kidding Me

...and we're back to shoveling ourselves out again.  

No School

I'm convinced we're never really going to go back to school.  I think this is our third snow day.  It all blends together.  The kids don't mind though.

A Snowy 3 Kings Day

We had a storm blow in for 3 Kings Day.  There is a layer of ice under the snow, so driving downtown for our traditional Rosca was not an option.   Gratefully, I had picked up their "gift" from the Wise Men early and had already gone grocery shopping, so I was still able to make pozole. 

The boys found creative ways to amuse themselves since it was too cold to spend a lot of time in the snow.

A Quick Trip to Vegas

Last May BB had a baseball hit his front 2 teeth.  After an initial emergency trip to the dentist we thought it was fine, but 3 months later they looked worse and we were told his needed a double root canal.  We sent the scans to our endodontist friend in Vegas and he said there was still some hope for the roots to grow back because BB is so young and still developing.  3 months later we went to the dentist and the scans looked really bad.  We booked a flight for BB and I to go to Vegas for our friend to perform the root canals.  With new scans it turns out that the dentist x-rays were just terrible and they're still in the same shape as 6 months ago.  We decided to wait for another couple of months again to see if anything happens, watching for any discoloration or pain.  BB thought he was getting a double root canal and instead got a fun trip to Vegas.  He and Elliott became fast friends.  We ate yummy Filipino food and had the couture donuts. They built Lego and enjoyed the hot tub.  BB was in heaven.  He wants to know when he can go back.  It was fun to see Kortney, and now we wait until the end of March to see if there's any improvement.