Jonas Rocks!

There was an emergency change of venue for Jonas's concert, so instead of going to Pat's Barbecue, we ended up at Leatherhead's Sports Grill in Draper.  It ended up being a pretty decent venue, and Jonas and his band were awesome in my totally unbiased opinion.  (I promise, they are really good!)  I love watching that super quiet, reserved boy performing on stage.  You can just see that he loves doing it.

A selfie before he went on stage.

And here are all the members of WOLFE.

Jonas, Sherri, Emily, Mac, Eric and other Tanner, (so as not to confuse him with Jonas's friend Tanner who is at our house regularly.)

On stage.  They played about a 45 minute set to a packed house.

There's my boy, with an actual, real smile on his face!

Apparently, Jonas is rocking the East coast as well - or at least winter storm Jonas is.

Meet Scout

 So, I know I've introduced the puppy already here, but he didn't have a name at that point.  After much debate, a name has been selected.

Meet Scout.

  (As in the ski run at Brighton - just like Ziggy is also a ski run at Brighton.)  We toyed with Marley, because Ziggy Marley, but ultimately it was voted down along with several others. His litter name was Titan which we almost stuck with, but instead kept it as a middle name.  So officially, he is Scout Titan Polo Stringham. (Because Titan Polo is a significant part of our lives, obviously.)  No Murphy, no Louis, no McDuff, no Bob, no Polo, just Scout.

I will admit those first couple of nights were pretty rough.  We didn't have a crate yet, and anything we put him in he could get out of.  Plus he cried and whined and barked.  I think he was seriously missing his pack of 9 brothers and sisters to cuddle up with.  Samantha was a trooper and took some night shifts, but there definitely wasn't much sleeping going on.

 Once we got through those first few nights and he was sleeping through the night, things got much better.  He is so sweet and so mellow, I just really, really wish he were house broken.  That's my only complaint.  (Well, occasionally, the wrestling that goes on between the 2 dogs gets a little tiresome, too, but that's manageable.)

I mean, how can you resist that face?

 Seriously mellow.

 Fortunately, Ziggy accepted the puppy right away.  He definitely lets him know he's Alpha dog, but they get along great.  Sometimes they just play and wrestle until it exhausts me, but that's not really a bad problem to have....

In fact, the first night of sleeplessness was actually due to the fact that Ziggy was so excited to play with this new creature that he couldn't settle down and sleep.  So no one slept.  And the puppy was exhausted.  So on night 2, we helped Ziggy out a little bit by giving him some melatonin. That was a good choice.

 He is the biggest in his litter and certainly doesn't look like an 8 or 9 week old puppy, does he?  He's enormous.

 Lots of puppy bonding going on around here.

 Pure joy and happiness.

 Part of Peter's gang.  This boy is in heaven.

Martin Luther King Day Beignets

Normally, we have beignets 3 times a year - 2 conference Sundays and on Christmas.  Apparently this is a very strong tradition, because when we had vomiting kids on Christmas, it was unanimously decided that we couldn't possibly have beignets if everyone wasn't going to be able to eat them.  Nor did anyone want to run the risk of eating beignets, then getting sick and then never wanting to eat beignets again. So we aimed for New Year's beignets instead, but since the stomach flu was still running it's course through the house, that also had to be postponed.  With morning swim workouts and skiing on the weekends, Martin Luther King Day was the first chance we had to fit it in once everyone was healthy. It was a little bit quicker than usual because Shawn did have to get to work, but we finally got our beignets.  So everyone should be happy until April conference.

The kids still wanted Christmas shapes though, since these were technically our Christmas beignets.  Plus, we don't own any MLK cookie cutters.

Mmmmmm. Delicious beignets!

It's That Time of Year Again

I've already posted the countdown to water polo chain that's hanging in my kitchen.  Now comes the fun stuff.  Choosing team gear. Here's this year's selections.

Deep down, I'm dreading the start of water polo season, but even I can get excited about the gear.

An Epic Day

So, because of the whole stomach flu over Christmas break thing, we had not actually had an opportunity for the whole family to go skiing yet this season.  (Believe me the breaking of the Christmas Eve Family Ski Tradition was harsh, and not taken well by all.)

Since the kids were out of school on this Friday for the end of the term, we decided to give it a go. It was a fantastic family ski day.  It wasn't crowded since it was a Friday, the snow was amazing, the temperature wasn't bad, and everyone could ski together! There was very little whining and I think everyone enjoyed themselves and being together.  We look forward to doing it again! (And that's saying something!)

And just in case the ski day wasn't awesome enough, we came home and found this waiting for us in the kitchen.

I think the kids were pretty surprised.  We had them convinced there was no way we were taking one of the neighbors puppies.  (I was also pretty convinced we weren't going to, but somehow I got talked into it, despite my better judgement.)

Peter, in particular, didn't quite believe it.  He kept asking if he was ours and if we actually paid for him. He was so excited. They all were, but you have to understand that Peter hauls his "gang" upstairs every morning - his gang consisting of a puppy pillow pet, a very large stuffed dog as big as he is, and any number of smaller stuffed dogs that he can manage to fit in his arms.  He LOVES dogs!

I loved finding this sign on the white board.

From there, everyone had to hurry fast and get out of ski clothes and into regular clothes for our next adventure, which was, of course to go to Petsmart and buy all the puppy accoutrements and food we didn't have.

And THEN, we got to go to a surprise party for Jake. Of course, with a brand new puppy, we couldn't leave him behind so he went with us, too. I'm sure my sister-in-law wasn't thrilled with that plan, but we kept him off the floor at all times and tried to keep him quiet and contained.

So, yes, we had already had a birthday dinner for Jake on his actual birthday, because the only way to keep a surprise is to not mess with all of the usual things that you do, so we still had our El Farol's dinner to throw him off the scent.

He got some really awesome gifts, like this Ken doll costume, complete with plastic hair, and these cool #30 glasses, because you only turn 30 once, after all.

This is a seriously mellow puppy.

Ken wearing his "the big 3-0 pin".

These glasses were an absolute favorite and just about everyone wanted to try them on.  I'm going to save this picture of my mom somewhere special.

Peter with creepy eyes.

And Jonas.

There were some other people at the party that were totally enamored by the puppy as well.

I hope I can continue to love him through this whole house training thing.

Jake Turns 30 and A Couple Other Things

We took Ziggy to the Dog Wash for a long overdue bath and some family fun.  Always a good time when the dog shakes all the excess water off.  No one left dry.

A beautiful striped sunset for Jake's 30th birthday.

We celebrated with our usual gathering at El Farol's where Jake donned the birthday sombrero and enjoyed fried ice cream for dessert. (OK, most of us shared in the dessert part.)

It wasn't Jonas' birthday but I guess he felt worthy to wear the sombrero anyway.

Nothing makes you feel old like having your youngest sibling turn 30, so thanks for that Jake.

When The Cows Come Home and A Science Fair Project

The view outside Shawn's office generally includes the Chick-Fil-A cows.  I think the kids think it's one of the best parts about going to his office. Every once in a while, the cows get taken down and disappear for a bit.  We were all so relieved to get this text from Shawn.

"Great News! My cows are coming home!"

Phew!  All will be right with the world again.

Did you know cows could fly?

Do you ever have plans to get lots of things done or maybe go do something fun for a change?  But then you realize that instead you have to do a science fair project?  Yeah, me too.  This took up pretty much the whole weekend. But now we know that the much more inexpensive FitBit Zip that you wear on your hip is more accurate at counting steps than the more expensive FitBit Surge worn on your wrist.  In case you were wondering...

Everyone in the family got to be a subject.

You can tell we were all super excited and enthusiastic to be spending our night doing this.

Yep, even the little guy participated.

Then we pulled in the big guns -all the teenage boys that were hanging out.  That was awesome. It definitely bumped our numbers up.

So glad it's over.  Can hardly wait for the next big project that comes along.