The February Holidays

For Valentines we had our traditional dinner with Ken's family. Ramona and I usually plan a mystery dinner. We come up with fun names for the food, make a menu and decorations.

One year everyone got to order their food from the menu (with made up names) and some had quite the silly dinner with dessert for their main course and veggie for dessert. Last year Jessie and her cousin helped us make the decorations. We also had a "love tree" everyone got to trace their hand, to add it as a leaf, and then sign it.

This year after dinner, which was just buffet style with little name tags by the dishes, we passed around papers and wrote what we loved about each person. It was fun to get your paper back and read through it.

This year for part of the meal we had "twisted valentines." Jessie and Abbie helped me make heart shaped bread sticks. But before we shaped them we took two long pieces of dough and twisted them together. They turned out pretty stinking cool!


A dear friend in the ward made these cute wands and capes for my kids for Valentines Day! They are just too much fun. Today Abbie and Spencer's wands accompanied us shopping. President's Day marks the beginning of the BBQ season in the Payne family. I was in charge of dessert and made these fun corn on the cob cupcakes. I thought they were perfect for the occasion and they were SO easy!!

This morning in the freezing cold Abbie and Spencer decided they would go outside and draw with sidewalk chalk. They actually stayed out longer than I thought they would. Then they came in and played with dice. This is Spencer's snake. It has a tongue (the blue one), a head (the white one), a neck (the black one) and a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, a back, and a tail. He was quite entertaining.