The week of snow!

 It was a pretty good week. I did all the same stuff I normally do but I also painted the wall that goes down into the basement, finished putting up the wall paper (a peel and stick that I love!) and hung up all the temple paintings I had ordered for a wall down there. I now just need to paint two more small walls and then the rest of the staircase walls (the inside ones) and it will be done! It is such a fun, cool space now and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Someday soon we'll need all new carpeting in our house but not quite yet. 

We also had our temple recommend interviews this week and that is always a good experience, especially when we didn't have to drive 45 minutes and wait in a long line for our turn! I think doing stake stuff virtually is fantastic and I hope they stick with it for some things even when it is okay to do in person stuff again, whenever that may be. 

Josh was off Friday and it was so nice to have him home. In between me doing all my stuff, we just sat and talked and hung out together, which we haven't done in a long time in such a relaxed way. Usually our time together isn't until 9pm or later and we're often tired or worn out from the day so I really appreciated the calm time to reconnect. We watched Emma that night and it made me so happy. I have loved that movie since I was in high school and it was fun to watch it again. I still have it mostly memorized. 

Saturday was really nice too. Lily and I made pancakes (not as good as Josh's) and then we all cleaned for awhile, that's when I finished the wallpaper and then the kids all played outside for awhile. I dropped off food at church for a food drive and then later when out to pick up dinner from Red Robin. We try to do something nice for the kids at report card time so we had a celebratory dinner and it was fun. The burgers were good and then we made milkshakes here and we shared how everyone did on their report cards and expressed our gratitude that they work hard and are such good kids. We talked about the many reasons it is so important to us that they do well in school and then we paid them their report card money. 

We also introduced a new money system for them. After all these years we are finally getting around to teaching our kids about money and how to take care of it and save and make wise spending choices. We took envelopes and taped them to paper for each kid for their tithing and spending money and then separately we have a savings envelope paper that Josh and I will keep track of. We told the kids we would pay them interest on their savings so there are more rules with that "account". The kids were super into it and it feels good after discussing and trying to figure out what works for us and is best for the kids for years to finally have a plan. Curtis is already saving for a car and Lily is for college, which is great because we tried to encourage them to save for experiences and opportunities, not just stuff. I'm pretty excited about it and feeling really good about it so I hope it works out. Eventually we'll get them real accounts but I think this will be a good time to practice and learn. Then we watched some Fixer to Fabulous, had scripture study and bed. It was really good family time. Often after an evening of fun the kids are slow to go to bed or grumpy because they are tired or it is just exhausting to finish the evening and they seem ungrateful for the fun we had, but last night wasn't like that. I'm really grateful for it.

Now it is snowing again and the kids are all out playing in it. We had a beautiful fast and testimony meeting this morning, a short primary singing time, our Sunday school classes and now it is just a calm, peaceful, beautiful snowy sabbath day.