Party Every Day

This week started and ended with parties.  The Valentine Lady made her annual visit this year.  She leaves gifts for the kids on the front doorstep.  If you've never heard of the Valentine Lady, that's because you have to be a Shippen for her to visit.  My first visit from the "VL" was my first Valentine's married to Scott and it's continued ever since.   I think the girls have consulted with friends at school about her, wondering if they know who she is, and the friends have probably been very confused!  I'm not the Valentine Lady (hint, Scott grew up with visits from her every year), but I did keep up the tradition while we lived in Michigan. 

Scott and I had fun this year making little personal heart-shaped pizzas for all the kids.  We used Marnae's pizza dough recipe - Yum!  Scott bought all his girls little gifts and spoiled me as usual.  He's such a sweet guy.

I threw a shower for my good friend Brittni (isn't she cute?) who's having her first baby - a boy! 

Brittni's mother-in-law came and was so helpful with Benjamin.  She let him play games on her phone the whole time and pretended to have fun sword fighting with him.

Benjamin was so sweet to this little baby at the shower.  It made me hopeful that he'll be a good big brother.

 That night was another party...Annica turned 13!  As you can see, I didn't spend as much time making a super fancy cake for her.  I was too busy getting ready for the shower!

A cute hat from Nana C.  For some reason, besides Annica blowing out the candles, this is the only picture we took of that night!  Oops.

The next night was another party!  I couldn't let Annica enter teenage-hood without a party with her friends.  I'm so glad that Annica has really great friends at school (and they're all at church with her too).  They had a fun night just hanging out here, playing games, eating pizza, watching a movie and eating cake and icecream.

Her friends were even nice enough to include the siblings in the party.  Benjamin loved all the attention from the girls and they played along with all his games. 

In all, a fun week, but boy, I'm looking forward to some dull peace and quiet this week...well as much as you can get with four kids!

Some Snow, Ballet and Bug-Eyed Fun

It's only January and I feel like we've had 2 winters worth of snow already.  Enough!  Benjamin on the other hand, loves it.  He asks every morning to go out and dig in the snow.  So I get his snow gear all on and send him out and about 5 minutes later, he's back inside saying he's cold.  I get him out of all his gear, he goes running off to play and about 10 minutes later, he's back at the door asking to go outside again.  It's a really fun cycle.  I can't wait for the weather to warm up, so I can skip all the bundling up - just open the door and let him run outside.  Last Thursday was a warmer day though (a balmy 26 degrees) and so Ben stayed outside longer.  Long enough for me to take a few pictures of him enjoying the snow with his "digger."  He thinks he's a tractor!

Making tracks in the fresh snow.

A beautiful day.  If it has to be cold, at least the sun gets to shine.

On Friday night, all the Shippen girls (minus Laura who skipped the snow and was in Hawaii and Jess who was in Nevada with a sick child) went to BYU's ballet production of Cinderella.  I thought I'd have to remind Clara at least 20 times to hold still and be quiet during the show, but she was mesmerized for the entire 2 hours!  She got to meet the Fairy Godmother after the show and was starstruck.  She's requested to take ballet again.  She took a ballet class last year and after a few months, she got bored so I pulled her out after the recital was over.  We'll have to see...

And now for the bug-eyes:

That (above) is Grace's Valentine card holder for her school party tomorrow.  Every year she has to decorate a box and this is the best one yet (according to both of us)!  We had fun making it.  The heart on it says "feed me."  Hope it gets lots of "food!"

And this (below) is Scott having his own kind of fun while Grace and I worked.  He's truly a goof, but sometimes this family really needs the comic-relief.  Happy Valentine's Day!!