It's officially official...

Ashby is a big kid. No it's not because I just potty trained her (she's been that for quite some time, calm down all you mandated reporters). She has not one, but two loose teeth. I was so excited about it today that I totally embarrassed her and made her cry. I can't believe it. It's such a big milestone in a kid's life. It's her two bottom teeth and the extremely bad news is that I can already see the permanent teeth poking through. However we've known since she got teeth that she would need serious orthodontia. Her baby teeth are so close together that there's no room for big teeth. Congratulations to Ashby and I'll try to tone it down a bit!

The light at the end of the tunnel

So it's Wednesday and I was hoping that today was the end. However, it looks like the light at the end of the tunnel is not coming until Friday. Don't know what I'm talking about.... it's year end audit time. For our family that means pain and lots of it. This has been the worst busy season yet. Roger worked 90 hours last week and will work that this week too. We are tired and cranky and missing him. So I decided to look on the bright side, I've been whining about this a lot. It's a new top five.

Top five reasons we are looking forward to Roger finishing up his year end audits.

1. Bill and I will no longer be solely responsible for shoveling the walk and driveway. (Bill's our extremely nice neighbor who takes pity on me and shovels sometimes, not a secret boyfriend)

2. Roger will be here to take part in all the bingo that the girls love to play (not to mention all the Hi Ho Cherry-O, Chutes and Ladders, Memory...well you get the idea)



3. He will be here to defend himself when Avery accuses him of shoving chap stick in the end of a marker.



4. Ashby will hopefully stop asking me if daddy will be home to see them.


5. He will just plain be here. We can see his face, he can get some sleep and we can enjoy quality family time again. We miss you Rog and can't wait until you are finished. We love you!

What to do....

What do you do when your husband is working a whole lot of hours and it's cold? Go to the mall of course. The girls always want to ride the carousel and I thought it would be fun today. The great news was that I didn't have to ride....I get way too motion sick and it ruins the rest of the trip to the mall. Ashby wouldn't look at the camera, but they both had a good time. Yeah for only two more weeks of Roger being MIA.


We also had a good time at the playplace. Ashby's all about having her picture taken!

Best Field Sobriety Test Ever

I needed a laugh today and this is one of my favorites. I laughed so hard the first time I saw it and it's still as funny as ever!

We the jury....

...decree that evidence is indicative of the Worth girls having had fun playing in the snow.

We got a pretty good storm earlier this week. I was out shoveling snow while the kids played. Then we all went to the backyard to play a little snow soccer, tag and throw a few snowballs. I usually am too wussy and cold to stay outside but the shoveling first was key... it made me all warm!

Valentine's Day randomness

Valentine's Day has always stressed me out. It's not quite as bad now as it was when I was younger, but still, I don't enjoy it. For one thing the holiday celebrating love is much, much too cheesy for me. I'm just not so into hearts and stuffed animals. That being said it's still not as bad as it used to be. I used to be a ball of stress about Valentine's Day when I was in elementary school. I used to stress out so much about who was getting what Valentine and what I was going to write on them. I couldn't have any of the boys thinking I liked them, that would be too embarrassing. As I got older and exchanging Valentines wasn't something you did anymore, things were better. As a matter of fact Valentine's Day was usually pretty fun in high school. No one ever had a boyfriend so we would all go out together to eat, very fun. Now that I'm married, I tell Rog I love him every day anyway, so Valentine's Day doesn't seem much different. Not to mention that our anniversary is on the 17th of this month, so my memory can't differentiate between the two holidays, it's all a bunch of red and pinkness.



I have, however enjoyed Valentine preparations this year. Ashby has been out of school because of snow yesterday and today. We made Valentine sugar cookies yesterday and it was pretty fun helping the girls get their Valentines ready for school and story time. We have also tried to start a new tradition. A couple of years ago when we lived in Utah, we wanted to go out to eat with our friends Jamie and Brittany. We went to three or four different restaurants but the wait at each was about 2 hours. None of us thought ahead to get reservations. We ended up getting take out and taking it back to our house. We took Ashby with us and since then I have wanted to do something special on Valentine's Day with the whole family. For us, our anniversary is when we want to get the baby sitter and go out. Last Friday we took the girls to Red Robin for dinner. We haven't gone there in a while and it was really fun. I will definitely look forward to doing something fun as a family for Valentine's Day in years to come.

Our neighbor gave these window clings to the girls. They love them. They say I Love You in about 9 different languages.

The great tag

Ashby and Avery were tagged for the love/hate meme by their friend Grace.

Ashby loves....
her family
school
pizza
panda bears
playing games with family
singing
Family Home Evening

Ashby hates....
macaroni and cheese
going to Lowe's
cleaning the toy room
spiders
people in costumes (mascots, the cow at Chick-fil-a, etc)

Avery loves....
her family
pink bear
candy
pizza
princesses
wearing skirts
primary

Avery hates....
spiders
monsters
when Ashby goes to school
not getting her way
having her hair fixed

I think I'm supposed to tag someone else, but I don't want to put the pressure on, so if anyone wants to share what their kids love and hate, please do!

Soft pretzel follow up

There were a couple requests for the pretzel recipe. I should have included it to begin with, but here it is now! Enjoy.

Soft prentzels

One of our Sunday traditions is to make a special treat and watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Ashby looks forward to it all week. Roger had the idea to make homemade soft pretzels or prentzels as the girls like to say (which is so much harder to say than pretzel....) The results were very good and the girls loved helping. It was a great treat for the kids to help with, they rolled the dough into long snakes and then made a pretzel shape. We went with a cinnamon and sugar topping. They were so tasty!

Here's our prentzels after being boiled in a pot of water for 30 seconds then brushed with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

Here's the prentzels after a 10 minute trip to the oven. I wouldn't recommend using wax paper instead of parchment paper. We set the smoke alarm off because holy cow that paper smokes in the oven! They don't really look as good as they were do they?

Here's what happens when you make prentzels and don't do dishes all day. It's a good thing we have a big sink, it holds lots of dirty dishes!