February Update!

Ya know, I figured you all are pretty sick of seeing my kitchen, so I thought I'd do a quick update on what's been going on in the Hartman home this month. Besides I like to kill 2 birds with one stone and print these out for my journal, so just bear with me. It's been a busy month, but what's pitiful, is that I have really no pictures to show - so you'll just have to take my word for it.

The month started off with Jeff and Steve heading north near Flagstaff for a snow campout with the scouts. They had a blast cross-country skiing, sledding and building snow igloos. Jeff and a couple of his best friends slept in their igloo (a tarp instead of snow was the roof) as one of their requirements for earning their survival merit badge.....burrr... no thanks.

Actually, we can just call this Jeff's month since last week he, with his dad and other deacons, did baptisms for the dead. This was his first experience and he truely loved it (in spite of waking up at 4am to go). Jeff also had his Jr. High orientation last week and also had baseball tryouts where he found out he'll be on the same team as his 2 best friends (and with 7 teams for his age group, this is very rare). Needless to say he's so excited! This week Jeff and the other deacons and beehives are performing in the roadshow - they have a cute little singing and dancing number they perform dressed as missionaries, very fun, but he's glad tonight's the last night for roadshows.

Whew...on to Starr. Her highlight this month was going up near Sunrise ski resort (4 hrs away where they spent the entire day sledding with Janae's family. She said a news reporter was there talking with them, and that she should be on youtube...but we'll see.

Josh was evaluated by a speech therapist on Monday and they will continue to come weekly to help work with him. Oh, for those of you who don't know, Josh is turning 2 in about 5 weeks and doesn't talk...at all...seriously. Sometimes the most we can get out of him is "ma" and that's it. The therapist wants us to start introducing him to sign language and more babbling sounds, so this should involve the whole family. But we sure enjoy Josh, he's the sweetest and most loving little boy. What a joy!

On top all all this, we enjoyed mom and Paul's visit last week for a few days. Mom and I were able to work on grandma bushmans headstone and make a plan for that. Also, Katie and Bryce hosted FHE for the entire family since mom was here at Bryce's house -- Katie served a taco bar for dinner...the food was awesome!! (As usual.)

My dad has been here this week - closing up his house for the winter before he heads back to Utah. He helped me get my garden ready yesterday (thanks, again dad!) Whew, I'm ready for March now. I just have to get through our Blue and Gold Cub Scout Banquet tomorrow night. We love all of you -

Happy Wife....Happy Life!!

After 17 years of marriage, Steve has finally learned this concept. Actually, it was more mutal concent and finally tired of broken down appliances, by which we based our decision on to replace our kitchen appliances....and after shopping around and going back and forth between stainless steel and black, we agreed on black (we are sick to death of white). Crystal checked me into reality today and told me that I probably would NOT be happy with anything after I had them a few months since we agreed there just isn't a perfect color. Anyway, here's my before and after pictures. And for those of you who know I'm on this getting rid of debt rampage, yes, we paid cash and it shouldn't set us back too far on our debt snowball.




This is sooo cute. Once we told Joseph we were replacing the refrigerator, he broke down and cried and cried and cried. He tried to talk us into moving it into his bedroom instead of getting rid of it. How in the world can someone attach themselves to an appliance?? Anyway, we sence this will be our child who won't deal with change well in the future...do ya think? Anyway, to help make him happy, we told him last night we would take a picture of he and the fridge and frame it and put it in his room so he can always remember his precious refrigerator! What a story this will make when he's older, huh? So here's the picture:

See...there is snow in Arizona!!!

It's been a busy week, but I finally have a few minutes to post an update. On Wednesday, Steve took the day off and we surprised the kids by pulling them out of school at noon and driving north of Mesa (about 2 hours) for some fun in the snow. Boy, we were the coolest parents ever...for about a day. Anyway, we had a great time and on the way home, with my kids feeling as frozen as popcicles, they all agreed unamiously, that they NEVER wanted to live where it snowed (even Starr, who kept telling us she wanted to move to Chicago)!!! We're quite happy living where we live, but it was still a fun afternoon.