Our goldendoodle, Toodles, turned 1 year old yesterday. She got to wear a special birthday bandanna, ate a birthday bone, and we had a birthday party for her. Here she is opening her birthday present:

We had our first snow day of the year on Tuesday, so we decided to have a Snow Party to celebrate. I jumped on Family Fun's website and got a bunch of great ideas. We had a wonderful day!

We started by making an indoor snowman. We wrapped boxes in white felt (leftover from our Christmas village) and taped on felt facial features. The boys were especially excited that he wouldn't melt.

Next we built indoor snow forts by draping batting over some chairs. Not high tech, but the kids had fun. Then we crumpled up pages from a magazine I had in the recycling bin and called them snowballs. Check out this intense snowball fight!


After all that snow play, we needed a snack. We made these snowman-on-a-stick treats with marshmallows and drank hot chocolate, of course.

We ended our party watching Snow Buddies, which Azlan got from Santa this year. We sat in the snow fort to watch the movie and even eat lunch! We had a great snow day and I didn't freeze to death - or have to deal with all the snow gear.

They've already canceled school for tomorrow -- guess I'll have to bust out the snow cream recipe!

For the new year, I've established a few new goals to help better myself. I've done OK keeping up with them for the first month, so I thought I'd share what's working for me.

One goal is to develop a daily Bible reading habit. I've tried to do this on my own before, but always faltered after a little while. This year I found John Piper's reading plan that gives me more direction.

This plan provides 4 bookmarks that you place in 4 different parts of your Bible: Old Testament, Psalms/Proverbs, Gospels, the rest of the New Testament. You are led to read a passage from each bookmark every day. One thing I love, is that there are 25 days per month, so the plan gives flexibility for those days you have to miss.

I am really enjoying reading from different sections of the Bible every day. I am amazed how God weaves a consistent message throughout the entire Bible. I would recommend this reading plan to anyone.