February Wrap Up

February stinks but we entertained our selves by...

Celebrating President's Day!

Making New Family Home Evening Treats. And lessons on Stranger danger!During which Devin grabbed Naomi's arm and said: What do you do if this happened? To our surprse she yelled: "I'll KICK him in the Wiener!!"

Had no idea she knew that word.

She was rewarded with a very proud daddy yelling back:

"YES! Now THAT'S my Girl!"

 Watching lots of basketball.

Go Bronco's!
(mommy and sons date.)

OH and more Basketball. 

Go Sierra!

(my cousin in the state tournament!)

Entertaining Family in town for the state tournament.

Face timing with cutest baby Jonas.

 Guessing our nephew's mission call then
 watching via Facetime to hear it was....
 Mozambique!!

Going on "Spring" runs 

and being pelted by snow.

Evening Costco trips.

Making dinner for lots of sick friends.

 February cabin fever crept in and boredom
 finally did over take us.

Resulting in...

And Staging lots of Ninjago battle scenes.

Or as Gage says NinjAAAA YAGO!!!

As you can see he says it with passion.

February was also a month of:

Coming home from early morning workouts to find my little studier. 

 And my early riser who rises who doesn't show her face for the first hour of the day.

 It was also a month of getting to church very early,(Devin has to bring young men to prepare sacrament)meaning time for Cache to crawl under the car and turn himself black and time for Gage to decide he needs to bring 2 tennis balls to church without taking no for an answer. Resulting in a mama in heels carrying a punching screaming 2 year old across an icey parking lot and then that same 2 year old throwing himself dramatically on the foyer floor and banging his fists while yelling.

 Yes we all needed a sign of spring!

 (Ward Valentine/prime rib dinner table decor)

Adios February. We tried our best to make the most of you but..
Blek. Good ridance.

Valentines

VALENTINES DAY

 Pre-school valentine art.

 So cute. I had my boys do it too.

Cache's school Valentine party.

Naomi was so excited to be invited to her brothers party.

She picked her own outfit. I ask her to smile and she did a toe pop,

I didn't teach her that! But I do love it.

Valentine tag with his friend Livi.

His mailbox didn't help his class clown status go down any...

Makes me happy that Cache still thinks it's super cool when I visit him at school.

But he won't hold my hand like the other first graders hold their mommy's hands.. :(

Valentine's after school. 

*Devin got me 1st Season of Ducky dynasty- because I'm a hillbilly like that.

He also got me a Tahitian dance video- because I'm Tahitian like that. 
My Valentine to Devin was new "man sized" bath towels and:

He liked it so much he turned into Sean Connery.

 They liked theirs too.

That night, Devin took the kids over to our neighbor Shane's house to give him a Valentine.

When they didn't come back, I went too. Lots of the neighbors gathered there and we sat around and visited for awhile. It was so nice. Shane is probably about 90. He lost his son (and housemate) and dog in a car accident recently.   He also lost his wife from old age the same month! Talk about loss. His son Steve was the neatest guy. In fact the last time I saw Steve, my car battery died when Devin was out of town and I was desperate to pick up Cache from school.  Steve came across the street and took care of me.  Sweetest man. Him and his dog "Cho Cha" are very missed. 

I got to finally share that story with Shane about his son.

Unplanned, but it warmed our hearts to connect with our neighbors that evening and ended up being a perfect topping to our Valentine's day.

... 

A late spaghetti dinner by candlelit.

 Sealed the day with a spaghetti slurp kiss. (Lady and the Tramp style you know?)

Aaaah! Close your eyes!

 HAPPY LOVERS DAY!

A simple thankful day.

Sometimes I have bad days. Now I realize on bad days 99.9% of the time are because I am not having a grateful heart.  So now I call them my "ungrateful day." I even warn Devin. "I'm feeling super ungrateful today so if I feel the need to plan why I need to redo every gross room in the house and complain about my body and the dirty carpet and my calling and anything that walks in front of me... don't take it personally. And I'll try really hard not to be mean BUT... " Then he laughs and tries to talk me out of  it.  But that won't work. I need my stewing time.     Even if I know the reason, it takes a good day of just being on edge for me to finally put on some great Pandora, accomplish some random small goal and have Devin come home It won't be till he bursts in the door after his loooongest day of work ever and after each child tackles him and I try to avoid all eye contact because I've been in the kitchen the entire day and I've swept 4 times and their is still crumbs STUCK to my feet.  He then tackles me. And I get mad but he keeps laughing and finally I melt and laugh and apologize for me to really SNAP me out of it.


Today though? Today is not one of those days. Today I ate a piece of licorice before breakfast. And it made me smile. Today I took the kids grocery shopping and Naomi helped me pick out tulips for our table for Valentine's dinner.  My heart felt it was gonna burst with love at watching Nay and her dress and favorite polka dot tights and pink rain boots and pig tails try to teach her brother how to skip down the sidewalk even though she can't skip at all.  And I had the distinct vision of the future me unloading groceries to an empty house and so wishing Gage was still there insisting that the single box of cereal is not enough for a big boy like him to carry in and is yelling at me: "I HEP you MAMA. Pwease. I hep you carry it." And demands I let him carry big bags that are too heavy for him even though it means cans are rolling under the car and will stay there till I carry a sleeping Gage to the car this afternoon to go pick up his older brother from school.  Gage will glare at me until we get too the school and we see Cache walk as slow as he can across the huge playground, kicking snow, chasing other kids until he is almost the last child left and we have been waiting for 15 minutes, then when he gets 20 feet from the car he will sprint as fast as any 7 year old ever has and run SMACK into the side of the car and fall down.  Because he thinks it's funny and worth getting a big lecture every day from his mother.  Then Gage's glare turns into a laugh. He throws his blanket and binky down. (Which we will search for before bedtime all over the house and then remember it is in the car.)  Yes today is not one of those days. My house is grungy and cluttered and yes I will spend the rest of the day trying to undo that, while little hands make new ones, so that by the end of the day, it won't look much different. Maybe even worse.
Today that is okay though. It is a beautiful mess.  My heart is full and I am so grateful.

A squirrelly Winter

I just need to record some bad behavior. We'll laugh one day right?  Our home teacher was over last night.(Brian Hanks)  And he is super great always doing a kid version of the lesson before a more adult discussion with us.  My point is the following is not his fault.  Our kids are the WORST when home teachers are over. Worse than they ever ever ever act with us. It's incredible and it's embarrassing and shoot. I'll just tell you that during the visit, Gage tore down part of the curtains. YUP. Sure did. Cache kicked Naomi off the couch. Like foot to face, Naomi went flying heels over head. Yes.   Sent to his room.  Right before the end, Cache sulked back out to join us.  We thought all was calm.  Nope. Naomi told to take her water bottle in the kitchen because Gage wanted it and she didn't want to share, which she did but first took the lid off and dumped it on Cache's head and the couch???!!! I was speechless. We were 1 foot away from her. I had no words. I've never seen them act that extreme.

We have been getting phone calls from Cache's teacher reporting "squirrely behavior." Meaning he just is silly at the wrong times. He is silly, ALL the time.  Sweet, but silly. When I volunteer in Cache's class the kids get BIG smiles on their faces and then proceed to tell me all the things Cache does that make the teacher mad.  Stick silly pictures of Gorillas making funny faces on the board when the teacher isn't looking.  Also the teacher has to put a mark on the board evertime she hears Cache talk in a funny voice. And if he gets 5 marks he doesn't get a sticker...OH boy. (I have to report that since the teacher and I got on the same page, it didn't take long for Cache to curb his silliness and save it for recess.)

And last but not least... The kids TEE PEED our bedroom. I don't know how, when or where I was. Or more importantly, who taught them what that was?  But Yes they did.

Devin and I discovered this as we went to bed late one night. After getting over the confusion, and bewilderment, we had to sit down on our bed and just laugh at each individual piece we spotted around the room.  We couldn't stop.  They got it everywhere, on the ceiling fan, on top of the door jams,(look at the top of the bathroom door in the picture) tied on bows on our nightstands. Wow. 

All this time I have been wanting my children to be better friends.   It is finally happening. 

But... maybe I didn't realize what I was asking for?

  

McCall - Winter Festival

My Dad called me up and said  he needed to get away from farm stress for a bit.

I said that I knew just the ticket. A little slice of heaven called McCall.

And it just happened to be the winter festival!

Next thing we know, Nick, Sarah and Danny are coming too!

Ye haw. 

Load up and take your car sick medicine!

McCall was breathtaking in the winter. 

And we had a cute cabin.

 We ate at the pancake house.

Hands down the best cinnamon rolls ever.   

Yes I realize what that looks like.

Bought wooden toys at The Christmas House.

Saw the incredible snow sculptures.

 Most sculptures were from the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

This one you could walk inside of.

A lot of the sculptures had slides coming off them or out of them for the kids.

 Gage attempted to lick every inch of every sculpture. 

Everything is food to Gage. 

 We pulled the kids around town on sleds.
The entire lake was frozen  and you could walk and sled on it!
Winter Wonderland.

I love heem.

Uncle Nick is such a fun Uncle.

This was Danny boy's first time sledding. :)

 Devin and I had to literally run Naomi and Gage home via piggy back.
They were so happy then suddenly hit an I'm-so-cold-and-tired-I-can-only-scream-bloody-murder wall. 

Back to the cabin and into Grandma and Grandpa's warm jacuzzi bathtub.

Then a belly full of warm dinner and hot chocolate.

Life got a lot better.

These two boys! Grandma let them pick a toy at the toy store. They both picked little flashlights for their fingers? We all tried to get them to pick something different. There were some really neat wooden toys!  But not. They fit like rings and the boys were really funny about it.  

Fireworks over the lake.

The night did not begin like this but,
believe it or not I slept in this bed too.

It's always too short of time when we go to McCall.

We packed up and said goodbye to Danny's Mr. Snowman.

 We will be back.