Valentine's Craft

I got a silhouette for Christmas this year, and I decided to try making something cute out of vinyl. I found this adorable, sweet phrase and printed it out and put it on a black tile. I made the one with pink writing first, then tried reversing the colors for the second one I made. They both turned out so cute, I just couldn't decide which one I liked better.

I have been having lots of fun with my silhouette machine!

A Black Bath

Isaac got some color tablets in his stocking at Christmas that you put in the bathtub to turn the water blue, red, or yellow. As an aside here, I personally feel that blue is the only acceptable color--who really wants to take a red or yellow bath?? That's just kind of ew. Even more frightening, however, is a black bath.

 This is what results when your older sister leaves your container of bath colors in the tub with the lid partially screwed on and your mom doesn't notice until the water has completely saturated all of the tablets...

At that point, we decided to just dump the whole thing into the tub for one glorious, color-filled bath.

I don't actually think I could have made myself get into that water if you paid me, but Isaac was willing and actually bathed in that before school one day. Kind of crazy.

My Sweet KeeKee

My Keeley girl is such a sweetie! I just love her cute little face.
She is into absolutely everything these days, which is why you can see that the garbage can is now housed on top of the counter--otherwise she finds tasty morsels in there to snack on.

I was particularly sad last week when she made the discovery that she can open the kitchen cupboards; that just opens up a whole new world of diasters for her to create. In addition to the daily flinging about of tupperware, cups and small kitchen appliances, today alone she dumped a bag of Rice Krispies all over the floor and pulled out a loaf of bread, dumped that all over the floor, and proceeded to eat it and crumble it into pieces.
She is walking all over the place and can take about 12 to 15 steps before falling, change directions midstride, and balance in the middle of the room for a while. I'm not sure why she thinks she is such a biggie girl, since she is only 9 months and has been doing these skills for more than a month now.

Valentine's Cookies

We love making sugar cookies for each holiday, and the first Sunday in February, we made some delicous heart cookies for Valentine's.

Keeley didn't actually make or eat any, but she did want to see what everybody else was doing.

The kids were all so sweet and each gave me a cookie they made just for me. Unfortunately, they were all extra nice and gave me their special plate sized cookie and yeah, I ate them. :( And they were delicious.

It was a fun activity, even if it meant I swept sprinkles up off the kitchen floor for a week. :)

After we finished the cookies, we headed over to our old neighborhood a half hour away to attend the monthly ice cream social. We've been going most months since we moved two and a half years ago, and it's been fun to stay in touch with some of our old friends that way. Strangely, we didn't go nearly as often before we moved. My favorite part about going is exchanging books with my friend Jennifer, who is the host of the ice cream social. We both are mainly into young adult fiction, though we do occasionally branch out to other genres. It has been fun to swap books each month and briefly discuss which ones we enjoyed and why.

January in Review

If I posted a single photo to represent our month of January, the above photo would be it. Everybody in the house has been so sick, and as soon as they get better, they have about a week before they come down with something else. From Christmas break through the end of January, we went to the doctor 9 times. I am not exaggerating. We had everything from pink eye, strep throat, ear infections, upper respiratory infections, sinus infections, the flu, and colds. This was, for me at least, quite possibly the worst month of my entire life. We couldn't go anywhere or do much of anything. Even things as simple as a trip to Costco kept getting postponed until "everybody feels better," which I was beginning to feel like that day would never come. We ran out of nearly everything, including butter, which I don't think I have ever allowed to happen before. Sareny and Isaac missed a full week of school, and Finley missed 4 days of preschool. The week it hit me, Keith worked a total of half a day, and spent the week taking over things I normally do so I could try to rest and get better. It was a hideous month, one that I hope never to duplicate again!! Despite her smile, Finley didn't feel good on this day either and stayed home from preschool.

We are currently halfway through February and are still dealing with some sickness, but seem to be past the worst of it. We better be!

A Photostudy of Sisters

One day, Sareny wanted to play with Keeley and apparently she also wanted to do a photo shoot. I love how her sequence of photos show her love for her sister. There were many more in the series, but I selected my favorites.

I'm not sure what was going on with KeeKee's headband, but it makes me think of a doctor wearing a light for surgery.

 I love how Sareny's legs are visible!

I think I like these pictures because even though there is only one subject featured in them, it shows their relationship. It is obvious to me that Keeley loves and trusts her sister.

Keeley is a busy baby!

I took this picture of them the following day when all of the kids were home sick. I love my cute girls!

Field Trip

Isaac's class went on a field trip to a puppet theater to see Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type. There was no way I could chaperone because I have a nursing baby, but I hoped that Keith would be able to take the day off of work and I signed him up to chaperone. Then I found out he couldn't take the day off of work, and that we got picked to chaperone. Luckily, Lexi was able to fill in for us and went on Isaac's field trip with him. She got to ride the bus, and was in charge of Isaac, Kosten, and Jack

When I asked Isaac what they did for his field trip, he said they saw "a not very cool play." Which is just silly, since it sounded pretty cool and Lexi said it was. But he was really happy to have his tia with him. After the play they had lunch at a park.

On Isaac's first field trip to a farm I packed him a donut as a special treat, which his chaperone promptly confiscated since it wasn't healthy! I couldn't believe that rule needed to be enforced on a field trip. I didn't pack him any treats this time around, but Lexi said she could hear kids all around saying, "I ate my cookie first!" or "I have a cookie!" and the chaperones weren't snatching anyone's food away from them.

The other two boys in their group both have long hair, and the one on the left told Lexi people are always asking if he is a girl.

I think Isaac was a bit cold!

Isaac and his tia.

Then the kids played at the playground for a while before heading back to the school.

So glad Lexi could fill in for us! What's rather ironic is that on this day, I was home with an upper respiratory infection, a sinus infection, and strep throat, so Keith took the day off after all so he could stay home and take care of the rest of the kids and I could rest.

Cheer Girls

In January, our local high school had another cheer camp, and Sareny and Finley were so excited to participate. The girls got to cheer and dance at halftime of the varsity boy's basketball game.

 I was home sick on the couch, so Keith took the girls to the practices.

 Finley's friends Sydney and Alora were there again, and Sareny's friend Amelie came this time too.

They had so much fun getting ready for their performance!

 They both learned two cheers and one dance.

The groups were a lot smaller this time, which meant we would have a much better view of the girls!

Here they are in the gym, all ready for their performance. If we're being honest here, I will just have to admit that me and the girls were doped up on advil, because none of us felt very well. But they had been looking forward to this for so long and really wanted to go, so we pushed through. Plus when you have a houseful of sick people for over a month, sometimes you just have to fake it and get out of the house.

They were so cute!

While were taking pictures in the lobby, Amelie and her family showed up, so I took a picture of the BFF's.

I once again fixed the girls shirts so they wouldn't drown in them, and Sareny wore the cheer skirt I made for her for Halloween.

Here we are, waiting for the show to begin!

Lexi and Scott came to support them as well.

Cute little KeeKee!

As I mentioned earlier, there weren't nearly as many girls this time around, and we were a lot closer to them since we were in the gym, so we had a good view of the girls. They had them divided by age, and Sareny's group came out second.

They danced to the Jonas Brother's Burnin' Up, and it was really cute.

Sareny told us later that when she realized that everyone would be able to see her a lot better this time, she was a little nervous. She said it was a lot scarier than dancing at the football game.

We were all a little bit puzzled by her extremely low kicks. I really was thinking, surely she can kick higher than that! Later, I figured out that she didn't wear her bloomers or any shorts under that skirt, so she did low kicks so nobody would see her underwear. This after I had mentioned to her that she needed to wear her bloomers!

Finley's group was the last to perform, and they were just so cute!

They danced to the song by One Direction You Don't Know You're Beautiful.

It really was funny and cute watching Finley perform. She was usually about 2 beats behind in the song--she would see the cheerleaders do a move, and she would do that move as they were moving on to the next thing. It was adorable.

It really was fun watching my girls shine!

Sareny and Amelie after the game.

Afterwards, we went home to have dessert and a glow in the dark party. We had some glow in the dark bubbles that were supposed to be really cool, but were rather disappointing and didn't really work. They glowed in the sword they were in, which we named the sword of truth, but didn't glow when you blew them. We also wore glow bracelets, turned out the lights, and played hide and seek. It was a pretty fun evening, and after many round of hide and seek, I finally called it quits since I just really wanted to be in my bed! I heart these girls!