the February chronicles

Well look at that, I’m back for round two for February!! This month may have been short but it certainly was packed. So here we go!

The month unfortunately started off with the stomach bug that has run rampant everywhere. It took our smallest one down, but thankfully he was a champ. It cancelled a weekend away at a marriage conference for Nick and myself, but what better way to strengthen our marriage than handling sickness, amiright??

One of my friend’s daughters had a Galentine party and even though I don’t have a daughter to invite, she was still so sweet to include me! I love doing life with all these girls and their mamas. And who doesn’t love a reason to have a girlie party full of hearts and pink?!

Sunday school with these crazies is a weekly adventure. Throw in the scripture memory prize box and it’s just chaos. All I asked for was a normal picture and this was the result.

Luke got to be student of the week this month and he was pumped!! The end of the sentence ‘I love….’ is URBAN AIR. Every little boy’s heaven.

Caleb found out he was having a field trip to the skating rink and apparently our big time parent fail is we have never taken our kids skating. So we promised that we would take him before the field trip to prepare and that’s exactly what we did! These kids have it easy with these walkers these days, but it’s probably because of parents like us that forgot to ever take our kids skating. Whoops. Caleb couldn’t believe how well I could skate and that I basically skated all of the time growing up. Gotta love the 90’s.

Caleb has become a nonstop reader and it’s proved difficult to keep him with books because he flies through them so quickly. I feel like he is a boy after my own heart because we both love the idea of a brand new book to read.

One day it did turn into him creating his own ‘library’ in his room where he pulled ALLLL the books off his shelves and allowed all of us (mostly Luke of course) to check out books. Love the imagination even amidst the mess. And he is still not totally my kid with that organization right there?? 🤣

Basketball season is still happening and he is LOVING IT!!! Their team has worked so well together this year. It’s always so much fun to see how much they learn year to year!

Making valentines was the easiest it’s ever been! Caleb pretty much did all the work for his cards and for Luke’s. Win win! We also created a super fun box for his Valentines for school that looked like a Nintendo Switch with his favorite Kirby game right now. The kid may LOVE sports but he also loves being creative! We were both very proud.

These two cuties both wore jerseys on Super Bowl Sunday to church and I pretty much completely humiliated them by making them take a picture together. Because apparently in second grade, we already don’t talk to the opposite gender because SO embarrassing. Well too bad, so sad. One day I may be showing it at their wedding and they’ll be thanking me for forcing a picture on them.

Speaking of Super Bowl Sunday, this was a small snippet of the complete chaos fun of that day. I ventured down to the basement a handful of times but for the most part, I barely saw the kids during that whole game.

Every month our family serves at a ministry for special needs and we absolutely love it! I meant to get a picture of the 4 of us all together but totally forgot in the fun of it all. But thanks to BeReal on the drive home, we have documentation of us 3 in our All Stars shirts.

Every year for Valentine’s Day, our family does a special charcuterie dinner to celebrate with chocolate covered strawberries and valentines candy spread out on the board as well. Something as simple as being able to reach all thru the meal for whatever you want (including candy!) absolutely makes the boys’ lives. We had to up the dinner to the night before Valentine’s Day because of a snow storm causing me to last minute fly out on Valentine’s Day evening. But they weren’t even phased by that as long as it happened!

Our fun surprises on Valentine’s morning has always included a Valentine’s themed book and some type of candy! This year Caleb outgrew the picture book and it seemed like a good reason to just buy him another real book for the reasons from above. They both were beyond pumped!

Decked out in Valentines gear before school! Caleb also declared himself too old for a themed shirt so Nanan obliged and got him a red Under Armour shirt instead. Why do these kids insist on growing up?!

I sure am thankful for a fantastic co-teacher to celebrate those party days with at preschool! (And willing to wear ridiculous headbands with me.)

As annoying and hectic that snowstorm made my life, it did land me a day with the sissy! Which is always a huge bonus!

And then the real purpose of the trip was to celebrate with Katie saying goodbye to Fort Worth! We drove by all the places we lived (including that door we are standing in front of!), our grad school, some of our favorite places, and even got to see some familiar faces. It was certainly a trip down memory lane!

A fun thing we love to do every February leading up to Valentine’s Day is write a reason we love each boy and post it on their door. They eat this up like candy! Some are serious, some are silly, but who doesn’t love words of affirmation?!

We managed to knock dentist and doctor check-ups all in the same week! The kids LOVED us for that.

The oldest kiddo in our small group was in a play so most of the families went to support her, children and all! We pretty much are a big extended family so it was so fun to have all of us in the audience watching one of our own up on stage. And I’m happy to report that the kids (even our 4 year old!) did way better than I expected!

Caleb ended the month celebrating his BFF’s birthday at Main Event! His group of buds had a day of bowling, laser tag, arcade games, and LOTS of pizza. To say they LIVED IT UP was an understatement.

And that was February!!!! WHEWWWW!! For a short month, we really crammed in all the things. Or maybe I just don’t really realize how busy our lives are until I decide to do monthly recaps… Either way, here’s to a WARMER March! Come on sun, do your thang!