Family Updates for February

Ryan has started reading the kids a couple chapters of a book every night before bed. Right now they are reading about a Series of Unfortunate Events. They recently read thru almost the entire collection of the Chronicles of Narnia (until we lost book 6). Anyways, the kids love it, and usually I am cleaning and trying to do things ... but I'm exhausted. So another blog post it is! February was a relatively calm month. It seems like they are all flying by so fast! I have made it a goal to make something from food storage every day ... but between cooking (it helps warm up the house a lot!) and then our basic schedule there isn't a lot of free time anymore. I also have been coupon-ing myself to death, lol. Which again takes up a lot of time trying to rebuild our 90 day supply here, but it's really paying off. It just means by the end of the day, Ryan and I are both completely exhausted. Anyways, so Colton has started telling me all he wants are donuts. Everyday I will ask him if he'd like a drink and he'll tell me, "Donuts Mommy!". I ask him if he wants some cereal, "Donuts Mommy!". Ask him if he'd like a diaper change, "Donuts Mommy!". Well, you get the idea ... so for family home evening one night I made donuts. Oh my goodness ... he was sooooooo happy! It was a bit of a stretch, but I compared our family and how we're all necessary ingredients to make something sweet & wonderful ... like the donuts. I found a recipe to make a chocolate glaze that I'm going to try on Saturday morning for him again. I really like making them (it saves money & is a cool thing to do) ... it's just VERY time consuming.

We focused on more coloring and art stuff. I finished up a bunch of unfinished projects too ... trying to kill time for spring to come ... meanwhile everyone in Vegas was telling us about their poor 60 degree weather. Ugh.

We tried freezing water to make cool colored ice blocks. I had seen it on a kid blog somewhere ... but when I actually tried it I made my colors vibrant, rather than dull & watered down like theirs were. Um, yeah. There's a reason that the STAINING food dye had been used sparingly ... poor kids got to see me pour it out and make multi-colored snow & grass and it took days for their hands to turn back to their original colors.

Jax is having lots of fun eating more & more ... and then getting to take more and more baths afterwards. Which he absolutely loves.

I spent HOURS making the kids cute valentine's day shirts ... and have absolutely no pictures of the kids in them, except for this. LOL.

Then Ryan had a birthday in February! I spent my entire morning ... literally HOURS trying to make this multi-layered cake for him. And it crumbled to bits when it was time to stack it up (I told you I suck at cakes). So I made him a chocolate sheet cake instead. Definitely yummy. Although next time I'll cut it in half (at least) ... it's so rich and I ended up throwing most of it away the next day ... we just couldn't all finish it. And I can't remember the last time I threw a cake/brownie/treat away (usually Colton will lick it to death when I'm not looking)....

And on our three month moving anniversary (should that be something we ever really celebrate???) ... we finally got to take the kids sledding! Oh my goodness, I think Savannah was the most thrilled of all to get to be out & play.

The move has been the hardest on Savannah. She's not old enough to get to go to school and get the daily interaction with friends, but she's old enough that she needs and misses her friends ... and has no real outlet for that. I've tried spending more time with her and making her special things. Like this dress ... it really helped her feel special. Getting to go sledding, combined with a really sweet girl named Olivia talking to her at church really helped her. I think this day was her turning point.