February Wrap Up

This might be the most eclectic and random monthly wrap up that we've ever posted about. Sometimes I feel sad that the only things we write about are the things that we take pictures of - because not pictured here are the days and days of just living normal life. Chores and books and meals and laundry and park days and library trips and board games and tears and movies and dishes and questions and laughter. So many things, good and hard. But I am grateful that the blogging habit keeps us posting about SOME of the things so that we can remember what life was like for us at this time. 

February has been a hard month. Our first month without Sue and it feels SO sad. But there have been good things, too, and it's beautiful that life can be filled with happy and sad as it moves ever onward. 

Here are a few things that didn't fit into other posts: 

Jason's baptism in Perry. It was beautiful. Lydia was asked to share her testimony and did a beautiful job bearing witness of the impact her baptism has had on her life and the blessings she has felt from the Holy Ghost. 

Lucy's favorite book and "the only book she can read by herself" is Brown Bear, Brown Bear. She loves to read it to me at bedtime and I love to listen to her sweet voice saying "what do YOU see?" 

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This strange cat visited our yard several days in a row and it looked JUST like Crookshanks from Harry Potter (smashed face, ginger cat) and we laughed a lot about it. 

This probably deserves a bigger post than just a brief mention in a wrap up, but this is all I've got. There was a house that came up for sale on the Middletons street in Bluffdale and we went to look at it. While we were looking at that, we found another house just a few miles away that was GORGEOUS and we went to see that one, too. I've said that when we move, it will probably be sudden. We said that we wanted to be in our house for 5-10 years and we just hit 11 year, so according to the life plan, we could move at anytime. We are pretty happy where we are, we love our house and neighborhood. However, there are some things that would draw us to move (*cough* third car garage *cough* homeschool room). We've been specifically holding off because we didn't know exactly what was going to happen with David's job, but he is in a position now (or will be soon) that he could work from anywhere so we've started to explore our options a little. I got excited about the idea of living so close to the Middletons and just a little closer to that part of the homeschooling community we have built. Neither house was a good fit for our family, though - and when we crunched numbers it just doesn't make ANY sense to move. We have such a low house payment and good interest rate, it seems foolish to move for anything other than EXACTLY what we want. (And even then, the idea of quadrupling our house payment is hard to swallow.) But it was fun to look and to dream, and maybe the move won't be as spontaneous as I once thought. We plan to keep an eye open for possibilities over the next year or two. Maybe rates will drop again or something will come up that will make financial and good house sense. 

Cousin Weekend is one of our favorite things about this stage of life we are in right now. Each month all of the cousins get a weekend to hang out together. We take turns hosting and then on our off-months we get a date weekend. It's great for so many reasons, but one of the funniest side effects is that every month there is one Sunday where we either have 9 kids at church, or NO kids at church. This picture is of the 9 kids plus us walking to church together. It makes me smile. 

One of the favorite random things that the kids like to do is create magnetic structures attached to the exercise bike in our bedroom. Austin and Lydia are particularly adept at this and they created this "amusement park" for stuffed animals." 

SNOW! This year hasn't been as snowy as last year, but it makes me happy that we are still getting some good snow days in February. I will say this 100 times, our backyard is the perfect snowy day backyard. Just enough of a sledding hill and plenty of space to play. 

We went to Kohls for an amazon return and decided to swing by the toys to see if it sparked any ideas for Caleb's birthday. He didn't find anything he loved - but LUCY DID. 

Some other random pictures from this month: 1-Lydia and a busy bag toy at church. 2-David took the kids to Sams Club when I was at my homeschool retreat. 

David traveled to Denver for work this month. He's got quite a few travel weeks on his schedule for this year, but thankfully none of them are too long or far away. I think David enjoys the chance to travel and even though I know he doesn't love being away from us - I'm glad that he has such a great job and gets to do some really great things.