Valentine's Day

Zack and I got to go out the night before Valentine's Day (thanks for babysitting, Mom!). And then we  spent an entire day with the kids on Valentine's Day.  They didn't have school, which was AWESOME! 

I made a card to send to Zack and to our family...

We ordered our valentines about 2 weeks ahead because Emmy wanted to start working on hers.  We had to get Frozen ones of course.  She spent a TON of time writing her name on all of them, and then writing each friend's name.  We also mailed some to our good friends and cousins. 

 She had a method and was very organized - checking names off as she went...

On Valentine's Day, we woke up and went straight to Lamar's for breakfast.  They had huge heart donuts. Perfect!  After that, we went to see the Lego Movie.  Smith had sat through another movie a few months ago and did great, so we figured he could do it again.  He couldn't.  He and I ended up walking around about half the time.  Oh well, we are almost there!  The older kids loved it.

After the movie, we came home and we gave the kids each a new sticker book.  They sat for hours and worked on them, played a lot of legos, and we rested for a bit.

Then we had a heart shaped pizza for dinner, followed by a Valentine's cake that they helped me make earlier.

 Here are some pictures from their school Valentine's parties earlier in the week…

I always have fun planning Zane's parties.  I have a friend who helps me - it's always good to see the kids enjoying all of the ideas we find...

 Emmy's party was so cute.  She spent so much time doing each craft perfectly.  She's so artistic lately.  She was also so excited to give all her Valentine's that she had worked so hard on.

February So Far...

 I tried to get a close up of the kids - and I could not get a normal expression from Smith.  LOL.  Love it.

                                      

 These guys are hard core basketball players!

 We love when our friends come over to play -
Spider Girl and Super Girl!

 Little buddies...

 Check out Zane's desk - woah, what a mess.  But there is so much to do in this little corner of our house - they love the space.  He was teaching Smith how to put a lego on.

 Oh our sweet Molly

 I am not a pet person.  Let me repeat, I am NOT a pet person, but Emmy begged me into signing up to bring her class pet hamster Striker home for the weekend.  The things you'll do for your kids!! :)

It was an adventure for sure.  The highlight was when he was running his the little wheel on the side of the cage and the wheel just fell right off.  He saw a chance to escape and went for it full force.  I had to push him back into the wheel and somehow connect it back on while he was in there.  I got the creeps for sure!  Then, all night, when I heard him running in there, I was terrified it was going to fall off again and he was going to escape and get lost in our house (or my bed). Haha.
Thank goodness he lived through the weekend and we were able to safely return him.

 Emmy loved him.  She took good care of him.  Zane didn't like how he smelled so he agreed he would never ask to get a hamster again.

 He ate right out of her hand.

 Smith and Molly loved him too.  Smith got to pet him, which sometimes was more of a squishy push.  Poor Striker.

 Last weekend we had a movie night with root beer floats.  This was all 4 kids (our kids and Molly) snuggled in to watch the movie. They all actually sat still for a few minutes!

 Root beer floats!

 I love when all 3 kids play together. This night they were all superheroes and I sent them on missions all night long
Emmy was Flash

 Zane was Wolverine and Smith was Iron Man.

The first part of February was cold, cold, cold, cold and snowy.  We had a couple pretty decent storms, and it was below zero temperatures. We were trapped inside for a few days straight.

 Luckily, we did go sledding one time and played outside a few times before it got so cold.

 Emmy, Smith and I went to a little museum by our house with some friends.  Emmy played in the train station a lot of the time.

 Here they are selling train tickets

 Clare and Emmy

 Gray and Smith

 Just a cute pic of Smith eating a donut and homemade vanilla steamer for a snack. Healthy!!

 Smith and Molly doing puzzles together. Molly helped by standing on the puzzles. Haha.

 Zane just got to do a second big independent project for school.  He decided to research caves this time around. This guy worked so hard on it.  The whole process of checking out library books, reading them and taking notes, organizing thoughts, planning the poster, doing the poster,  printing and glueing on pictures, building a cave and writing about how he made it, and presenting his work in class - was a LOT of work.

He would choose to read his cave books and research at night before bed instead of fun reading. He thought of most the ideas of how to do things, and he did almost all of it on his own.  Wow, I'm so amazed at him and I'm so proud of him.

I took some pics of him working on his poster.

 His poster was in two parts...

 Lego cave with stalagmites and stalagmites, and a crystal inside.  And a bat is in the back.

 I found Emmy and Smith snuggled together when they were watching TV.


Here's Smith practicing riding his bike inside.

 Here's just a cute one of Smith from when we went swimming the other night.