Fun In February

February was a pretty good month. The kids worked on their bed-making skills.

Ammon's leaves a little bit to be desired, but he's working on it. Lydia has been crowned around here as the best kid bed-maker there is. Even beating out her eight year old Aunt Kayleen. I mean, she even makes a bed for her Sophia doll on top of her own bed! It makes a mom's chest swell with pride. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it lasts through teenage years.

I have started a renewed effort to teach Ammon his letters, numbers, and shapes. Lydia had it all down at this point and was learning sounds, so I was feeling a little neglectful. However, Ammon is different in that he just has no desire. It's like I'm torturing him every time we pull out the alphabet book. He was that way with learning his colors and I had to turn everything into a game for him to even try, and even then he would say the wrong color just to be funny. He's a giant stinker like that.

So I decided to make a game and have him park his car at the "A store" or the "triangle store" and see if he could park it in the right one. He knows the letter A and the circle shape...and besides that he calls every other letter "D" and every other shape "triangle"...no matter what it is. He lasted about ten minutes with this game, went through three different car models, got mad when I wouldn't let him use Lydia's giant, pink barbie car - even though I explained it wouldn't fit in the parking spots - and finally settled on an airplane. After the ten minutes I just resorted to letting Ammon pretend he was driving to Fred Meyer and the library.

Even though we didn't get much learning done, he loved the one-on-one time while Lydia was at preschool, and I think if we keep at it he'll get it eventually. My boy is sure different than my girl. And that's ok. I love it.

Here in Washington they have a midwinter break where the kids are off school for a week in February. We made the most of the dreary weather and lack of outings that appealed to large age ranges by creating our own stay-cation at home.

First Ryan and I built a giant fort in the living room.

Lots of blankets and clothes pins and safety pins. I have to say making forts does not lose it's appeal with age...or maybe just not for me. I totally got into it and was like, "Let's make the best fort EVER!" :)

Next I ran to the store to get supplies to make movie-snack necklaces and to get a redbox for everyone to watch. Then we planned our indoor picnic and made our snack necklaces.

We popped the movie in, ate our lunches and snacked on our necklaces. It was a blast!

The kids played in the fort the rest of the day until we finally had to take it down.

The rest of the month was spent catching the few days of beautiful weather. February is quite dreary here. It rains and rains and rains, and is pretty gray when it's not raining. However, it's still beautiful.

This is a bridge that I cross when I ride my bike on the Arcadia trail behind our house, and the view from the bridge. I love it.







There was also ONE day that so beautiful. The sun came out and the skies were actually blue!

Do you know how rare that color of sky is during the winter in Washington? So rare. In the summer it's like this every day, but the window is short.

I spent all morning at the park with my bestie, getting a workout in using the stairs and a picnic table while our kids ran around playing. I think I commented 1000 times on how much I loved the weather.









That afternoon while my kids were sleeping I took advantage of my brothers being home and decided to explore some trails in our neighborhood.

I took this picture walking down the street because: what is that peaking through the pine trees? THE SUN! Oh glorious sun! It's amazing what it does for a person. I was SO happy that day. I spent an hour hiking on the trails, listening to music, and happy as a clam. I came home, woke my kids up, helped them learn to ride scooters and bikes, and did a few loops around our circle on my own bike. So basically I spent the entire day out in the sunlight. I could go on and on, but basically I'm excited for summer when this is my everyday. Especially when it's supposed to downpour this entire week.

So I think that we had some pretty good times this month. We looking forward to Lydia's birthday coming up and hopefully more springtime weather!