Valentines Day in Pictures

I think these are self-explanatory...! :)

Winter 2014

FINALLY moving on from Christmas. I must be a little OCD about moving out of chronological order with blogging our life events...it's now JUNE and I'm just getting to January... which is super lame and uneventful and really I should just skip to the present but I just can't do it. I am way too ritualistic with way too many things but I just can't help it! & I still feel blogging is the best way to journal for me, or I would have given it up long ago! Luckily, our winter was quite uneventful so I should be done with it within a few posts. And even if it wasn't I don't really remember it too well... so there isn't a whole lot to tell! :)

Here it is!

 The kiddos were SO excited to look out one winter day to find that Roxy had drawn a perfect bow (or according to E a butterfly) in the powder with her little paws. :)

Parker and Emmie off to school... & little sis not quite ready for the day yet. My bed head looks quite similar to hers... (not nearly as cute)

Chris turned the big 36 in January! & of course I don't remember a thing about what we did for his birthday or what he got.... 

This little one cracks us all up. She is so full of sass and personality... we never know what she's going to do next!

This happy girl was a little obsessed with scarves over the winter. 

Parker and his buddy, Cole, having a read-a-thon. Yep, read-a-thon. So cute. They took the Jazz Reading contest for their school super seriously. The schools with the most minutes had a Jazz player come to an assembly, and their school did it! Parker ended up reading over 3000 minutes in just a 3 week period of time! This boy loves a challenge (especially with prizes and weekly drawings involved) and he really worked hard to read all he could! He did awesome!!

More school days!

This little girl loves to "read" herself! She especially loves Look and Find books, and will yell to me, "Read Mom! READ!" if I pause for a second. 

On a side note, this chair is so not in great condition... especially considering that Lexi has colored on it... not to mention it's too bulky for our Living Room...but it was my brother's and I just can't bring myself to get rid of it! 

Happy Trio! Emmie was in love with her Hello Kitty hat that Mimi (my Grandma) gave her for Christmas!

Emmie only had preschool 2 days a week this year, so these two had a lot of time to hang out. They have definitely turned into the best of friends!

As for me... some might call it frumpy, I call it smart.... but I spent much of my winter in these pups...and savored every second of the coziness! I bought these at Christmas time for someone else but ended up keeping them when I found that person another gift... BEST MOVE EVER! :)Thank you Ann Taylor Loft. These were a definite highlight of this year's hibernation! :)

Christmas Day continued 2013....

Our crazy Christmas afternoon at Mimi's with Dad & Melissa.

 I think I've spent every Christmas afternoon of my life at my cute Grandma's house. She is such the hostess and goes above and beyond in making holidays special. It's obviously hereditary because my Dad takes on the same role. Between the two of them, my kiddos are spoiled beyond measure....

Did I mention that they are professional shoppers? 
That mountain of presents? All for my kiddos...!

Ca-Razy. But so fun for the munchkins. 

Later that day we headed to our next stop, the Hansens where we had a yummy Christmas dinner and more gifts. I obviously was done with taking pictures by then since all I have are these four....but since I took a ton on Christmas Eve over there it all evens out! The movie Frozen came out in November (we went to it the day after Thanksgiving), so the girls were super excited to get Ana and Elsa (in different forms from both my Dad and the Hansens) as gifts this year. That movie and it's soundtrack have become staples in our home and the girls are slightly obsessed! SUCH a great movie!! Cute Cousin Isaac is obsessed with knights and got this darling knight's tent and dragon from Santa, and Chris' Dad surprised him by refurbishing an old bike Chris had used on his mission in Louisiana that had been sitting in their garage. Now he and Parker & Emmie can go on bike rides together! 

And that was our Christmas! It really was a great month and I was so, SO thankful that my kiddos stayed healthy all of December! I quarantined them a bit from friends (besides school) and religiously used On Guard Doterra oil on them and it worked! Although I was finally just coming out of my inner ear problem and my other medical issues I had experienced earlier in the year, I had some big time issues with kidney and UTI infections from Nov-end of Dec and random bleeding (TMI but really I think maybe two people read this and I want to document) that kept me in a lot of pain and running to the Dr and even over the hospital for testing... but by Christmas Day thankfully I was feeling much better. 

Honestly, I think my favorite thing that we did leading up to Christmas was an advent Christmas tree calendar that I printed off, that had scriptures from the New Testament of the story of the birth of the Savior. Each night the kids were so excited to read one and color in another ornament on their advent tree. It was a really great way to keep the focus on what Christmas is truly about - all throughout the month! We will definitely make that a tradition!