February 2022 Roundup

February is often one of our slowest months of the year, which is not a bad thing! The weather lends more towards indoor adventures, soccer is on hiatus, although Sophie did play Upward basketball, all the Christmas aftermath has long since settled, and there are no birthdays or major holidays. That being said, we still got up to plenty. Here are a few highlights:

Afterschool snack at Sam's is always a favorite

Pretty sure Griffin's eyes are bigger than his face

Sophie played Upward basketball for the 3rd/4th grade Ducks. After having last season cancelled (covid) it was a slow start this year trying to relearn skills, but she did eventually find her rhythm and was able to score a few times in the later games. 

Little siblings having fun during the basketball games

Griffin looking dapper for church

Charlie's Letter Group had a field trip to Fish Pros where we were able to see and touch lots of critters. Feeding the turtles and koi was a favorite of both boys!

First trip to Five Below! We discovered they have dime candy so the kids were able to each fill a bag with the $1 bill grandma had sent them for Valentine's day.

Group project puzzle - I did the water and then the kids worked together to finish the land

Safety goggles definitely recommended for eating popcorn

The kids had school off for President's Day so we went to Lubbock with friends to play at the Science Spectrum. Charlie was there even though he didn't make it into any pictures!

Also fun close to home at our own Discovery Center. Griffin is destined to be a star at something someday. So much personality in his little body!

We got to host Letter Group for H. We read Old Hat, New Hat and I invited all the kids to come with a fun hat to show off. Other activities included playing hopscotch, making a Hungry Caterpillar craft and eating honeycomb for snack. 

January/February 2022 Video Clips

February 2021 Roundup

The major cold storm was the main story for February, but we did have lots of other little things going on before and after everything was buried in snow for a week. We had lots of park days (hard to believe we had days close to 80 and days -11 below all in the same month), lots of fun at the Discovery Center, we took a day trip to Lubbock, and watched the Super Bowl with friends. 

The Panhandle area (Amarillo + surrounding counties) also moved from Level Red to Level Orange for covid!! In practice nothing much changes, but Level Orange does mean our hospital numbers and the daily new cases numbers are both low.  Things here spiked out of control around Thanksgiving, and it's been so encouraging to see things finally moving in the right direction again. In fact, this was the first month that I didn't get a covid letter from Sophie's school!

Charlie building big towers while Davey was at school and couldn't knock them down

Some girls had brought their pet bearded dragon to the park and let Sophie hold it for awhile. She keeps wanting to go back to that park to see if they will be there again with the lizard. 

Sophie's dream is to take care of animals

Davey wanted to stack the Legos until they were taller than he was. We had to build the towers in the very middle of the table where the Griffin Grabber couldn't reach them.

This is Charlie's treasure box that he keeps in his crib with all his special things. Can you guess his favorite color??

Sophie loves sleepovers with Emery. They beg us to have one pretty much every week and sometimes we let them do it.

Poor Charlie didn't make it home from church awake

We have no loyalties to the Chiefs or Buccaneers, but Davey loves pirates so for the Super Bowl we were Tampa Bay fans. Shockingly they won!!

I got this photo of Davey from his preschool on Valentine's Day

All four kids playing peacefully at the Discovery Center

We had fun at the Science Spectrum in Lubbock on a day off school. This was the first day of freezing cold weather and we debated whether or not to go down. I'm glad we did because after this the kids wouldn't leave the house for the next 8 days.

I took the boys for a walk around the pond once the weather warmed back up. We had to walk to the far side where some ice had melted to get to the ducks. Most of the pond was still frozen solid.

Sophie built Griffin this house of magna tiles at the Discovery Center. It took him about 2 seconds to flatten it after we put him inside.

Smallwoods had a great sale on Valentine's Day so I ordered these giant frames of the kids. They turned out so good and it looks so nice to finally have some pictures on our walls that have been blank for 3 years.

Both kids deny adding "Stinking butt stupid face" to my shopping list, but I did find it hilarious that Alexa categorized it as "meat"

February 2021 Video Clips

February Roundup

Since I'm writing this late, I don't really remember the month of February too clearly, but we had some good (winning smoothies for a year), some bad (the passing of Dave's grandma), and lots of busyness in between. I think I'm starting to learn that things never really slow down for us. Now that our family is bigger we will always have stuff going on, and I think I'm ok with that! 

We kicked off February with a family swim night at WT. Charlie has come to really love the pool and loves cruising around the wading pool in his baby float. At one point he wandered a little to close to the dumping buckets and caught a big splash right in his face. Poor guy :(

The Discovery Center changed their rotating exhibit. We said goodbye to "Rescue" and welcomed "Battle of the Titans." It doesn't even come close to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point, but the kids are super into dinosaurs right now so it's been fun. 

There is a little dig pit with sand where you can look for dinosaur bones

These big foam blocks had been in storage, but they brought them back out when the new dinosaur exhibit was set up. The kids asked me to build them a castle. 

Davey continues to love puzzles. He can do most 24 piece ones on his own, and has even tackled a few of Sophie's bigger one. This princess tower was 48 pieces and the only help I gave was to find the missing pieces that had fallen on the floor!

Dave left us for 5 days for a trip to Chicago for his grandma's funeral. We sent him this photo to let him know we missed him (and were still alive). 

While Dave was gone, the sporting goods store near our house had a massive "spring cleaning" blowout sale, only I didn't hear about it until I sat down for Charlie's nightly feeding. So instead of bedtime, I loaded all the kids into the van in their pajamas and we went on a shopping spree. All this stuff, plus a few other things not pictured, was purchased for under $100!

Davey requests dinosaur noodles almost every day for lunch, but one day I decided to change things up and made chocolate banana muffins instead. They were a hit!

I let the kids play with my camera before bed one night. Sophie took hundreds of photos, but this was the only one I kept. It was fun to look through the camera roll with her, and then move them all to the recycle bin. Hooray for digital. 

This big tractor has been working at the south end our neighborhood for several weeks now. One Sunday I took the kids out to get a closer look while it was "resting." We always see it driving around in the middle of the field, but it was much bigger once you got close!

Charlie is getting more adventurous now that he can stand. We really have to watch him in bathrooms because he loves to unroll the toilet paper, sift through the garbage, and turn on the bathtub. 

Sophie brought this home from school and I hung it on the fridge so she would remember he goal to "be nicer" to Davey. Acknowledging the problem is the first step!

He's growing fast, but still fits in the kitchen sink

Swim night at WT, and this time Sophie brought her friend Emery. 

Charlie sleeping on the floor during YW, and the girls were all so jealous that he got to nap during church.

I'm not sure who was putting who to bed here tonight...

Some February video clips