This roundup is short as most of January was dominated by time away in Dallas and Seattle. Dave also made a quick trip to Utah to meet up with friends. Other highlights for the month include Sophie starting basketball (later post), and just getting settling back into home after so much time away over the holidays.
While I was in Seattle with the little boys, daddy treated the big kids to a day at Chuck E. Cheese and the Discovery Center
Griffin happy to be back home with all his stuffy loves
Sophie got a balloon kit for Christmas and learned to make several creations in the following weeks
The only pictures I have from Dave's guy trip to Utah. I'm sure they did lots of stuff, but the main activity was a ski day.
Griffin and his super big dark eyes. We get comments about them everywhere we go.
I pulled all the games from the cupboard to get organized and find homes for the new ones we got for Christmas. All pulled out it was amazing to see how much that cupboard had been storing!!
January is always a bit of a dreary month. It's long, mostly cold, and the spark of Christmas is gone. To add some purpose to my days I started a massive home cleanout. I broke down our house into 60 "micro regions" and got to work purging. This wasn't a deep cleaning endeavor, but purely a mission to go through each nook and cranny, take everything out, and put back what made the cut in a more organized way. Of course it won't stay organized, but it will help clear out a lot of junk that had collected in the three years since we moved in. I made it about half way through my list this month, and should finish the rest up in February.
I also got called to serve in the Stake Primary Presidency this month. It was a bit of a shock, but should hopefully be a good growing experience. I really know nothing about Primary after only serving with youth or in the nursery for the past several years, and it will be good to get to know more as my kids will all be primary age for the next several years.
Other January happenings, with photos, are below:
Building (and destroying) things with the giant magna tiles at the Discovery Center
Sophie always does a great job looking after Griffin
One of the dangers of working from home, zzzzzz
Taking a nap snuggled with lion
If you squint real hard, you can see the beginning of a tooth that's close to breaking through!
We met up with friends at Cinergy on MLK day. The big kids did the SkyWalk Obstacle course (Sophie's favorite) and then we through them all into the laser tag arena for a couple games.
I have no memory of why I took this photo. It must have been one of those days...
It was our turn to host Letter Group again, this time for N. I was worried at first because nothing obvious came to mind, but the more I thought I was able to come up with "numerous" fun ideas! We made noodle necklaces, wrote nice notes, ate naan with nutella, caught things with nets, used our noses to identify smells, and pretended to be nocturnal animals to night 9 ninjas and 9 numbers hidden in the "night."
Little Bees had an open play day sponsored by a dealership one morning. Admission there is pricey to bring multiple kids, but we will show up for sure if it's free!!
Charlie collecting eggs, and then Sophie drawing the chicken's portrait
Building walls for his diggers to plow down
I told the kids I would give a candy to whoever could build the largest tower, but it turns out these kids are too competitive. There was sabotage, fighting, and crying so in the end I split it into three different pieces so they could all win.
Charlie and Rossi trying to catch the flying scarves
During my purge I found some fertility drugs in a cupboard from 8 years ago when we were trying to get pregnant with Sophie. Thank goodness we didn't have to go this route again!
Towards the end of January I ordered a book bundle at the library and requested that they include some holiday titles because Valentine's Day was coming up. When I picked up my order I laughed when I saw these instead. Don't forget Groundhog's Day!!
