Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was fun this year. Pretty low key, we didn't really do anything all that special for the kids. We made some pink pancakes with sprinkles in the morning. They were all excited about exchanging valentines with their friends at school.

The twins got to have a Valentine's party at joy school. These are the Valentine's I made for them.

Mckinley and I put together a pretty basic Valentine's box but she was very excited about it. She is so easy to please! Hopefully next year we can start a little earlier and make something more creative.

I got a heart shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's and made the kids jello. They eat dinner before Brandon gets home just about every day, because they are so hungry, not because he works late. He has an awesome work schedule that we are very grateful for. Anyway, the kids struggled with the pizza, they would have preferred Little Caesars but I wanted it to be different and festive.

Brandon bought me roses which was very sweet of him, and that night we had a fondue dinner with some of his brothers and parents. It was so fun and I can't believe I didn't take any pictures! We brought our kids with us over to Jason's house and had them play downstairs while we ate and then when it was Ava's bed time I brought them all home, put her to bed, and put a movie on for the other kids and left them all home with Mckinley babysitting. I left my phone for her so we could text her and she did such an amazing job! She got the movie theater all turned off when the movie was over and we came home to the twins asleep and Mckinley just lying in bed by the phone so she could text us. She was so mature and responsible and it was such a wonderful glimpse into the future when she will be able to babysit for longer periods of time for us.

This isn't a great picture of it, but if we tell Ava to fold her arms she just kind of tucks her hands under her chin, it's really cute.

She loves being up where she can play the piano.

So three and a half weeks after Ava threw up, she threw up again and we repeated it all, throwing up for a day and then needing to be held for a few days, followed by an extra dose of whining, and diarrhea. No fun. Poor baby. Mckinley also had this crazy cough that lasted forever. She missed 5 days of school over the span of two weeks, went to school a lot of days coughing, and then finally was better for all of maybe 2 days and then got another cough! So she has been sick this whole week but it's very mild so she hasn't had to miss any school but she is definitely not 100%. Winter can be hard!

One of the kids must have taken this with my phone. We got a huge dumping of snow somewhere towards the end of February and the kids have had a blast every day sledding down our absolutely perfect hill.

Kallie especially is obsessed and goes out twice a day most days. I went out and built a pathetic little snowman with them one day. I threw a carrot down to Kallie off the deck and she couldn't get it in the face so she just rested it on the top of the head. Ha ha ha.

Brandon was able to go out with them on the weekend and build a much bigger, better snowman.

I can't believe how much fun they have had in the snow this year.

I have taken Ava out a few times just real quick since she doesn't have any real snow gear, and she absolutely loves sledding down the hill too and walking around in the snow. She is so adorable.

A few times they have been able to get together with cousins and go sledding down our hill.

Ava loves to get in to all of our drawers and cupboards. This is her happy place.

Brandon and I finally cashed in on our Christmas present and went and painted plates at Color Me Mine. We had such a fun time! We went to Lucy's Pizza for dinner first, then to Color Me Mine, then to Jamba Juice, and got a cookie at Sodalicious on the way home. Megan and Lincoln gave us this gift and the best part about it was that it came with babysitting. Our kids get so excited when those guys come over to babysit. Anyway, it was so fun to do something different for a date instead of just getting dinner or a movie. It inspired us to be a little more creative in the future (hopefully).

February

February was rough. We had all that sickness that I posted about and then had a little bit of normal life, and then more sickness. This post is pictures from when we were relatively healthy.

Cute cute baby! We just love her to death.

One of the days when Mckinley was home sick from school she sat down at the kitchen table and just started drawing a picture of the view out our back window. She drew this so fast and seriously I was just blown away. She has such talent!!!!

The finished product.

The view she drew it from.

We enjoyed one warm-ish afternoon and read books out on a blanket. Having Mckinley home sick actually gave us lots of time to get some extra reading done. I read the first Box Car Children book to her in three days.

This picture is so cute of Ava asking Kallie for whatever it was that Kallie is holding.

Tyler makes some pretty amazing creations with his mega blocks.

He had this one on the shelf in his room for awhile and even put sunglasses on it. Ha ha ha.

I took Sophie and my three youngest to Walmart one morning for a random outing and they seriously had a blast. Lol. At Walmart. Ha ha ha.

Mckinley was awarded Student of the Month. Not surprising, but we were still very proud of her and took her to Menchies to get her very own ice cream that she didn't have to share with anyone else. We swung by Chick Fil A on the way to pick up our free vanilla ice cream cones for the twins.

My handsome dude Tyler.

Ava playing in Grandma Bishop's basement having a blast.

Sick

Things turned south fast after Kristen's kids left. Kallie woke up the next morning (Saturday) with a pretty bad cough.

This was Ava Saturday.

Ava on Sunday.

Brandon stayed home from Church with Kallie because of her cough. Tyler stayed home because he had a very minor runny nose (and mostly because Kallie stayed home, ha ha). So of course Ava was going to stay home too. If anyone stays home, Ava stays home too. Church is not her happy place. Ava was weird all morning, extra whiny (as opposed to her usual whiny, which is very whiny), and was laying down on the tile floor sucking her thumb at times. So I told Brandon she should have an early nap, which she did. She slept during most of Church but about ten minutes before church was over, I got a text from Brandon saying you have to come home right now. Ava just threw up. This was her first time throwing up. So she threw up the whole day on Sunday over and over. So sad. She was just so snuggly and mellow.

Luckily she didn't throw up during the night but we had her in a pack n play in our room just in case. She cried all through the night and ended up in our bed even though I was terrified of her throwing up in there and having to wash everything on our bed. But thank heavens that didn't happen. All day on Monday she just laid around in my arms. I think Tuesday too. And then she finally started to come out of it but had diarrhea the whole week and was extra whiny and mellow. Not fun.

Meanwhile Kallie's cough continued and Mckinley woke up on Wednesday completely sick. I was worried all week that she would get sick and miss the 100th day of school on Wednesday. She really didn't want to miss it since last year we were in Disneyland over the 100th day and she missed it. It's a pretty big deal. Especially to her. On Tuesday night we got an email from her teacher saying her teacher had a stomach bug and she wasn't going to be at school on the 100th day so they would celebrate it when she got back. So it worked out okay that Mckinley missed it although I'm sure she would have loved to see the students that dressed up like grandmas and grandpas. Mckinley coughed in the morning and then for a while she was totally fine and I thought she was good and the next thing I know she was taking a nap in my bed. Which is a sure sign that she is really sick.

This is Mckinley having home school with the twins since she stayed home.

She was so sick the rest of the day and asked Brandon for a blessing that night. She coughed and cried all through the night on Wednesday but Thursday she woke up at like 9:45 and was perfect and thought she was going to school. I told her she needed to stay home because I was worried she would get sick again but she has some incredible faith and she was completely better the whole day. Her teacher told me she would wait till Mckinley got back to school to celebrate the 100th day. I couldn't believe she would do that for Mckinley. It was so nice of her. So Friday they got to celebrate the 100th day. Mckinley wanted to make these glasses to wear so I helped her. Ha ha. She has no fear. She wore these on and off throughout the school day. I got a call from Mckinley about 45 minutes before school got out telling me her stomach hurt and that she was coughing a lot and she wanted to be checked out.

I checked her out and brought her home but she didn't seem that sick to me at all, just coughing a little. She was mostly fine Saturday too, we went out to the library and stuff, no big deal. But Saturday night she slept in my bed and coughed literally the entire night. Sunday she was so bad that I honestly considered taking her in to the ER but we got some steroid pills from a neighbor and that saved us. She actually slept Sunday night! But she has been bed ridden for days now and takes naps every day and just coughs a ton if the humidifier isn't going. Poor thing. You know she's really sick when she's not even sad to miss school. Usually she is freaking out if she has to stay home from school. So today is Wednesday and she is still home. Today is the 5th day she has missed in the last two weeks. I'm hoping she can go back tomorrow. Otherwise she will have to come with me to Ava's well check, which wouldn't be all that bad because then maybe the doctor can take a look at her. But I am beat! Taking care of sick kids sure takes it out of me. Anything extra on top of taking care of my ever whiny Ava seems like just too much!

Cousins

Ava just looked so cute one Sunday before Church. Her hair totally curls on one side and stays straight on the other. Ha ha.

She loves to rub her hair when it has shampoo in it.

Mckinley made it to the top of the rock climbing wall at the Provo Rec Center. She did the one inside the pool too.

Kallie wanted to have a make up party one day when she and I were having "alone time."

My cute little school girl. Mckinley looked like a teenager to me this particular day. She's growing up so fast!

I let the kids take Ava down on the sled. She had a blast in the snow even though she doesn't have any snow clothes. She didn't get to stay out long, and she was mad when I brought her inside.

Oh, that cute smile!

 I had Maverik and Kayler for three days while Kristen was out of town. It went a lot better than I expected and was a good experience, empowering to know I can do life with two extra kids. We took them all to the Bean Museum one night, which was our only outing while they were here.

Maverik and Tyler played straight for three days with no fights or drama whatsoever. Kind of wonderful.

Mckinley had to get a picture by the turtle since it's her "spirit animal" (from some random questionnaire online she did with her cousins). Ha ha ha.

I can't remember where the girls were for this but for some reason Tyler and Mav got to watch a movie all by themselves in the theater.