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).