Valentine's Day craft project

Owen totally embraced his classroom project to make a Valentine's box for receiving cards.  I gave him one of my shipping boxes which he painted red.  Then he started cutting out hearts from construction paper and gluing them on the box.

Owen cut so many hearts in different colors and wanted many of them to be standing up.

Owen had me poke holes in the top of the box so he could squeeze pipe cleaners through and then shape them into hearts.  He was so focused on making his box the best ever.

Owen was very pleased with himself.  As well he should have been.  He had awesome ideas and made them happen.

He even wrote this note all on his own.  I love my sweet, thoughtful boy.

Here is the finished box.  Isn't it cool how the pipe cleaners stick up as hearts? Then he glued other paper hearts over them because he felt there really couldn't be enough hearts on his box to adequately celebrate Valentine's Day.

I think it turned out absolutely awesome!

I didn't get my camera settings fully adjusted and got the first way over exposed, but we got to the front of the drop-off line faster than I expected. Whoops.

Driving away, but he's only looking at his box.  So careful not to drop it and walk it in carefully.

Henry

I just love this boy so much.  He is the absolute sweetest and will always let me bury my face in his belly.

Morning Walk

We had had a lot of rain at the start of February, but this morning was the first in awhile that it was under freezing.  

The muddy path through the nature trail was frozen solid, so I took Dylan for a walk through the woods.  Hard to tell from this pic, but the stream was up quite a bit.

Although it was a cold morning, it was beautiful and the sun was out.

We walked all the way to the end of the trail at the edge of the woods, but we had to turn around because the bridge was washed out during our floods last fall.

LOVED the sun shining back through the woods.

Then I saw this swirling lichen growing up on a stump.  Too cool.

Here is the tunnel for the stream that goes under our street.  It is large enough for a couple of cars to drive through side-by-side.

Crazy Hair Day for Chloe

This was Spirit Week for Chloe in pre-K.  One day was wearing sports team clothing, another was wearing school colors.  But my favorite was the first day.  Crazy hair day.

I pulled her hair into multiple pony tails and then wound pipe cleaners through the pony tails to make them stand out from her head in every direction.

She knew her hair was so cool she didn't even want to look in the mirror.  Pop tarts were the primary focus.

Owen thought her hair was pretty cool, too.  He was all smiles in the car on the way to school.

Chloe walked proud into school, just waiting for her friends and teachers to notice her and tell her how cool she looked with her crazy hair.

I absolutely LOVE this pic of Todd holding Chloe.

Of course our silly girl had to give us a silly face to go along with her crazy hair before we gave her kisses goodbye.

Blueberries and the Grandmas

The kids just love sitting in a Grandma's lap and eating blueberries.

Owen likes to eat blueberries by first sticking them into his lips and then sucking him in hard so they make a loud noise as they fly through his lips and hit his tongue.

Grandma Eloise had fun watching the kids be silly and stuff themselves silly with blueberries.

Playing at PLAY

The next morning after the roller skating party, I took the kids to PLAY in Roswell and Owen's friend Preston came along.

Chloe had fun jumping on the trampoline and getting some serious air between her feet and the tramp.  I love what it does to her hair!

Meet Seth.  He works at PLAY and is supposed to be monitoring the rooms to ensure all kids are behaving and not playing dangerously.  Instead, he finds himself the object of Chloe's affections.

And the recipient of a good foam block pummeling from all the kids.

The kids pull out all stops and resort to throwing the ginormous exercise ball that is bigger than them.  Seth eats it up and throws everything back.  Sometimes, he can be talked into jumping on the trampoline and doing flips.  The kids love it.

The kids moved on to jumping off the tower and into the foam pit.

Or taking nose dives.

Owen and Preston had fun racing on the long moonwalk.

Owen would slide to win.  I worried he would slide off the edge, but he never did.

The kids wore themselves out and had sooooo much fun!

Roller Skating Madness

The kids were being sweet before we headed out for a friend's birthday party at the local skating rink and let me snap some pictures before getting in the car.

Owen held my hand as we made a our way around the rink a few times.  Then he was good to go and speeding away all on his own.

Chloe needed a little more assistance and chose to skate more on the carpet.  Those skates are so slippery!

Then it was time for pizza and Owen was thrilled to be sitting next to his good friend Matthew.

Chloe was doing her best to not smile at me.  Neither of the kids are very successful at this maneuver.

See?  She caved and burst into the biggest best grin.  Chloe continued her efforts at smile hiding and eventually covered her face because she couldn't keep her mouth straight.

When it was time to leave, Owen kept saying, "One more time around, Momma!"  Here is one of those many times, skating away with Matthew.

The skating rink was white linoleum and made a nice backdrop for a falling Bean.  By the end of this party, she was so ready to take off her skates and go home.  It was good exercise for us, but I'm not sure if Owen or I had more fun.  I had a blast skating as fast as I could around the rink and snapping pics of the kids.

Sick Beanarina

Chloe came home from school on Wednesday not feeling well. She chose to lay down on the sofa and skip dinner. Food just did not sound good to this Bean. Then there was diarrhea. And after going to bed, she started throwing up. We changed out her sheets several times before she realized what that rumbly tummy meant and she should hurry to the bathroom. Chloe threw up over ten times and wasn't done before 1am. It was a long night and it wiped her out.

This is how Chloe spent much of Thursday morning. She took a good 3+ hour nap on the sofa in the living room.

Look at those pigs! I love those sweet pigs, even though they are not cute little bebe feet anymore. They are getting so big.

After Chloe woke up, she felt much better. Although food still didn't sound good to her. She didn't eat much of anything all day and made me work at getting her to even drink any water or gatorade (she turned up her nose at Pedialyte!). We were happy that what she did eat and drink stayed down.

I was able to finish early with work close to 1pm and helped her get set up for painting. She had been asking and asking to get the paints out. I love that when she starts out, she pays special attention to painting the corners of the paper.

She's a tough artist. She has tattoos.

Chloe spent mucho time cleaning her paintbrush between colors. I was just glad she was feeling better and not a little sack of potatoes wiped out on the sofa. Hard seeing one of my babies so sick.