It was a balmy 40 degrees

I don't actually remember what the temp was, but I do remember that it was warm enough to go outside!  we even braved it without gloves and most of our winter snow gear.  the kids loved it.  tillie even benefited since we took her for a couple of walks!

 two blurry kids super jazzed about being outside for the first time in a LONG time

 and i snapped these pictures of evan.  i love them both!  i don't know that i can pick a favorite!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The kids were not in the most loving of moods on Valentine's day, so I have no pictures of them together.  And, evan's preschool had a pj party on valentine's day...evan picked out his christmas pjs to wear.  so, i had no chance of getting a picture of evan wearing his valentines day shirt either!   but, i did get some pictures of them smiling...success.

 you can't even tell that these smiles and happy faces were smashed in between bickering with me and his sister.  and that he flat out refused to the point of tantrums to stand next to his sister and wear the shirt that i made for him

 grace inherited her tunnel vision focus while reading a book from me.  if i remember correctly, the book was the start of the first fight.  she wanted to hold it during the picture SO evan wanted to hold it as well.

 if i had to describe gracie right now...it would be drama and sass!

February Crafts

In February, I battled our stuffed animal issue...and I won!  Since Gracie is a HUGE stuffed animal lover, we have accumulated a large number of stuffed toys.  They were starting to overtake our basement, and I felt like I spent most of my days picking them up.  So, I made a pouf!  The first one turned out a smidge taller than I had envisioned, so I made another one that was blue with red piping that was about half as tall.  Together they are fun for the kids to jump over, roll around, sit on AND they hold every single last one of the stuffed animals.  I put a very long zipper in the back, and both kids can easily unzip it to release the animals AND zip it back to contain them.

 evan was not a fan of sharing the first pouf.

and for valentine's day, i made up some stuff for evan to gift to his teachers and to his friends.  evan really wanted me to put more pictures of dinos on his friend's bags but, we compromised at three.  he even hand picked every dino for each friends.  the popcorn sleeves for the teachers took a little longer than i expected...but, evan and i were both please with the result, so it was a win!