Well. (It's a deep subject.) February is flying by.
The girls have been begging to go swimming at an indoor pool, so the Saturday after Cecily was feeling better we went. Miriel took a bit to warm up to the idea, but once she got used to the noise and the splashing she loved it.
It was warm enough for sidewalk chalk and no coats Sunday afternoon.
"Uncle Jakey Stuck In Mud" has another adoring fan.
This penny is named "Leprosy" because it has white spots.... :P
Aaaannd then it snowed on their beautiful chalk art.
Back to snow gear and sleds...
Yay winter.
These tiny little throwbacks to college days arrived in the mail for Bob. Strong Bad and The Cheat- such a blast from the past.
In an effort to be less anti-social I invited some people over for lunch on a Friday. Anita and Jamie and Jordan came, and Jenni and Summer, and Mindy. It was really fun- I really should do it more often. It would be good for the girls too, to learn to share their toys with little people who aren't siblings.
We printed some photo booth props to make our Valentine's this year. They mostly got the idea.
Except for the one who wants to eat all the props and the one who won't sit still. :)
There were a lot of funny/blurry pictures...
But this may have to become a tradition. Hehe.
Engineers are weird. (Chemists are weird too, but more in a the-chemicals-are-affecting-our-brain kind of way.) So Bob writes and tests software all day at work. They have it set up so that if you do something wrong and the code doesn't work, the computer plays a snippet of a song with the error message. One error gets you the Mario is out of lives music, a different error plays "The system is down" from Strong Bad Emails Techno.... yeah.... and apparently there are also figurines to go with the songs that get passed around to the unlucky people who 'break the build.' (Or something. I don't always follow programming lingo.) Anyway, Bob wanted me to make him a tiny Strong Bad Techno diorama to take to work. Ha. I'm half rolling my eyes, and half think this is awesome.
Winter is for finishing projects! I started this quilt before Miriel was born. I saw the pattern while aimlessly scrolling pinterest and fell in love... of course the fabric was a few years old, but I tracked enough down on Etsy to make it! It's called "Wee Wander" and the main panel has kids catching fireflies, and the other fabrics are firefly/outside related.
This was my first attempt at free motion quilting with my sewing machine, and oh boy, are there issues. I struggled with tension and stitch length, not to mention that I apparently still can't sew a neat binding. *sigh*
Oh well. It's done, and overall I'm pleased with it. A good washing gave it that cozy crinkly look which hides a multitude of construction ills. :) The backing is a cute fireflies in jars pattern.
We spent one afternoon making valentines.
She's not really interested in crawling or scooting, but she'll bend almost in half to reach things that I thought were safe...
I took the younger two to get Miriel's 9 month pictures taken and then picked up Emmy from School. Clearly, I have not been allowed to sleep all night for a few weeks because we were home before I realized I was wearing ankle socks with Sperrys. I was intending to wear tennis shoes... you know, more of a sporty look, rather than frazzled frumpy mom... I'm just. so. tired. And I miss the days when she slept for 8+ hours at a time.
We were all really hoping that we would get a snow day out of this round of white stuff. No luck.
Bob sent me this beautiful arrangement for Valentine's day. I love flowers.... especially in February. They're such a lovely contrast to the whites and greys and browns outside.
Valentine's Day itself was busy and fun. Bob had the day off so I got to go quilting for a little bit in the morning before the big girls got home. They had a half day at school, so we spent the afternoon delivering Valentines's to a few special older friends. It was so cold! For supper I was planning on making spaghetti because it's red... but Bob requested haystacks. So the girls got spaghetti and we ate cobbled together mostly haystacks. :) But there was real fresh homemade pink lemonade! Woot!
Susan was in town for the weekend and stopped by for a bit on Saturday. The girls insisted that she play in the snow with them. It was cold. Much colder than Alabama. Poor Susan is a good sport. We fed her cocoa and cookies to make up for it.
Our piano books and hymn books have been overflowing the piano bench and piano and we don't have a good spot close to the piano to store them. And then I remembered that we still had the book rack thingies from the old church pew in our basement (They were under the seat and we took the racks off so we could fit toy storage boxes underneath the bench). This is why I never throw anything away! It's not hoarding if you use it! Haha. Anyway, there were two of them so I built a frame so we could hang them on the wall. It turned out... ok... it's definitely an amateur job and would not win any woodworking awards, but it'll do. Maybe some day I'll develop enough patience to do the job right and not try and cut corners... also someday I won't have a cute little helper who demands lots and lots of attention and gives me very little time for such projects. :)
Here it is in situ. It's in the shadows so you can't see all the flaws.
The girls had Presidents day off of school, which was lovely. In the afternoon, they invited Grace and Eden over to watch Frozen 2 with them.
Just once in my life I'd like to live in a house with brand new plumbing. Haha. The faucet sprayer is leaking, which we discovered when I stepped in the puddle of water forming on the kitchen floor. I have very helpful plumbing assistants though. Or something. "Can we make a silly face?"
Tonight was the second grade "Rain Forrest Program," followed by the school open house. Cadence is such a handful sometimes... ok, all the time. It was quite the evening. They were pretty good for the program, but then we went to Emmy's classroom and Cadence wanted to play with all the toys. Next we went to Cecily's room and Emmy needed to go to the bathroom... I took her, came back, she neeeeded to go again. Seriously!? So we went back to the bathroom, then back to Cecily's room where Cadence was rearranging all of the stools. They wanted to show us the music room, which was fun, but crowded and impossible to get Cadence away from the instruments. Last, we went to see the art show in the gym and Cadence disappeared. Bob found her running thru the hallways looking for us. *sigh* All while juggling Miriel, the carseat, the coats, and the papers we got in the girls' classrooms. We are a circus and I am tired.
Blessings.
