February Highlights

February was an incredible month. It felt like winter began to melt away (and did literally!) but with that came the realization that I am busier than ever. We had some hard times and had to make some choices on what might be "good" "better" or "best" because the reality is that I can not do it all - even if I try. 

Some of the "best" things that made the cut - Declan's participation in basketball! He had so much fun with his little team of 5/6 year olds. 

As parents, we really enjoyed watching the kids play too. And it resulted in a new experience for the boys too - watching a basketball game with Dad for the first time :) 

In February, my brother and his wife went to Mexico for a week and we got to hang out with their awesome 3 toddlers - Athena, Audia and Anax. It was both awesome and exhausting. No joke, that is a LOT of toddlers! But we had a lot of fun too and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I love that my kids have cousins their ages to play with.

Some things that made it easier - I'm already used to cooking for a million kids. Adding three to that was SO simple. 

And I am SO thankful for babywearing - I spent a lot of time like this 

We basically "neglected" our school work for a week - but by neglect, I mean we had some STELLAR books that we enjoyed instead of too much paper work stuff.

Our glowing reviews for Math & Magic in Wonderland and Human Body Theater. Seriously awesome and worth reading for the tween stage. We loved them both!

On of our biggest accomplishment of February was finishing the upstairs completely - floors completed, baseboards installed and the kids moved upstairs! Still some finishing touches, we have curtains for the boys room but not the girls room and Kalani is having a bed built for her by Damon this next week but overall, it's awesome having it "done". The kids had fun moving their beds upstairs. Lots of giggles and hard work!

We had a lot of "typical" days.

Real life right there. A cutting board for morning snacks (strawberries and banana this day), kids accomplishing some school work, eggs still out from breakfast, cords that Damon set down and left for a week, an iron from hemming curtains from the night before.... on and on, I look at this photo and I can see the chaos that others might see, but somehow it's all useful to us. School workbooks and a shoebox full of colored pencils (why do they reject the pencil box I purchased and choose trash instead?)... But this is what life looks like daily for us.

The magic happens in the mess y'all.

Lots of lazy mornings and *trying* to savor some of the tiny stages that are fleeting.

Not going to lie - these two slept like crap in February and I won't miss being exhausted.

Adelene sums up how I feel about it -

At least she's cute, right?

We wasted $20 on "Jackfruit". Ran to Albersons for a quick missing ingredient and came home with this monster. The kids first had to guess what it was....

I really want to know who comes up with eating these things. Who looked at a coconut and decided they wanted to bust it open? Who decided to get honey from a a bee hive? And jackfruit? this thing was intense to cut open and eat. Lots of pods and seeds and this things was not exactly inviting from the outside... but that made it hilarious and fun!

Tried something new. Half of us liked it, half of us hated it. We'll never buy it again but it was fun!

More new experiences in February - Celebrating Declan's birthday and the first time going roller skating for all the kids! Some of our good friends joined us and Declan chose some cupcakes to share. Good times indeed.

Declan tried both roller blades and roller skates!

It was trickier than they expected!

And everyone made it through another eye exam without needing glasses - just Daunika and Damon so far!