Caught Up!

As the kids and I were driving home from church one Sunday afternoon in January the sun was beginning to set and was shining so beautifully on Mount Si.  With the approval of 4 out of 5 kids, we passed our exit and got off to take a quick picture at Snoqualmie Point Park.  It was so, so cold but the promise of dessert put a smile on everyone’s face just long enough to take a picture and run back to the van.

Sometimes Drew will want to eat on the floor – sometimes he’ll even eat directly off the floor.

A Café Rio opened just 24 minutes (without traffic) from our house last month (the closest was 43 minutes w/o traffic).  Enough of an improvement in travel time that we’ve visited three times in the last month.  The first was during the grand opening where Justin and I each ate a free meal/drink at the location and then took BOGO home to enjoy later.  The second we met Justin’s Dad there with the kids.  The third visit we met up with some friends from Auburn and again took a couple BOGO meals to go for later.  Not sure how often we’ll go when we aren’t scoring free food, but we took advantage while we could.

What to do on a holiday when you don’t want to get out of bed – invite the little ones to join you.

Until, inevitably it turns into mayhem and everyone gets the boot.

Drew’s blankie is actually Jason’s old baby blankie given to us by my friend Tara.  Drew sleeps with it every night and every nap – he finds the tag and rubs it between his fingers.

Just this week the fishy fabric tore in multiple directions on the other side of the tag – not sure how we’ll get that repaired, but we’ll have to figure out some way to keep it from falling apart.

Typically I leave our Christmas cards up until Valentines Day, but this year I hung them in the entry from a string of lights in the shape of a tree without thinking about the fact that having a lighted tree displayed weeks past Christmas would feel too weird.  So they had to come down at the end of January. 

Just some silly pictures I found on my phone of my biggest and littlest – they sure do love each other.

Drew loves to jump in and get his hair done whenever he sees anyone else doing theirs.

Never too young to start doing jobs around here

Truthfully Drew does very little besides creating messes around here.  He’s can organize the shoes and help unload the dishwasher, but very little is expected of this kid. He was a little clever with the shoes on Sunday.

Carly attended her last Daddy/Daughter activity day event last Saturday.  Looks like a good time was had by all.

We saw the brightest rainbow last Sunday as we were sitting down to eat dinner.  We had to run upstairs to catch a better view.

Thursday night I came upstairs to find Katie reading to Drew on her bed.  She proudly declared, “I’m putting Drew to bed.”  I love her eagerness to read and her desire to share that with her little brother.

I found this picture gem on my phone tonight.

Tonight Abigail was at a birthday party and Carly was babysitting a neighbor so Justin and I took the three youngest out to dinner at Chick-fil-A and to run some errands.  It’ll be a sad, sad day when we run out of our free meals.