February

Feb 1:  I saw a fun magnetic message board on Instagram last month and was excited when I saw a discount code so I could order one for myself.  I’m a sucker for wood – especially walnut so it was meant to be.

made my JUT made

Feb 3:  Abigail came home from school to find that someone had gotten into her candy stash while she was at school.  The culprit had even left behind a toy as unneeded evidence. 

Abigail demanded that he be taught that he’d done something wrong.  Carly even had the gall to say I was at fault for not watching Drew properly.  Just wait til those two are mamas.  I agreed that there needed to be a consequence, but the situation quickly became worse when Drew straight-faced lied to me insisting he wasn’t guilty.  Off to time-out he went as stayed for over 40 minutes while I continued to come back for a confession.  

The kid is a pro – if there’d been any other person in the house that afternoon I’d be convinced Drew was innocent.  He finally cracked, but just long enough to get out of time out and then he quickly put back on his sweet little innocent act.

Feb 7:  Today was the perfect day for a snow day as I had a hair appointment in Covington and with the kids at home I was able to make a full day of it.  Fred Meyer, Costco and just enough time to pickup Café Rio to enjoy while my hair processed.

Feb 10:  I don’t remember what tuckered this kid out enough to fall asleep on the kitchen floor – must not have been feeling well.

Feb 13:  I seriously love a good, productive day.  I posted this on Instagram today:

“My buddy and I killed it today – Target, Winco, Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer, and Car Shopping all before enjoying my most favorite meal of the year – Valentine’s Fondue Luncheon with some of my most favorite women. Delish!  Sam’s Club on the way home where we picked up a free pizza (+ some) to feed the kids.  Looking forward to an evening with my Monday Night ladies #lovemyladies #andsunshine #andfood”

My friend Laura commented, “Literally crushing it!!! Efficient and well feed=happy Holly!!!”  She knows me well.

Aside from running several errands the highlight was enjoying the afternoon in Auburn at our annual Valentine’s Fondue lunch.  Seriously, the best meal of the year.  We also have a fun tradition of exchanging Valentine’s.  I thought this a perfect opportunity to pickup a dozen small cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes to share with the ladies.

Feb 14:  I love that Jason’s teacher invites the students parents AND younger siblings to their class holiday parties.  Sure I could always find childcare for Drew, but it’s been fun to have Drew join in on the Christmas and Valentines parties.  Of course, this wouldn’t go well in a place with oodles of young kids, but I’ve been the only parent that’s brought along a younger sibling and Jason and his classmates LOVE having Drew there.

Each student was to create a Valentines box with some sort of shoot for the cards.  Of course Jason chose a sports theme.  Justin helped him put together a pretty cool box including fun wrapping paper and duct tape.

Oh, my gosh!  He looks so much older in this picture!  What is happening to my boy??

Feb 19:  I was asked to sit with a class today in Primary, which gave me a great view of this most adorable little sunbeam. 

Especially during singing time as he tapped along with the chopsticks.

The rest of February we were off to Mexico with Justin’s family for mid-winter break – much to share…

Snow Days

It makes me laugh when I remember back 17 years ago when Justin was nearing graduation from BYU and we were deciding where he would take his first grown-up job.  Justin’s parents were in Maple Valley, WA (where his Dad grew up) and while attempting to lure us to Seattle, Mike told us that it NEVER snows here.  I’m not sure how much we believed him, but we were both ready to get out of the snowy Utah winters and the less extreme summers and winters of the Northwest definitely appealed to us.  Once living here we quickly found out that it does indeed snow in Seattle and when it does it’s a BIG deal. 

A couple of our more memorable snowy adventures:

The Christmas Crash of 2008 - here, here, and here

The Great Power Outage of 2012

We’ve seen more than our fair share of snow this year.  It was lightly snowing when we left for church on Sunday and significantly snowing by the time we got home.  

And it didn’t stop for 24 hours.  The kids went outside every few hours to measure how much had accumulated on the table outside.   It was pretty much a given that there wouldn’t be any school on Monday so we stayed up late with the girls where I clobbered them in Settlers of Catan before sending them off to bed.  By Monday morning we had over a foot of snow. 

Justin made omelets in the morning while the littles watched cartoons. 

After breakfast we all bundled up and headed up our street to the undeveloped portion where the road is a steep downhill slope, perfect for sledding. 

Our House 

   

That’s Drew behind Abigail getting pulled up along up our street – the kid is spoiled. 

   

It took many, many runs for the neighborhood to pack down that foot of snow into a pretty sweet sledding path. 

Drew lasted close to an hour before he was so cold and tired (it’s a long walk back up the hill) that he was ready to come home and enjoy a warm cup of cocoa.

Abigail and Carly hooked up with friends around 12:30pm and spent the day enjoying different hills around the ridge.

Justin was going to work from home in the afternoon, but an afternoon with family and friends was too tempting.  The Gibbs invited us and the Rowleys over for lunch – Jen made three different kinds of soup and I brought potato soup – so yum!  We stayed until the evening visiting and playing games.

While all the other school districts were already making the call whether to have school on Tuesday our district waits until the very last minute.  I woke up several times during the night to check the status.  Finally at 4:30am they posted a 2-hr delay, but then at 7:50am they changed it to Closed.  Super frustrating.  I can imagine it must be even harder for those families that have to make arrangements for childcare when school is cancelled at the very last minute.

Anyhow, Justin still went to work and the kids and I headed back out sledding first thing.  What was fluffy and soft the day before was now slick and icy – making super fast runs. 

I shared this video on Instagram.

Just moments after this video I was fumbling with my phone to get a video of Jason heading down and I didn’t notice his friend barreling toward me.  He ran right into me and knocked me to the ground hard.  I hit my head on the ice and boy did it hurt.  I headed straight home for some medicine and to lay down.  Talk about a headache.  Yikes.  The next day my head felt a bit better, but my neck and jaw are still really sore.  Hopefully I didn’t do any harm that won’t heel quickly on its own.  Perhaps we need to wear our helmets the next time we go sledding.

The kids were back at school on Wednesday after a 2-hr delayed start then the rain set in and has washed most of the snow away.  I think we’re good on snow this year – come on spring!

January

New family pictures meant it was time to update the photo we have displayed in our entryway.  It was fun to see all these old photos hidden in the picture frame.   These kids of mine are growing up way too fast!

June 2009 – Dec 2009 – Fall 2010 - Sept 2012 – Nov 2013 - Oct 2014 - Nov 2016

Drew has become quite the little singer.  During the holidays he picked up the chorus to “Angels we have heard on high” and will still randomly break out singing his version of the song.  I was able to sneak a little video one afternoon while I was frosting cinnamon rolls.  Both entertaining and delicious!

I found a few really great deals at Gymboree right before Christmas so Katie got a few coordinating tops and bottoms under the tree.  She put a “matching” top and bottom together one morning and was head to toe Flower Power.

This will likely be one of those pictures she looks back on and asks, “Why did you let me wear that?!?” To which I can reply – the joy you felt that day is far greater than the embarrassment you feel at this moment. 

We get some pretty strong windstorms up here. I swear some nights it sounds like our bedroom window is going to burst.  We lost a trashcan during our first year here, but hadn’t had any other loss or damage until early in January when a portion of our back fence blew down.  Thankfully we have a pretty proactive back neighbor who reached out and offered to help Justin fix it the following weekend. 

Jason’s teacher sent out a request for prizes for the students to bid on with coupons they’d each earned for good behavior.  One afternoon I was organizing all of the stuff we were donating to DI and came across a bunch of pens and wallets that Abigail created years ago out of duct tape.  I wasn’t sure if the kids in Jason’s class would like them or if they’d see them as junk but I sent them in and according to Jason they were a HUGE hit! 

 

Jason didn’t bid on any, but he won a late homework coupon (which is much needed as he often forgets to turn in his homework) and he also won a “graffiti desk”.

T-Mobile Tuesdays continues to award us each week.  Mid-January we were able to buy any movie ticket for $2.  When the kids got home from school I took them to see Sing in 3D (Abigail had a babysitting gig so she missed out).  We were the only ones in the theatre.

We signed up to clean the church on Saturday, January 14 – as an incentive / reward we visited George’s Bakery beforehand.  I even called the day before to order a chocolate Texas donut for myself.  Unfortunately they were short-staffed that morning and didn’t have as much selection as usual, but it was still delicious.

Abigail and Carly received a last minute invitation to go skiing with Sarah Ricks and her daughter on Martin Luther King Day.   Sarah is an instructor and had to be at the slopes and available to give lessons and her daughter wasn’t thrilled about going up alone.  Abigail and Carly were both thrilled and nervous to try skiing for their first time.  I drove them over to the Ricks early that morning and thankfully they had all the gear the girls would need for the day. 

Turns out Sarah only had to teach one lesson so she was able to be with the girls most of the day and basically give them private lessons.  The girls loved it and apparently only fell once all day. 

While the girls were skiing, Justin and I found ourselves with just the three littles for the entire day.  We spent the day shopping all over the Puget Sound.  Katie had a gift card to Kohl’s from Grandma Fletcher so after we’d finished checking out the new Restoration Hardware in Seattle we headed down to Tukwila so she could use it.  She knew just what she wanted – "feetie" pajamas.  Unfortunately, feetie pajamas aren’t an easy thing to find, especially for a tall almost seven-year-old girl – there was one only one pair – but they were Christmas and size 10.  I let her try them on anyhow and she fell in love.

She still had a balance on her gift card so we headed over to the shoe department where she found a cute pair of booties – they pushed her over the $25 gift card, but she was willing to pay the extra $5 so she could have both.  Pretty sure this was Katie’s first purchase over $1.  She was so very pleased with herself.  Though quite camera shy.

Drew likes to look at the back of the cereal box anytime he eats cereal.  We ate a lot of cereal when I was growing up and I very much remember sitting at the bar eating my bowl of cereal surrounding myself with walls of cereal boxes. 

Another video I snuck of Drew singing.  Love this kid!

Justin and Jason were up early last Saturday to hike up Rattlesnake Ledge with some friends.  Apparently it was a bit cold.

The views never disappoint.

We were pretty pumped that they brought home donuts from George’s.  Hands off Drewbee – that one is for Mama!