The rest of February

Poppy had a birthday and we all helped celebrate at Cracker Barrel.

 Charlotte got to bring the class pet, Peels the Monkey, home. It was supposed to only be for the weekend but due to snow turned into an two weekends! Including Valentines Day.

 Dallin still loves taking naps in the big brown chair in his room. He always starts in his crib, but then gets out and crawls into this chair. For some reason he knows he can't come out of his room at nap time, but he doesn't know that about the middle of the night.

 Aliza picks out her outfit for the next day every night before bed. She sets out everything down the the accessories.  Charlotte has started doing this as well.

 One night Charlotte was having a hard time falling asleep. I told her she could fall asleep in my bed. Later, when I came up to go to bed I found her like this. Apparently, I meant her and 10 stuffed animals.

 Carmen's sight word sentences were really amusing to me this week.

 Daddy's shoes!

Valentines Day

It has become our Valentine tradition to decorate little mailboxes so we can leave little treats for each other on Valentines day. The girls look forward to this every year!

 The girls planned an amazing party for us. This year Vday fell on a Friday and the entire week had been very snowy. So we pretty much knew in advance that they wouldn't have school that day. It was a little disappointing because all their class parties got canceled. But we had a pretty great party at home.

 We exchanged gifts and love notes.

 We did some dancing.

 And played pin the heart on the.... something. I can't quite remember what it was.

 And we had the breakfast of champions! Pink cinnamon rolls

 with Skittles and cinnamon toast crunch cereal!

 Carmen did some face and hand painting. You can see David behind me playing the heart game.

Carmen's Book

I found these really great blank books at Target and just knew my girls would love creating their own stories. Well, the one Carmen wrote was so sweet and so funny and melted my heart a little bit.

My Family 

By Carmen Bean

Illustrated by Carmen Bean

 My day has a bald spot on his head. He figured it out at Taco Bell on his mission. But I love him anyway.

My mom is at home every day dealing with us kids. So I try to help a lot, because she needs it. But I love her! 

Carmen - my favorite color is blue and I'm 8.

 Aliza is my favorite sister. Her favorite color is purple. She's my everything partner. Her and I are even taking a Spanish class together!

 Charlotte is 4. She loves Dallin!! Between us, she is kind of a copy cat-er. Some people think her and Aliza are twins.

 Dallin is my baby brother. I LOVE him, a lot. People like to hog Dallin, a lot! He can say a lot of words!!!

 Together we are the Beans in cans!

 A great book about Love and Family. 

And I love how she made each chapter heading in that persons favorite color! She is so creative.

New Years

We always have a really low key new year eve. As a family we watch movies, have tons of junk food, play games and stay up late. This year Carmen, Charlotte and myself made it too midnight. The girls were pretty excited to watch the ball drop since just the week before they had been in Time Square.

New Years day we broke out the play dough, Dallin's first time. He thought it was pretty cool.

Dallin and Aliza seriously have a special kind of relationship. I hope he has her same disposition as he grows older.

 Carmen has been mastering the art of face painting. She got a really fun kit for Christmas and has enjoyed anyone being a willing participant.

This boy has me wrapped around his little finger! Isn't he just the cutest thing ever?!

This day he was getting particularly bored shopping at the craft store with me. When he spotted this Thomas the Train sticker/coloring book he plopped himself down right in the middle of the floor to enjoy the book!  

We took advantage of the warm day to play outside. Charlotte got to finally ride her new bike she got from Santa. 

Although it was warm enough to play outside, it was still pretty breezy. Dallin and I snuggled with each other while the girls played. 

I caught Dallin feeding juice to his Lightning McQueen car, like you would feed a bottle to a baby. I tried to catch a picture of it, but then he saw me and stopped. It was pretty darn adorable.

Testing out the sunroof while waiting for the bus. We love the warm weathered days among the cold blustery ones! The kids missed a few days of school due to it being "too cold to go outside". I thought it was pretty ridiculous to miss school due to cold temps. It was -3F. 

Science Museum

Over Winter Break, we spent a day at the Richmond Science Museum. It was a super fun day! We really loved the old trains.

Dallin was in train heaven!

This was fun, you had to try to fit your entire body in the white square....

Blowing bubbles