January

We've been blessed (as in SUPER DUPER blessed) to have Aunt D move in with us to help me with the kids while I try to lay down as much as possible. 

Now the girls get to go on our weekly walks to the library, play at the park, and outings that go along with our home prek curriculum. This makes for some really happy girls and one happy mom. Not to mention Aunt D is amazing at making dinner. We are so grateful she is willing to help us!

Grama T and Grampa A gave Big Sis an indoor hopscotch toy for Christmas, which both kids love to play with.

Baby Beluga says "hop, hop, hop" while she runs across. Big Sis is getting better and better at hopping accurately with two feet and I think we'll soon see some hopping on one foot.

I made a New Year's goal to stretch/yoga each day for 15 minutes or so. Aunt D got a picture of the girls stretching with me. 

Baby Beluga is 18 months old now and in nursery at church! She is also an expert at saying "cheese," staying still, and smiling while I snap pictures. 

Baby Beluga is "reading" this book aloud, which makes it even cuter. I got it on video too. Her top pick from her Christmas book set is If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. 

The other day our living room became a hair salon-bakery. Handsome got his haircut while eating a cupcake. Big Sis asked "How would you like your hair?"

Then she decided Handsome should give her a haircut.

And then she gave Aunt D a haircut before she headed out the door to Institute. 

Our February

This green bucket from the dollar store provides quite a good time for our Little Sis. First, she explores all the toys and pulls them all out.

If things aren't coming out fast enough, the dump method is very effective.

And then you can get a good taste of the green bucket. 

We've had a lot of fun this month making felt food for Big and Little Sis' kitchen. We've got some chocolate chip cookies, heart shaped sugar cookies with frosting, sandwiches, and pancakes. Today Big Sis offered Handsome some syrup for his sandwich. Interesting combination...

Which reminds me, tonight we had chocolate pudding for dessert. There were still some spinach leaves on her plate and the next thing we knew she was dipping her spinach in the pudding and eating it all up. 

This year for our valentine's to the kiddos grandparents we tried out a pinterest idea. Around the feet it says "We love you from the top of our head to the tips of our toes." Sadly, I forgot to make one for us to keep, so we took a picture instead.

This Little Sis LOVES to tear up the grass. Let her have at it for long enough and you get a nice pulled up patch of grass. 

Big Sis LOVES to pick dandelions. Good thing we've got a bunch right in our backyard. We may or may not have gotten at least 5 dandelion puffs blown to bits just inside the door of our house on a windy day, which led to LOTS of dandelion seeds all over the kitchen.

Little Sis loves to get under things.

The couch cover...

 

  

The futon...

The exersaucer...

Maybe we have an aspiring mechanic on our hands.

We found a caterpillar about 2 weeks ago and I let Big Sis put it in a jar so we could look at it for the rest of the day. 

Well, turns out that caterpillar was ready to cocoon. 

And so it did. 

In our jar!

We've been working on food storage...a lot. It's one of our goals this year, to work up to our year supply of food. The leaders of our church council us to do so, and so that's what we're doing. Want to learn more, go here.

Figuring out where to put it all has been our main challenge, especially since we need to rotate it so nothing ever goes bad. Aunt M has been an AMAZING help with figuring that part out.

Here's our pantry after doing some organizing. No, not all the food fit in there. We stashed lots of it on the top most cupboard shelves, and I've got plans to make more shelving in our storage closet and laundry room.

We had a matchy-matchy morning and I snapped some shots of my smiley girls.

If you are ever getting bull-dozed by your big sis, just try to bite her head.

We are also attempting some gardening. We are really excited at the prospect of growing some of our own food. This season we are planting spinach, zucchini, green beans, and 2 types of tomatoes, plus some basil, marigolds, and zinnias. Big Sis chose the zinnias...bright pink ones. 

Here is our garden box made by Handsome and some of our friends who are also attempting gardening as well. They made 4 boxes. 

Before we moved it and filled it with dirt it was a magical play land in a sea of windy grass.

Remember that cocoon a few pictures back? Here is the beautiful butterfly! 

It only took about a week! I was so surprised that it happened that fast because I was expecting about 2 weeks. We missed watching it come out, but were glad to see that it didn't fly away. We let it go outside after we showed Handsome.

Reading their books. Little Sis did have hers open before I snapped the pictures.