Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was full of hearts, pink, and treats at our house.

Aunt M has introduced us to the easiest-made treat on the plant...Rice Krispy Treats. For some reason I had never made them until she showed me how.

I tried them out and made them pink and cut them into mini hearts.

We ate pink heart, and xo shaped pancakes for breakfast.

Eating a heart right after lunch. And wearing hearts and pink.

We made heart shaped sugar cookies. 

(Because having heart shaped Rice Krispy treats was NOT enough.)

This is what Little Sis did while we baked.

Some of my pictures came out blurry, and I missed the face she made just as she opened it. She was SO excited about her new Berenstein Bear book. In our family we have a Valentine's tradition of giving books. Our other tradition is to purchase a game for the family to play together. This years game was "The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game."

Big Sis took a break from her book to read Little Sis' book to her. Really she just ended up looking at it herself, but it was a nice thought. 

The book was such a hit that she wanted to read it while we played our new game.

I made this for me and Handsome. I combined 2 ideas off of Pinterest. Best part...it cost me $1 because I already had a ton of scrapbook paper and a whiteboard marker. The frame I got at the, you guessed it, Dollar Store!

And Handsome came home with flowers. 

A rose for me, and a carnation for Big Sis, Little Sis, and Aunt M.

 We had a great pink day.

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.