February Days

We are almost through the first two months of the year. These two months are the hardest, I think. They are cold and dark. They are also very busy due to sports schedules. I try to redeem these months by giving myself permission to move a little slower and be a little lazy. But there is always a sense of relief and a renewed hope when March arrives. Warmer days are on the horizon and new life is about to spring forth. We are almost there. We have, once again, just about made it through these cold, hard winter days.

The five of us have a text thread that Bella titled, “The Fam.” Andy sent this photo of Salty on the back of his Jeep. We have Salty paw prints all over our vehicles. This kitty likes to be up high, I guess. I think he captioned this photo as “Salty on his throne.”

That was followed up by a crown drawn on his head. 

Which was followed by this! King Salty! 

I took a personal day on February 2nd. I’m pretty bad at using these. Our sick days and personal days roll into the next school year, so I’ve just been banking them. But we were given a bonus personal day that we had to use this school year, or we’d lose it. I decided to take it at the beginning of February to break up some of the long winter weeks. I scheduled a massage for that day, treated myself to Starbucks, and enjoyed a quiet house. 

What I didn’t realize when I scheduled that personal day a few weeks prior, was that we were going to get hit with a snowstorm and have the next two days off anyway. Oh well, the day to myself was still nice.

During our first snow day, Curtis already started to get some cabin fever. He wanted to go somewhere, but there was a travel warning - no driving on the roads unless absolutely necessary. So we decided to take a family walk through the woods and cemetery. We eventually ended up at Hucks where Andy and the boys bought treats for themselves. 

Kind of hard to tell, but the snow was whipping us in the face! 

Whenever we get a good snowfall, our backyard becomes a pretty popular sledding spot! 

Andy and Curtis like to watch educational shows and documentaries on Netflix at the end of the day. I decided to join them one night.

Curtis: “We can watch, ‘How to Focus.’ We started, but didn’t finish it. 

This still makes me laugh weeks later! 

Our last kid doing class Valentines for the last time. Bittersweet. 

Mabel likes to make a little nest for herself among our pillows. She is the reason why our bed often looks a mess! 

We always have so many crayons left over at the end of the school year and I don’t like to waste things. Last year, I made some special crayons that I used as a counseling tool to give to students when talking about big emotions. Well, my stash started to dwindle and a student asked if I’d be making more. I told her I would, I just needed to make the time to take all the crayon wrappers off (it’s a pretty time-consuming job). This sweet third-grader then offered to do that part of the job for me. I gave her a container full of crayons and, a few weeks later, she returned them to me without the wrappers! One Saturday afternoon, I took those crayons and baked them. 

This was the result! This part of the job was so quick and easy. She saved me SO much time by taking care of the wrapper part. When I brought these back to school, I let her choose 3 for herself because I was so thankful. And now I’m also on the hunt for more silicone molds because it’s fun to have a variety of shapes. 

I took Graydon shopping to buy a gift for his girlfriend. (Yes, Graydon has a girlfriend!) He actually ordered her a stuffed animal on Amazon. He spent about $17 on it and, when it arrived, he was less than impressed. The stuffed animal was the size of this sloth’s foot! It looks like something he would have bought at the dollar store. Definitely not what he had in mind. We sent it back and, for just a few dollars more, he was able to get her this sloth and some chocolate. I had so much fun shopping with him. 

We celebrated Valentine’s Day in our house on Super Bowl Sunday and just added some of our traditional V-Day foods to our game-day menu. 

Poor Curtis didn’t get to enjoy too much of it. He came down with a stomach bug the day before and didn’t have much of an appetite for anything. Bella and Graydon enjoyed a little mocktail. 

All three of the kids’ basketball seasons are now officially over. I love watching them play, but am also grateful for a little more room in our schedule. Here are a few shots of Bella we found online. 

Here is Curtis with some of his teammates at Elementary Night during a high school basketball game. He has LOVED being a part of this team. 

This past week was National FFA Week. Bella has been a member of this organization for a few years. This year, she earned her Chapter Degree. I accidentally forgot my phone at home, so a friend took some photos for me. 

I also wanted a photo of just Bella, so I made sure we got one right when we got back home. Very proud of how hard Bella works whether it’s academics, sports, or her activities. 

There were all sorts of festivities as part of FFA week. 

Each year, kids from our Hope chapter play a basketball game against the Columbus chapter. They compete for a broken bucket, so this game is called the Broken Bucket Challenge. Unfortunately, Hope came up four points short; but it’s all in good fun. Here are the two teams. 

Curtis learned how to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. He has done it twice now and he is getting pretty good at following a recipe. I’m already thinking through the next recipe I should teach him. 

Curtis joined the running club at school. They are training for a 5K in May. We went for a run today to help with his training. 

One more week of school and then it’s Spring Break!