Latourell Falls Hike

What do you do on a beautiful, sunny, 60 degree day Saturday in February? 

Go hiking of course!  We were so lucky with such beautiful weather and we took advantage of it.

The Sunderland’s went with us to hike Latourell Falls in the gorge.

It was the perfect family hike, about 2.5 miles.

The kids had fun together and there were plenty of places to stop and rest and take pictures.

This girl is usually my hiking buddy when we go on hikes.  Sometimes she needs a little more encouragement.  That’s ok, she’s fun to be with.

The hike was full of beautiful things to see and places to explore. 

Both the upper and lower falls were gorgeous.

Glad Peter was willing to go above and beyond for a good shot, or was it down and below?  :)

 

We finished!

What a good bunch of kids!

On the way home we stopped at Crown Point.

It was just a little bit windy!

I could handle more days like that in February!

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day morning was fun.  We found some sweet treats on our doorstep from our neighbors, and the kids were excited to get their last notes and a small gift from their mailboxes.

I had planned on making a yummy breakfast, but time got away from me at the end of a crazy week.  So, Lee got us donuts instead.  I’m pretty sure the kids were just fine with that.

We all laughed at Gracie’s snaggle tooth.  It was soooo close to coming out.

We read our last love scripture that morning.

Per an 18 year tradition I made Lee his heart shaped chocolate chip cookie for Valentine’s Day.  For the first time in 18 years I totally messed it up!  This is what his cookie looked like this year:

I hope he knows I still love him!  In fact I really love him a lot.  He was still working swing shift at the Oregon State Hospital, Tuesday-Saturday, but he made a special request to get the Saturday of Valentine’s Day off so we could go to the adult session of Stake Conference together.  The stake presidency that he had worked with for so long was being released and he wanted to be there.  Good thing he got it off because he was asked to speak!  Ha!  He did such a great job and made me love him even more.  Afterwards we went for a very un-fancy Valentine’s Day dessert at Mike’s Drive-In.  I didn’t care, I just like being with him!

The next night we celebrated with the kids and had our traditional candlelight Valentine’s Day dinner.  Grace helped me decorate the table.

Oh how I love these people!

Guess what we had for dessert?  Warmed up cookie pieces with ice cream.  It was perfect!

Valentine’s Fun

The closer it got to February the more Isaac and Grace bugged me about making our Valentine mailboxes.  The first Monday in February finally came and we got to work.  I couldn’t find any mailboxes this year, so we went back to the lunch bags.  It was a good crafting  night.

We had fun leaving love notes for each other in the weeks before Valentine’s Day.

We got Isaac and Grace’s class valentines done earlier than ever.  They were happy with what they chose for their classmates.

We heart attacked two of our neighbors one night.  It was so much fun and our neighbors loved it!

Isaac and Grace’s kindergarten Valentine’s Day party was going to be a pink pancake pajama party.  The excitement level at our house for that party was through the roof.  So when Grace woke up throwing up in the wee hours of the morning the day of the party the look of disappointment on her face was devastating.  She was so sad and I felt so bad for her.  Isaac had to take their valentine for their teacher all by himself.

Lee stayed home with Grace (one of the few perks of him working the swing shift) while I went with Isaac to the party.  We really missed Grace but we still had a great time.  Isaac thought it was awesome to be at school in his pajamas, I even got to wear mine!

When we got home Grace was feeling a lot better and was happy to go through her valentines. 

The next day there wasn’t school and thankfully Grace was well again so we could go to Hope Village to deliver valentines.  That is one of our favorite traditions and I’m glad we were able to do it.  We made a few valentines that morning, and then we went to make our deliveries.

We also made deliveries to two ladies in our ward who live there right now.

What a good group of friends!

Now we were all ready for Valentine’s Day!