February 13-19, 2017

Valentine’s Day morning brought lots of sweet notes and some fun little surprises.

 We ate heart shaped pancakes with Emma while we read scriptures before seminary.

  Heavenly Father gave us a love note with the beautiful sunrise that morning.

 The twins got a heart shaped lunch that included the cookies we decorated the night before for FHE.

They were also happy with the contents of their mailboxes when they woke up.

And Lee was happy with his traditional heart cookie.

And I made more heart shaped pancakes for them that we ate over more scripture reading.

We also read our last love scripture.

Isaac and Grace dressed in red and were ready for their class party later that day.

Lee walked them to school.  I love them!

One of the big benefits of Lee working from home??  We could have a Valentine’s lunch date!  We ate yummy Thai food in the middle of the day.  It was perfect.

Then I headed to the school.

That night we had our usual heart shaped pizza by candlelight dinner.  I tried to change up the menu this year but that idea was quickly shot down.  I guess the kids like our traditions!

I love this bunch of weirdos. 

The next day Emma tried to kiss a frog she found outside our house. 

He didn’t turn into a prince but he sure was cute!  She rubbed his tummy to make him ribbitt and his throat would get bigger than his body!  It was pretty crazy.  

Isaac was a Terrific Kid.  But we already knew that!

Isaac and Grace have been making all sorts of contraptions in the tree in our back yard.  They really want a tree house.

Emma and Grace went out to capture the sunset on Friday night.  It was a beauty!

On Saturday I took Isaac on a book date.  He has really wanted to be in on the book reading competition that Emma and I have.  Of course there would be no competition if Isaac was involved because he reads A LOT and has way more time for it.  We decided we could have a family competition going on as well.  He blew us all out of the water by reading 252 books and 37,609 pages.  He proabably actually read more than that becuase he didn’t keep track of all the books he read at school.  This kid.  We started our date by going to the library, appropriately.  I had a hard time getting him to leave after he started one of the books he checked out.

Then I treated him to a Blizzard.

He also got a new book.  He didn’t get to pick it out though.  I got a good deal on some books at Christmas time and so I bought the fourth Harry Potter for him since I knew he would be very happy to get it.  He was! 

Too bad he can’t read it yet!  He has read the first three several times each, but I am holding him off on the fourth one.  I’ll read it with the twins soon.

We had a good little chat while he ate his ice cream, he is so fun to talk to.  Then he begged me to let him read for a bit.  I figured we were on a book date so that was an ok thing to do.  I pulled my book out and we both read.  It was great.

 

Sunday morning Isaac and Grace made all sorts of Lego creations before church.  I love to see what they come up with! 

February 6-12, 2017

There wasn’t school on Monday so Emma and I went on our annual book date. 

I won our 9th annual friendly book reading competition for the 2nd year in a row!! 

I read 82 books in 2016 to Emma’s 63.  (Although we may have almost tied with the number of pages read.  Emma didn’t enter the number of pages for 3 of the books she read and she was only 1000 pages behind me…)

We went to Powell’s and just browsed.  She bought a few books for herself and a book for me since I was the winner.  I chose a Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  I’ve always wanted to read it and Emma had to read it for school that trimester, so I thought it would be a good choice.

Oh how I love this girl of mine.  I so enjoy the time we get to spend together. I hope we can keep this tradition up for a long time to come! 

Especially if it involves yummy Salt & Straw ice cream too!

It was a good day.

That night we decorated our Valentine’s mailboxes during our Family Home Evening lesson.  This is definitely a favorite tradition.  Isaac and Grace were driving me crazy with questions asking when we were going to decorate the mailboxes.  They were pretty excited when the day finally came.  I have to include this whole series of pictures because the facial features are too funny.  Lee is always doing things to make the kids laugh.

The mailboxes turned out cute, and the nice notes and Valentines started showing up in them the next day and throughout the week.  I love it!

Grace lost a tooth on Tuesday! 

School class Valentines production got under way that week. 

Emma was at districts on Friday and Saturday.  I got to watch her swim on Friday.  She did well and advanced to finals the next day in the breaststroke and for her relay events.

She made a friend from the Tigard team.  They swam the same events and had similar times.

Saturday is always her favorite day at districts. 

Less of a crowd and fun to be with her friends.

It’s fun to watch them cheer each other on. 

Even when things don’t go so well.

Lee had an extremely busy day that was full of meetings for Stake Conference, but he really wanted to watch Emma swim.  He was able to be there for her events, the timing was perfect.  They were both happy about that!

Good job Emma!  The end of the swimming season is always so bittersweet.

We had a visiting authority for Stake Conference, Elder Murray from the Quorum of the Seventy.  Lee and I got to go to a meeting with him on Friday night which was fabulous.  We also got to eat dinner with him on Saturday night between meetings.  Elder Murray made an impression on us.  He made an impression on the whole family with his Hokey Pokey talk on Sunday.  We want our whole selves to be in the gospel!  What an inspiring, and busy, weekend it was!  We capped off the week with dinner at the Reed’s house on Sunday night with some other families.  The kids had a blast while the adults played a fun game that I need to remember the name of so we can get it. 

I will end with a picture of Isaac playing toilet paper bowling on Saturday when he was supposed to be putting the toilet paper away!