February- Parades, Parties, Princesses and Princes!

Here are some of the things we have been up to in February!

February 6-
Sydney wanted me to make them some crowns so I cut out the crown shapes and drew the ovals and Sydney cut out and glued her gems on her crown. Fun the little things they enjoy.

February 10- Highland Mardi Gras Parade
The kids were super excited for Mardi Gras. The weather was just about perfect, it had poured down raining earlier that day but by the afternoon, in time for the parade, it stopped! We joined up with Ian, his mom Becky and Liam and Scarlett as well as our friends the Terrys.
Jonas was ok with the parade, he wanted to run around and just eat all the candy as they got it.

These cousins, lol. They're just so cute when they get together.

Here's Sydney holding out her bag to catch some stuff.

And the kids showing off their spoils.

February 17-
Dad just thought Sydney was so cute in this dress. We got it from someone but Sydney had never worn it before and it goes so well with her short hair cut.
And you know our little Sydney, she loves to pose.

February 15- 
No pictures for this bu we had a Sweethearts Dance at our ward and it was lots of fun. Just hanging out with no kids and dancing with my sweet hubby :) Brian was so wonderful on Valentine's Day- made me a HUGE breakfast in bed and had chocolate (yay!) for me. Really sweet! We do have some pictures taken at the dance which I hope to get soon and share!

February 18- My Birthday!
This year I turned the ripe old age of 27. lol just kidding. I don't feel old. Until the kids wear me down real good but I had a wonderful birthday. Loved all the birthday wishes and calls and songs. Had Liam and Scarlett over and also had my friends the Terry's over a little bit that day too and just felt super happy the whole day :) Wonderful-smelling lotions and body spray from Drea helps too :)
We went to the Boardwalk Mall that night with some take-out from Albasha's (gyros yum! I crave their food all the time!) and then had some Coldstone's ice cream (double-yum!) So it was a blast! Some pictures from the Boardwalk:

Brian and I went out to eat Tuesday night while a family from our ward watched the kids. That was really nice to get out of the house! I also stuck to my calorie-plan well with their lighter Italian fare at Olive Garden so that was cool! I have recently discovered that is asparagus is cooked right and still a bit crispy, I actually like it! So I've tried something new this year! go me!


February 23-
We had a small party at our house for my birthday with some friends and family :) I love having King's Cake for my birthday and we hadn't had one this year either (King's Cake, that is) so it worked perfectly.

Thank you everyone for making my birthday great! 


The past few weeks Brian hasn't been in school but he starts his next class on Thursday so we're prepared for things to get busy around here again. It's like being a single parent lots of days- especially the night he has his 4-hour class, I am with the kids all day, feed them dinner, bathe them and put them to bed myself. It will be like that other nights too as he has to go somewhere to work on his schoolwork but the goal is for him to have his Master's in a year so we can do this! With Brian not taking classes, I stepped up my tutoring hours and so I appreciate his help with that. This week I'll go back to 8 hours a week but I really want to try to maintain that as I know there are only a couple more months of good tutoring opportunities before the summer hits and it will be very slow. I'm excited about some sites I have been ( and will be ) featured on this year for my design business. One this month was MyscrapbookArt.com and that has brought in some good advertising for me and I have another big one scheduled for April that I am really excited about so I am hoping all of this is getting my name out there and helping my business grow!

We are working with Sydney on trying to read words. She can recognize some small ones like "dad", "mom", "dog", "cat" and sometimes "cow". She can be a little obstinate about working on it and so I have to find a better way to make it fun. She's doing great with cutting skills and she can count to 30 (sometimes more if we just help her with the names of the tens) so that's all exciting. She loves playing opposites with us (just "What's the opposite of hot?")  and it's hard to imagine her going to Pre-school this fall. I know Jonas will miss her!

Jonas is not progressing much with potty-training. lol but he is learning to talk and say more words every day! I think he said "Love you too" for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It was really sweet! He says "Thomas Train", "show" (for TV, and then gets SUPER MAD when I tell him he's not watching more TV),  and he can say all our names but is still struggling a bit to say his own. I love it when he says "Woah" or "OH!". It's so cute. And he also says "ma'am" when I tell him something he should be doing. Also, sometimes when I get mad at him but don't put him in time-out, he will put himself over in time-out. His slumped over pose with his frowny face is pretty pathetic but cute.

We're doing well and hope everyone else is too!

Warming Weather and New adventures

January 21st
On Martin Luther King Day I got to watch my nephew and niece! Sydney was so excited to have someone to play dress-up with! I would see a purple dress walk by and thought it was Syndey, but the brown hair gave it away as Scarlett. I did double-takes like that all day. lol.

I really wish this picture wasn't blurry, it's so dang cute their looks!

Blowing some bubbles outside. And yes, Jonas has the bubble wand in his mouth in the back.

Liam enjoyed taking the berries off of the tree that hangs over our back fence. I was careful to tell them not to eat them!

January 26

Jonas loves all kinds of fruit, including strawberries. I was just shocked at how big this strawberry was and the leaves were huge too!

February 2
 
 So the big adventure... I'm not 100% sure Jonas is ready to start hard core potty-training but I thought maybe if we get him some Cars underwear he would get excited about it and try it. So here is a video of him trying on his underwear for the first time.

I kept asking him to go sit on the potty, sit on the potty, etc. and he had an accident on the floor. I very gently told him, ok let's go get this off in the bathroom. And he happily took off his socks but when I started taking off his underwear, he was MAD. But I stayed calm because I knew that it was good for him to see that the underwear goes away if he has an accident. So, I was kind of happy he was upset. lol. Going to try to give him some time in the underwear when I can and am home and see if starts getting the idea... wish us luck!