Happy Valentines Day

Yesterday we had a good valentines day. We got to watch Jackson for the day and Aunt Sarah brought the girls some fun valentine balloons in the their favorite colors of course...

The girls made some valentine cards for Daddy.

And Sophie spent a lot of time writing her message in the card.

"Happy Valentines Day Sophie" Her E's always crack me up. It doesn't matter how many capital E's I show her and have her count how many lines they have she is insistent she has to draw as many lines as possible.

We also made some pink valentines cupcakes for Dad.

I handed Lydia a handful of heart shaped marshmallows to put on all the cupcakes and she proceeded to put as many as she could on her own cupcake.

Chad came home and brought us each a rose. Even one for Baby Roc...

And he gave me my valentine. A bag of hole punched paper that I had to decode.

This is as far as I have gotten and that is thanks to Chad helping me sort through and organize the numbers. There are 283 of them! All the girls at work gave him a hard time saying I would hate it because they would. But I love it!!! It is fun to slowly see the message and he spent so much time and effort on it! I'll take that over a box of chocolates any day. Pretty much the best husband ever.

My Archers

Last week we took the girls out into the desert to shoot their bows. They are definitely getting better at it. Especially Lydia. Usually she shoots it a couple times and is done. But this time she shot longer than Sophie. And she can do it by herself (with us holding the bow of course)

Sophie cracks me up. She always makes a funny face when she pulls the string back. And she is shooting it farther then before.

They still love to go get all of the arrows...especially the one's mom shoots way out in the middle of nowhere.

Then we headed to the park for a picnic. It was a really nice day outside. I guess that's one of the perks of living in the desert. You can still picnic in February.

Sonic Date Night

Chad surprised us last night with a trip to Sonic in the station wagon. The girls were excited to take a ride in Eleanor. (Okay so they are always excited to ride in Eleanor).

He definitely knows how to make all his girls happy

We ate in style and set up some chairs and had a tailgate picnic. It was awesome.

My Sleepy Girls

The other day the girls decided getting up at 6am sounded like fun. They normally sleep until at least 7:30. I was working and Sophie asked if I could play a game with her. I told her that I would right after I was done working. I still had a few hours left but she insisted she was going to stand next to me till I was done. And next thing I know...

She was out. She did finally lay down on the floor but she slept standing up for quite awhile. Then later that same day Lydia decided to empty all of their hair ties. So I asked her to pick them up and she was happily doing it when it got really quiet....

Apparently 6 is a little too early.

Purple My Favorite Color!

Lydia is pretty set about her favorite color. The girl is obsessed with purple. Everything has to be purple. When I ask her what she would like for lunch she answers "purple!" Everything she wears has to have something purple. Which is a little difficult since Sophie was obsessed with pink...so we have a lot of pink clothes.

For her 1st birthday she went shopping with Grandma Miller and picked out a green Leapfrog dog that sings. You could hook it up to your computer and make it say her name and sing her favorite songs. I couldn't get it to work so I just left it as it was figuring she didnt know it could do that anyways. But then she discovered her cousin Jackson had the same one and it said his name and sang Twinkle Little Star...so I had to figure out how to make her dog do that.

I couldn't get it to connect to my computer for the life of me....so I contacted Leapfrog thinking they probably wouldn't do anything since we have had it so long. But they were awesome and gave me some tips to try and get it to work...nothing. So they said they would send me out another one! Out of curiosity I asked if it would be possible to get it in......

 

Purple!! I officially love Leapfrog they are awesome. And Lydia has no complaints. Her purple dog says her name and sings Twinkle Little Star...Win!

Blessing Bags

It happens quite often that we pass someone on the side of the road that is homeless and hungry. I always feel bad because I have nothing to give them and never carry cash. Chad came up with an idea of keeping food and water in our car so we were always prepared. So the girls got busy and put together some blessing bags...

We just put some oranges, granola bars, and peanut butter crackers in small bags. And I also picked up some of those mini water bottles. They fit perfectly in the glove compartment of our van so we are always prepared.

Sophie is always on a mission to find "hungry people" now. I tell her to look for people who are holding a sign because that will tell us if they need help. We have given a few away and Sophie got really excited to see their sign. She tells me "Mom! their sign says I'M HUNGRY!!" After we give the food to them Sophie and Lydia get so excited because we made someone happy. Sophie says "aww look Mom he's happy."

It took Lydia a little bit to understand what the snacks were really for. She used to ask for one and Sophie would say "No Lydia those are for hungry people!" and Lydia would respond..."I'm hungry!"

But she has gotten it down now.

Current Happenings

Some things that have been happening around here:
Its been really cold....

So 20 to 30 degree weather is probably a laugh to most people, but when it has been 80 to 100 degrees untill a few weeks ago.....we might as well be in the arctic. Its just cold.

We have officially stopped giving Lydia naps. Which is bitter sweet. She had several weeks where she would wake up at 1 a.m. ready for the day. I couldn't take it anymore especially since I will have to get up at night in a few months with a baby. Practicing that didn't sound fun. But now that she doesn't nap she sleeps great!

And occasionally is exhausted and passes out at odd times. This was the first time we have ever lost a kid at dinner.

We also added a new member to the family....

Yes I know we are now a minivan family...sigh. But I love it! We searched for quite awhile and weren't sure if we were going to be able to find what we wanted in our price range. But after a lot of searching I had given up when a ad for a Nissan dealership popped up. I don't know why I clicked on it (we did not want a Nissan with all the issues we had with mine). When low and behold they had a Dodge Grand Caravan with all our criteria and in our price range! Its even a bit fancier than we had planned with automatic doors (which I Looove) and a trip computer. But my favorite part of all is the stow and go seats.

So far we really like it and are grateful that we found the right car for us.