February Fun

February flew by, and not just because it's the shortest month of the year.

We had phone day in preschool, and the worksheets and art projects I have used in the past were becoming outdated.  Kids don't recognize regular phones much any more, so I made up a new art project.

 The kids had so much fun designing their own cell phones and some even cut them out at home to pretend they were real phones.

I must've been in a creative mood that day, because I had some balloons our for balloon day and decided to make something for Cedric an Sophie.  I felt the heart wand and ax I made turned out pretty good!

 The Super Bowl is always a fun tradition.  We go to Josh and Rebekah's house for a party.  The kids always have fun together.

 And most people enjoy watching the game.  Some of us just like the commercials.

Lily performed in her school musical "The Lion King Jr." in February.  She was one of the featured singers.  Unfortunately she got sick and lost her voice the week of the performance, but that didn't stop her from doing her best. 

 They sold out of their first four shows and added two more!  If you count the performance they did for their school mates, they'd performed the play seven times in less than a week!  No wonder Lily was so sick and exhausted!  Tom and I went a couple of times and on the final night Lily was pretty emotional.  She always has a hard time seeing things come to an end.

 After the performance, she had me follow her around with the camera and get pictures with all of her friends from the cast.

Sophie was so excited for Valentine's Day that she did all of her class valentine's all by herself!  She looked off of a paper for help on spelling and wrote the to, from, her friends' names and her name on all 12.  She even rolled the tape and stuck the chocolate hearts on all by herself.  I was quite proud of her and glad I didn't have to help since I was busy getting my own things ready for Valentine's Day.  Cedric made his own robot valentine's on the computer and they turned out really cute too.

For Valentine's Day Maren offered to help with our kids, and then we helped with hers a few nights later while she and Tim went out.  It was the fist time we'd actually gone out on Valentine's Day.  We enjoyed dinner at Sizzler and then went next door to the Megaplex to watch "La La Land".  It was a fun night and nice to not have to worry about the kids.

My Dad and Suzy sent all of the kids their own post card in the mail from England (where they are on their mission).  They came on different days and it was fun for the kids to get mail just for them.

The weather finally stopped being so bitter cold.  So one day, Sophie and I walked part way home with Lily from school.

 Tom and I were fed up with having to put our kids to bed several times each night.  It seemed like it'd take forever to get them to bed and even once they were there, they'd still holler for us several times.  It had to stop!  So I invented bedtime passes.  They earned them by being in bed by 9:00 with everything done or by not needing anything once we'd put them to bed once.  They could loose them by bothering us after they'd been to bed, or if they went to bed way too late (since that was more of a problem for Lily).  They could also trade them in for $.25 each.  They solved the problem, and although I'm not as faithful now as I first was at using them, they seemed to solve a lot of the problem.

 One day Aimee and I went up to the state capital to visit Mike.  He is on the House of Reps and had been working long hours there.  So we thought it'd be nice to go see him.

I got to sit on the floor with Mike and he would explain to me what was going on and how everything worked.  I'm not much into politics, but to be right there in the action was quite interesting.

 For one of our mutual activities we went rock climbing at a rec center.  Lily climbed to the top more than anyone and really enjoyed it!

 Now that we have kids old enough to be our babysitters, we tend to leave the kids a lot more often and find that we have to make doing things with them more of a priority.  So when we have a free weekend, we try to do something fun with them.  One night we went to Scheels and rode on the Ferris Wheel and looked around.  The kids love it there!  Maren and her girls came too.

Jeff was complaining of his eye sight and Sophie was up for her yearly check-up, so I took them in one day to the eye doctor.  Thankfully Jeff doesn't need glasses and Sophie's eyes haven't changed.  They didn't like getting their eyes dilated, but enjoyed wearing the sunglasses the doctor gave them.

Another thing we started was a  new electronic rule contract.  I'm trying to cut back on the amount of time the kids are on the electronics and also taking away YouTube more since they waist too much time on it and it's easier for scary or inappropriate things to come up.  Jeff's probably having the hardest time with the new rules, but it has been nice to have the kids actually come up with things "to do" besides electronics.

 Our boys participated in the school talent show this year.  I was sure proud of them!

 Jeff solved a Rubik's Cube (he's really good at it).

 And Cedric played a piano piece (he's also really good at it).

Cedric's been struggling with staying focused at school and some anxiety issues (he's terrified to be anywhere alone).  The school has been a great help for him and he's now taking some intervention (like IEP) classes to help him cope with his issues.

 February was Jeff's turn for our kid-date night (our new tradition we started this year).  He chose bowling.  He had a lot of fun, but was upset that he didn't get any strikes or spares (it didn't help that I bowled some of my best games that night).  We went to Iceberg afterwards for a shake to help cheer him up.

We had a great February!