February 2019

Well here it is the 21st and I'm just getting this posted. I was already 90% done with my September post at the beginning of the month, so I finished that up before starting on February. I got the pictures edited and uploaded, but then it was my birthday and as soon as we were done celebrating my birthday, it was time to get ready for Logan's birthday. It's fun sharing a birthday month with Logan, but it also makes for a very busy month because we like to go big and really celebrate birthdays at our house.

Anyway, February started off with a no school Friday. I spent the morning decorating for Valentine's Day while listening to Michael Bublé music. I changed my felt letter board.

Got a new 11x17 poster printed.

Last year I had made a banner using Christmas cards. I did that again except this year I cut the string in half and hung it in front of the fireplace. I liked it much better this way!

Peyton was in desperate need of a haircut, so I told her she could pick something fun for us to do after. She picked Jamba Juice. I got 2 larges and split them between 4 cups.

Then we dropped the kids off at the Martyn's for an early date night. Corbyn had basketball practice at 6:30, so we went from 3:00-6:00. Din Tai Fung had just opened in December and we had been wanting to go. It's always busy, but with getting there before 4:00 and sitting at the bar, we didn't have to wait.

Logan comes into our bed at some point every night, so I thought we should try getting him a nicer mattress. That instantly cured Peyton of coming in our bed at night, so I thought it was worth a try. We used our Costco rebate check, so it wasn't quite as expensive. Unfortunately it didn't work, but at least now we know it isn't the mattress.

We had the name Carson picked out for our next boy, but when we officially found out we were having a boy, I wasn't feeling it anymore. Partly because I wanted all the kids to have a different initial for their first name. We debated between a few names and finally settled on Easton. 

When we were going to use Carson, we were planning on Kent (my dad's name) as the middle name. We didn't like Easton Kent as much as Carson Kent, so then we had to debate about middle names. Kent was still in the running, but we also considered Harker (my dad's middle name and his mom's maiden name) and DeMott (Rog's middle name and his mom's maiden name). Corbyn already has Roger as his middle name, so I didn't think we needed to also use his middle name. But my dad didn't seem very excited about us using his first or middle name either. 

One night I kind of jokingly threw out Walt (as in Walt Disney). We both agreed that Easton Walt sounds good and with our love for Disney, it is also highly appropriate. All that is a long way to say we are naming this baby boy Easton Walt.

Peyton spelled this out with Bananagram tiles. 😍

We had the Willes and Yates families over to watch the Super Bowl with us. Krislyn is expecting twins pretty soon after I have Easton, so it will be fun to have 3 new little ones running around next year. We had a lot of yummy food, but I neglected to take pictures of any of it. I still have a ton of brown balloons leftover from Corbyn's Mario Party (in 2017), so I turned some into footballs again this year.

Shannah Tanner is homeschooling her two older girls and still manages to do joy school with us. This week Logan wanted to keep reading books long after the rest of the kids were done, so Summer read to him.

We had our first snow day of the season on February 5th.

Rog worked from home even though he technically could have made it to work just fine. He took a break and went out to build a snowman with Logan.

They built it in our neighbor's backyard because they have much more grass with snow on it and they don't have young kids to play in the snow. After I took these pictures, Logan knocked the snowman down before coming in. 😂

My parents went to Disneyland with Jared and Cailey and their girls. When they asked what souvenirs we wanted, Peyton knew she wanted some Minnie ears, but didn't know what kind. I showed her some that I found on Instagram and she liked these rainbow ones. My mom always looks for the best deal and she found some cheaper on eBay than you can buy them at the parks. So she ordered them and they came much sooner than the rest of our souvenirs.

I was in a quilty mood, but couldn't start on Easton's quilt yet because the pattern I was planning on using hadn't been released yet. So I pulled out my Halloween quilt and worked on that for a few weeks.

I got to go on a date with Peyton in her class. I helped her cover a heart box with different colors of tissue paper. I didn't get any pictures of that, but we also made some heart notes to put inside the box.

 I had been watching the weather app and on Friday it said we were going to have snow every day for the next week. I normally go grocery shopping on Monday, but decided to make my menu for the next week and go Friday afternoon. It was so crazy busy because all of Portland was out doing the same thing. I wanted to get it done before the kids got home from school, but that didn't happen, so I had all 3 of them with me. The aisles were packed and they were out of random things, but I got pretty much everything I needed.

That night I made personal pizzas for everyone and let them pick what toppings they wanted.

I cut out circles from ham deli meat and made some Mickeys on my pizza.

The next day it did snow quite a bit. I pulled out my snow boots and went on a walk while Rog shoveled just about every driveway on our block!

The kids played with the Lockers. They live next door to us, but we don't play with them very often because both their parents work and they go to daycare.

I was feeling bad about Corbyn's no snow pant situation, so I pulled out some of my warmup pants from my cheer days, rolled the waistband a few times, and tucked the bottoms into his rain boots. It worked pretty well.

The Yates were planning on watching our kids that afternoon for date night swap because Corbyn was supposed to have a basketball game. It ended up being cancelled, but since we were planning on an early afternoon date, we had decided to go to Biscuits Cafe (only open for breakfast and lunch), so we kept it at the same time. It was a little snowy, but that doesn't scare us, so we went to Biscuits Cafe and then came home to work on a puzzle. They were open, but said they had limited staff. We didn't notice a difference though. It also wasn't as busy as normal, so that must have equalled things out.

I took these pictures as the sun was setting that evening. With all our evergreens, Oregon really does look beautiful covered in snow. I wouldn't mind it if it didn't cause such problems.

After dinner we watched Mary Poppins as a family. Logan was cracking me up laying there with his shirt riding up and his belly showing.

Even though no snow was forecasted for Sunday, they decided to cancel church for Sunday on Saturday afternoon. While we were out on our date, we drove to the church and the parking lot was pretty bad (and wouldn't be getting any better before church), so I think they did make the right call. 

We had a cozy day at home. We had our own sacrament meeting (without the actual sacrament part). We gave Corbyn and Peyton topics and scriptures from Come Follow Me and they wrote their own talks. We were very impressed with what they came up with!

I made Cinnamon Roll Cookies and we went on a walk to deliver them to a couple of our neighbors in our ward (the Beans and the Connors). (I've made these before, but it had been awhile. I'm glad I remembered that they are actually better cold right out of the refrigerator than at room temperature.)

By the time Monday morning came around, all the snowflakes that had been in our forecast changed to rain and life went on as normal that week. I feel like we dodged a serious bullet because it rained hard nonstop that week. If it had been snow and not rain, it really would have been a snow apocalypse.

Kristen hosted joy school that week and they did pirate activities for the letter p.

While Peyton was at dance on Monday afternoon, the boys and I drove to Krispy Kreme and picked up some valentine donuts for our FHE treat.

 The rest of our souvenirs showed up. Logan got this Mickey sipper. (I actually had them get it to be a decoration for my craft room. Shh, don't tell him!)

Corbyn got a Star Wars advent calendar. He knows he has to wait until Christmas to use it and is patiently waiting. This worked out well because Logan can start using the set Corbyn has been using.

And I got donut Minnie ears.

I made a huge batch of sugar cookies for Activity Days. I took a ton of my sprinkles and I mistakenly thought they would be responsible with them. A few of the girls started putting a scoop of every single kind of sprinkle on their cookies, so then all the girls had to do that.

We had enough cookies left for the playgroup Valentine's Day party the next day. I learned my lesson and didn't get out as many sprinkles. I think they were more responsible with the sprinkles than my Activity Day girls though. It did help that their moms were there helping them.

I found these printable valentines from Just Add Confetti to use for the kids' valentines that they passed out at school. 

Robot here. (I realized too late that I put these together wrong and covered up the part that says, "I like you a bot.")

Llama here. I encouraged Peyton to pick these, so we could use our Mardi Gras bead supply for them.

Lava here.

Rog came home from bishopric the night before Valentine's Day with flowers and Twizzlers Bites for me. He knows me well. I prefer daisies over roses and licorice over chocolate!

I wanted to make a strawberry banana smoothie for breakfast on Valentine's Day. I've never been able to find a recipe for one that I love. I tried a new one and it was fine, but not amazing.

I helped with Peyton and Corbyn's class parties on Valentine's Day. In both classes they didn't do much more than pass out and open valentines, but it was fun to be there with them especially since the parties were during Logan's preschool.

When they all got home from school, we decorated the rest of the cookies.

I made a fancier dinner and we left the tablecloth on the table for dinner. I tried this new recipe for Alfredo Sauce and made our favorite Breadsticks. Unfortunately the alfredo sauce was not our favorite (too buttery - especially the leftovers the next day). We had some sparkling cider in the fridge that friends had given us for Christmas, so I pulled that out at the last minute.

I had been wearing my VE shirt all day and wanted to get a picture with Rog in his LO shirt before I took it off to go to tap that night. I asked Corbyn to take the picture, but it turns out he was taking a video (on purpose to be funny). It would have been more funny if I wasn't in a hurry to leave. We never did get the picture.

All the kids got a little present in their mailbox for Valentine's Day. Corbyn got a Stikbot lion, Peyton got a few stamp pads, and Logan got Crayola Color Bath Dropz. Every night he had been saying he didn't want to take a bath because he hates baths. These have helped although the novelty has worn off a bit over time.

We had the Din and White families over for dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year. I ordered these lanterns on Amazon.

They came with some red envelopes that I used as decorations as well.

The Dins brought some noodles and fortune cookies and the Whites brought orange chicken.

We made Dixie's famous egg rolls and fried rice. I didn't get a picture that night, but took this one of the leftovers when I was eating lunch the next day. The edges got a little black in the toaster when I was reheating them. 

We were playing Eye Found It (the card game version) and noticed that the cards fit together in lands.

This is the Little Mermaid land.

The Cinderella land.

And the Aladdin land. (There's also Winnie the Pooh, Monster's Inc, Pirate's of the Caribbean, Mickey, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan, Phineas and Ferb, Alice in Wonderland, and Cars.)

I don't usually make a dessert for Sunday night anymore. I save that for our Monday FHE. But sometimes we'll have ice cream after dinner. This week I was feeling fancy and whipped up some quick homemade ice cream cones. I've been craving strawberries more than anything else this pregnancy, so I've been keeping strawberry ice cream on hand and I had made some strawberry sauce. That with Magic Shell on top was 👌.

Peyton's ballet teacher wants her students to wear their hair in buns for class each week. I finally bought a black scrunchie (in a 2 pack for $.88) to go around her bun which makes it look so much more finished.

My mom had bought the kids shirts last year and meant to give them to the kids for Christmas, but since they moved into their house in December, she hadn't found them by Christmas. So she sent them with our Disneyland souvenirs for Valentine's Day. Logan has no idea about Star Wars, but was happy to be matching with Corbyn.

Since I am the room mom for both kids' classes this year, I got to help put together baskets for Winterfest. Peyton's class was Family Fitness and they hardly got any donations. I was given a budget of $110 to add to the basket. On President's Day the kids and I went to Walmart and bought all the stuff we could find that was related to family fitness.

Corbyn's class was Fun in the Kitchen. They got a ton of donations and they still gave us $75 to spend. My co-room mom bought a basket to put the stuff in and an apron and then we donated the rest to Peyton's class and another class that also had meager donations.

The day after President's Day Logan and I went to the school to put the baskets together. My co-room mom in Peyton's class came to help, but my co-room mom for Corbyn's class couldn't come, so I put that one together on my own after we put together the basket for Peyton's class.

When Logan started speech therapy with Kaiser, he was supposed to have his hearing tested, but they were backed up, so they said they'd call me when they could get him in. That was last May and they finally got him in at the end of February. We were pretty sure his speech problems were not related to a hearing issue, so we weren't too worried about it. He did great for the hearing test and as we thought, he is hearing just fine.

I had a rough night putting the kids to bed by myself on a Wednesday night when Rog helps with the youth and has his bishopric meeting. On my way to bed I checked on the kids and both the boys gave me reason to stop and smile. 

Corbyn seems so big during the day, but seeing him cuddle with his Star Wars bear in his sleep makes my heart happy. He's still my little guy! 

And Logan was going through a phase where he wanted ALL the stuffed animals in his room to sleep with him. 

I've been making this smoothie quite frequently over the past couple of months. 

It's a recipe of my own creation.

I like it quite thick, so I go heavy on the frozen fruits.

I got the squares cut out for one of Easton's quilts. I decided that since he's going to be living in our room for the first 6-12 months (6 if you ask Rog, 12 if you ask me), I decided he needs a yellow and gray quilt. (I'll also make him a BYU football quilt for when he moves into the boys room.)

Peyton was selected as Student of the Month for Integrity. 

Mrs. Christensen gave us more notice than we had when Corbyn was selected, so Rog was able to come to the assembly too.

Word got out in the PTO that I have good handwriting and my friend Lindsey who is on the PTO board asked if I would come help with a few things that needed to be handwritten for Winterfest.

The big thing was this poster that had the times when all the raffles were happening. This is only 1/3 of the poster, it was huge! (We took this picture when we were there for Winterfest and someone else had written in the winners.) 

Logan came with me and Lindsey gave him a bag of Cheetos to occupy him while I was writing!

After helping with that Logan and I went to Safeway to get a couple things that were on sale. Oreos were $1.99, so I got a couple different kinds. This Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie flavor is pretty good, but I can't eat them without being reminded about what happened while we were at the store.

Logan wanted a cookie while we were there and we're used to shopping at Winco where they always have cookies out to take for kids. I went to the bakery and there was a container of cookies that was open just behind the counter, so I reached over and took a cookie for him. Next thing I knew a man who works in the bakery was yelling at me telling me that you have to ask for a cookie or otherwise you are stealing. This went on for more than a minute or two and I said I was sorry and told him that I didn't know and got out of there. 

Being pregnant and hormonal, as soon as I started walking away tears started coming. I tried to hold them back, but by the time I was checking out at the self checkout area, I was a mess. Of course the machine malfunctioned and the worker had to come help me. I couldn't even talk I was crying so hard. He just looked at me in horror, fixed the machine, and walked away. I finished checking out and got out of there as fast as I could. Then I went home and tried to compose myself before we had to go out to the bus stop to get Corbyn and Peyton. 

I already didn't love Safeway before this incident. I've mentioned that before. They have good sales, but otherwise you end up paying way more than you should for things. Even though it is our closest grocery store, I rarely go there. Instead I drive the 13 minutes to Winco where things are much cheaper (and the cookies don't come with a lecture). It took me a few weeks, but I did go back last week when I wanted grapes for Logan's birthday party and they were on sale there. And I'm going to be going in the next day or two because Tillamook ice cream is on sale and we always stock our freezer when that happens. All that to say, if you buy these Oreos, I hope you have a better experience at the  grocery store than I did!

The next day was a crazy busy Saturday. The morning was relatively chill. I went on a walk while Rog took the kids over to the high school to ride bikes. It wasn't raining, but there were plenty of puddles to ride through!

After lunch Peyton had a birthday party to go to. I took her and sat in the car preparing my primary lesson for the next day while she was in there. Then we met the boys at the stake center for a baptism. One of the boys in my class who has a birthday at the end of the year was getting baptized and Rog was confirming him. 

After the baptism we rushed over to Corbyn's basketball game. Logan was terrible at the baptism and fell asleep on the way over. 

Then we went to MOD Pizza for dinner. That was Peyton's choice for dinner to celebrate her being student of the month.

Finally we headed over to Winterfest. It went from 4-7 and we were definitely there for the tail end. We missed it last year when we were at Disneyland, so the kids were extra excited about it this year. We don't buy tickets to enter the raffles for the baskets, but we do buy tickets for the carnival games.

They also had balloon swords that the boys spent some of their tickets on!

I took my turn hosting joy school with the letter q. We made this craft (Q is for Queen and quilt). Then the kids wanted to play games almost the entire rest of the time. When we had about 30 minutes left I had to cut them off. That's a lot of time playing games with 3 year olds and I had run out of patience! 

We had a leaky dishwasher. Rog figured out what part we needed and ordered it, but for a few weeks we had this situation going on whenever we ran the dishwasher while we waited for the part to come.

We had a week where we literally only got a sprinkling of snow, but we had 2 days where school was delayed 2 hours in the morning, 1 official snow day, and the Blue and Gold ice cream social for Cub Scouts was cancelled. The Blue and Gold being cancelled was the most ridiculous part because they cancelled it early in the day and by the time it would have started, there was no snow whatsoever.

The afternoon of the snow day all the kids went to play at the Martyn's house, so I took the opportunity to finish up the blocks for Easton's quilt. I did more than the pattern called for to make it just a little bigger, but then when I laid it out with the sashing and triangles, I realized it was going to be square and I didn't want that. So now I have 7 extra squares. (Pattern is Quilty Hearts by Emily Dennis.)

That night was the night of the cancelled Blue and Gold. The crappy thing was they didn't cancel YM and YW, so Rog still had to leave that night. It wouldn't have been so bad if both were cancelled and we got an extra night with Rog home.

Peyton and Corbyn wore matching pajamas that night without planning it and wanted me to take their picture.

Corbyn had to do a presentation in his class about his dream vacation. He chose Disneyland which made me very happy. He worked hard on his presentation and practiced a lot.

He got a great review from his teacher.

Tracy invited me and Logan to go to Chick-fil-A with her and Riley for breakfast the morning after the snow day. It was perfect because we literally had nothing planned that day. It was a Thursday, so Logan should have had preschool, but they had moved his preschool to Wednesday (the snow day) that week since they were doing a CPR training for the teachers on Thursday. 

I was cracking up when they brought me our food and I saw the name they had put in when I said Shauna. Trana?! That's not a name! 😂

And that was our February!