February Activites

-This month started with Larry working at home again (which we're big time celebrating)! Luckily, he had one more Friday off so we squeezed in vet appointments. Unfortunately, this turned into such a nightmare! I wanted to get Charlie in to get him scheduled for his neutering, but decided to schedule for all the cats just as a checkup. The appointments were fine enough (all cats got a good bill of health), but afterwards they started fighting like crazy. We've been working on getting them used to each other again, but Charlie and Minnie literally tear each other apart so we've had to keep a VERY close eye on them and now Charlie and Otto sleep in the basement (hopefully once he gets fixed things will get better). I do sleep on the couch on Thursday and Friday nights so Minnie can have the master room just her and Larry and then the boys can have a night not in the basement, but this is definitely not ideal and I REALLY hope things get better soon. If Charlie wasn't SO good with the kids and they didn't love him I'd honestly think of finding him a new home, sad as it is to say. Wish us luck!

-While the Home Depot kids workshop hasn't worked out as much as we'd like, the Lowe's ones have been a HUGE hit so far. We did the first one this month (a chalkboard message board) and the kids LOVED building it and say they want to do more of them. I just love that they have you register for it and actually make sure they hold a kit for you.

-I've been really enjoying finding time for my puzzles and reading more. I think I've done like 5 puzzles now and I'm in my 4th book. I know it's not a lot compared to others, but still an accomplishment for me. I've been working on my smaller puzzles to start with and I've been doing good with not looking at the boxes (which is a huge feat for me). It's been nice for my brain to get the "exercise".

-In preparation for our Disney trip, I made a list of  movies to watch that the park either has rides for or experiences of and we've been watching one of those each week. It is SO much better watching with the kids for their first time. I have never been a huge fan of Snow White or Alice in Wonderland, but watching them with the kids I actually, legit enjoyed the movies. It's been so much fun watching them through their eyes. We also watched one of the newer Haunted Mansion movies and it was SO good (highly recommend it!), so that's been good too. It's definitely getting us all even more excited for the trip.

-For a fun Family Date idea we decided to take the kids to Tepanyaki for dinner one night. It was a lot of fun and I forget how good the food was. Unfortunately, it was a bit expensive, Lucy was scared, and the kids hardly ate anything, but they did enjoy the show and we had lots of leftovers especially with the Superbowl food haha)

-My Grandma has alzheimers and had to be put into a memory care center last month so I decided since I had President's Day off we should go visit her. Mom took the day off too so she could show us what it's all about and seeing her was so nice. I've never been to one of those places so I wasn't sure what to expect, but everyone LOVED seeing the girls (I kept Pierce behind with Larry) so they were all over them. We got to see Grandma's room and see good pictures from a long time ago. It was a quick visit and we went to lunch at Arctic Circle after so the girls could play for a bit. While I was sad to think of her being in one of these places, it was actually really  nice and the food smelled amazing so I know she's in good hands.

-We had to take the van in for some recall updates and a burnt out light replacement. I love car maintenance appointments because I know I get to read a bunch and have a quiet couple hours haha. I was even able to take our donation stuff to Savers on my way up and grabbed some lunch from Wendy's as well. I was able to read like 5 chapters of my book and it was a nice little break.

-I've been experimenting with some cleaning routines and what makes it easier and sense for our house as well as is efficient and doesn't make me feel like I'm losing time with kids. This past Sunday I was cleaning our upstairs and Larry mentioned we should go get some ice cream after dinner and I thought we should totally do treats on Sunday nights. We all pitch in with cleaning and to have a treat together would be such a great addition. I'm very happy to add that to our weekly routine (plus it incentivizes us to make sure we get our cleaning done...no cleaning, no treat haha).

-So after I watched that episode of Modern Family where they take Leap Day off (because it's an extra 24 hours you're gifted, why spend it at work?) I totally knew I wanted to start doing that. Take the day off and make use of the extra hours we get. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do anything too fun because I had to get ready for our Phoenix trip (post to come) so today is spent doing things we'd normally get done on Sundays as well as some fingerprinting errand for possible field trip chaperoning in the future. There wasn't really anything I could do about what needed to be done this time, but I am glad to have it off work and get things done that need to be done and I look forward to future ones and making them fun.

-Silly kiddo pics:

Man, it was a good month!

Christmas Coupons

For Christmas we gave the kids some coupons to use throughout the year. I'm pretty proud of this idea and, so far, it's been so fun picking things each month and I definitely plan to do this in future years!

This month Cara chose a date with dad. Larry took her to a nickel arcade and she had an absolute blast playing games and turning in tickets for all the prizes. 

Gwen chose a sleepover with mom, complete with ice cream, masks, silly filters, and playing a silly vet game (where she pretending to poop all over me haha). It took a while to get her ready to go to sleep,  but man am I glad to have a king size bed so we had plenty of room for each other!

Lucy chose a date with Mom, so I took her to Kangaroo  Zoo (with bouncy houses and slides) and then for Froyo. She was so cared of most of the bounce houses and slides so she just stuck with a couple of them and only spent about 30 minutes there before she was done, but she had fun and it was cheap. And Froyo is always a hit and is cheap enough so it was fun to add that in.

Overall it made the coupons even more fun and the kids now want to do what the other one picked for their next month picks haha.

Valentine's Day 2024

UGH do I feel so horrible about Valentine's this year. I ordered gifts for the kids early enough that I thought I was on top of things. The first week of this month I kept telling myself I needed to plan more things than just presents, but then I'd tell myself I have plenty of time left. Then suddenly it's the 13th and I have NOTHING planned.

I also realized the weekend before that I got them gifts, but not any candy. I forgot to make breakfast plans or read our holiday books, and I never felt like I had time to put up our decorations.

In my defense, I really feel I've still been trying to get caught up and used to our new normal schedule with the activities we have and making sure homework and reading is done. Also, we couldn't make valentine's boxes since the teachers sent emails out saying they were providing bags to decorate for the kids so we only had to get valentine's cards and candy for the classes (but I feel like decorating a box is a big part of celebrating).

I will say we did have fun with the gifts. I had planned to give them their stuff in the morning, but then Gwen wanted to play Bingo earlier this week so we told her we'd play Bingo for our gifts so they looked forward to that ALL day long. They also had a lot of fun with the anticipation of giving out valentine's and getting them at school. 

The other bad part was I didn't really wrap their gifts, I kind of repurposed bags my mom gave her gifts in the day of so that didn't feel like I put too much effort in to it. I also felt SO cranky that night. I felt like ALL the kids were asking for my help all at once and weren't being patient with me as I was helping each of them (Larry was breaking down boxes for garbage day tomorrow) so I felt like I was snapping at them a bit. No matter what I did, I just couldn't stop yelling at them even though I could tell I was doing it and needed to stop.

The good news is, they all said they had a good day. They loved the candy they got, they REALLY loved the gifts they got. For Cara, she got a diamond art keychain kit and some non toxic (kid friendly) nail polish. For Gwen, we got her some play dough tools, paint brushes (she loves to paint), and some snap pop bead set. Lucy got some play dough character accessories and popcorn pens. Pierce got socks, a pillow case, a magnet toy, and some puzzles. I also got them new thermos straws since Pierce chewed through the old ones and they all got to pick out an outfit at Carters. The girls all picked out dresses and for Pierce we got him a new swim suit set. I was pretty happy with what I got them and was happy they liked what they got as well.

As for Larry and me, I got him a shirt that says "V is for Valentine Video Games" and a tuna press tool (the kids have become obsessed with having tuna lately and so this strainer is supposed to make draining the cans easier). He got me flowers (stargazer lilies, my absolute favorite) because that's what I told him I wanted. No candy, nothing special. I honestly forgot it was Valentine's this morning when I ran upstairs to grab his things and just hand them to him haha. It wasn't our most romantic moment, that's for sure haha. 

So while Valentine's Day was a bummer and I wish I had done so much better, I am glad the kids are happy. I promise I'm going to do better next year. I know I say that all the time, but I've got plans to do better for the rest of the holidays this year to get more used to doing more and how much time I need to plan them out.

Super Bowl 2024 - My Favorite Time of the Year

Well it's the end of the Football season and my seasonal depression will probably kick in now haha. I absolutely LOVE Football season and the Superbowl is so bittersweet for me (fun to watch, love the food, but hate that when it's over I have to wait 5-6 months until the next season starts up). This year was sad since I went into thinking The Packers would do awful (so many new players and I figured we'd chalk it up to a learning year), but then they did awesome and got SO close (almost winning the Divisional Playoff round was SO amazing to watch), maybe next year.

For the past few years we've done big buffets for the day of and while those were so fun, it was also a TON of work! So this year we decided we're doing a big pizza feast. As in, anything I've ever wanted on the pizza place menus, I'm ordering. We got pizzas, breads, desserts, pastas, and salad. We got sodas and some chips with dip at the store so we didn't need to worry about adding that to it (which is good because everything I ordered was pretty pricey). We were set and excited to have food, football, and the fact that we don't have to cook or plan anything (just leave the food out and eat when you feel like it)

I decided to invite Mom, Will, Andy, and Rachel and though maybe this will be MY thing. Everyone has a favorite holiday that they'll go all out for and I think the Superbowl will be mine. 

I wasn't sure which team I was rooting for this year (I really didn't want the Chiefs to win because it would be ALL about Taylor Swift and the 49ers beat my Packers so I didn't really want them to win so I was very undecided). I will say not knowing who I was rooting for made for a very boring 1st half for me. The 2nd half got better, and going into OT is always pretty exciting, but I kind of bowed out once we put the kids down and just "watched" the game on my phone while (real) watching a movie and doing laundry. I did love the commercials and the half time show though and we ate SO much but still have quite a bit leftover (no problems with that though). 

Now that it's over, I'm excited to just focus on household things and look forward to the next year (I think Packers might have it...fingers crossed). Onto Valentine's Day now!