February 2013

Dear kids,
This month has gone by so fast.  It has been a busy month but mostly busy with just normal life things.  And honestly most of those life things involve our family and just being together.  Here are some pictures:

 

I had a weak moment and let Trey talk me into trying the potty training thing.  I discovered about 30 seconds in that I wasn't going to have the energy or patience to do that right now.  We trying for a little longer and then I decided that we could try again in about 6 months.  (When I told my friend Brooke about this, she said we are true friends because she did this same thing with Andrew this month too!)

Cooper celebrated his 100th day of school on February 15th.  We got this great idea from a friend and Cooper's teacher said that no one had ever done anything like it before.  I think that made him feel pretty cool.

 Jenna

 Cooper

 Ryder

 Trey

You guys are such goons.  It was fun to see you make these silly faces.  It was even funnier when we discovered after church the next day that we hadn't done a very good job of washing them off.

We sure do love reading books together.  We have a bigger couch but this particular night we all ended up on the small couch while Jenna read us a book from the library.  We stored all of our books in storage and have tried hard to keep a great stash of library books on hand to enjoy. 

Valentine's was fun this year.  We wrote notes and had treats for each other for the few days leading up to and then of course on valentine's day as well.  Dad gave mom beautiful flowers and mom gave dad a Jar full of Riesen candies.  (On each "Riesen" I put a real REASON that I love him).

The weather has been SO incredible.  We have been biking/walking/scooting/skating almost everyday this year.  We do this too and from school and I think it is a highlight of my day.  It is great to be together, outside, enjoying life.  I know that more rain is probably on its way but we are going to keep enjoying this as much as we can.  We even got a couple of park days!

We had two friends come over on Valentine's day and we made play-dough.  Ryder loves having friends come over and I think he has really missed preschool this year.  He asks quite often if it can be a preschool day.  I really hope to get him in a fun preschool next year as he still has another year before he will go to Kindergarten. (Even though he is READY in almost every way).

Cooper and some of his friends during the "Green Eggs and Ham" breakfast.

Cooper and Ms. Williams - She has been an amazing teacher for Cooper!

 

Cooper got to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday with a Green and Ham breakfast.  A local restaurant sponsored it and they got hats and had a fun breakfast with their parents.  Garrett and I got to go and it was fun to be with just Cooper.  We even got to read some Dr. Seuss books together.  

I did capture a few fun moments of play this month too.  Trey has discovered puzzles and Cooper and Ryder were helping him while I made some dinner.  I played cars with the little guys, while Jenna and Cooper were at school.  It only took about 30 minutes before I figured out how the pieces actually fit together.  I think my kids are better at this then me.

 We have been going to library story time.  Sometimes we go on Tuesday for Preschool Story time and sometimes we go on Wednesday for Toddler Story time.  It is really fun and we love to sing and read books and play some great activity afterwards.  Plus the library has such fun things to play in the kids area.  We get to pick out new great books for the next week or so.  It is wonderful.  This month they had a special visitor.  It was the Toothfairy.  She came and read to the kids and taught them about taking care of your teeth.  Ryder got to help be the Dentist and he was SO cute.  Ryder is growing up a lot.  This puts him in different situations and I have found that he is a little bit shy and nervous at first.  He pushes through and does really well but I am always a little surprised to see the nervousness come out.

 

 My sweet friend Brooke, sent me this e-card.  She said she thought of me, which is totally sweet.  It made me smile and kind of sums up my feelings about life right now, being pregnant and trying to keep up with you four kids.  I am trying really hard to be awesome but I have a hard time doing it everyday.  I hope you ALL know how much I love you!