Hello February!

I'm so excited to be done with January. January always seems to just drag and drag, and nothing exciting ever happens in January. So, I for one, am very glad to leave it behind and welcome in February.

The kids and I had a good day today. Nothing super exciting or eventful, mostly just a regular day. But today went so much better than yesterday, and so I'm happy!

First of all, I was able to get in the shower before 10am. That never happens, because usually there is only enough hot water for Aaron to shower and then he leaves for work before there is more hot water, which means I have to wait until Adelia goes down for her nap at 10 before I can shower. I'm not a productive, or really even happy person, until after I get my shower. So usually mornings are not great. But this morning, I was showered and dressed with hair done and even make up on, before 9:00. Thank you Aaron for taking a lightening quick shower and then eating breakfast with Lincoln and Adelia so I could get in.

I did spend from 9:00 until 10:00 just getting three children dressed with shoes and coats on so we could get out the door at 10:00. I never would have dreamed that it could take that long just to dress three people, but every day, without fail, we spend a solid hour on that task.

10:00 is usually Adelia's nap time, but I'd just tried really hard to get everyone out the door so we could run to Costco, and I figured she slept in a tiny bit this morning, so I opted to push her nap back and go anyways, because it was kind of a now or never thing. Once we get into nap time, we are stuck home for almost the entire rest of the day.

My first thought upon opening the door was that it was FREEZING outside. We made it to Costco, and got all four of us from the car to the inside of the store without any major ordeals. (Sometimes the kids fight over how they are situated in the cart.) I love Costco. Its one of those places that I go, where even if I'm only getting one thing, I still do a complete tour of the entire store, just to see what they have out. And today I was only going to get rice milk for Ivan, but I came out with more. :) While browsing the movie isle, I found a Leap Frog DVD called Numbers Ahoy! for only $6. That's the same series as Letter Factory, Talking Words Factory, and Math Circus, that I really like, and $6 is the best price I've seen...even better than what I can get it for online. So I got that. The kids were thrilled because it has pirates and sharks in it. Even though it's preschool math, just like Math Circus, it focuses on different things like patterns, estimation, and number recognition.

I also found some preschool work books that I liked for Lincoln. They are called Total Reading and Total Math. They are full of lots of activities, some similar to what we've already been doing, which will be nice for the repetition and reinforcement of those ideas, and some new stuff that I hadn't thought of doing with him yet. Plus, I really like the way they are organized. And even if we don't do every single page, I like having it as a reference when I'm coming up with my own stuff for us to do. I have kind of made a solid decision that Lincoln and I will do preschool together every day for about an hour (or however long the activity planned will keep his attention) during Ivan's nap time. Today we did the color red. Linc already knows all his colors, but I thought it would still be a good opportunity for him to work on following directions. He did great, and we had a lot of fun. We did a little bit of coloring pictures of things that are red. Then we traced the word red, and Linc had a chance to try writing it on his own. But the best part was our red scavenger hunt. We went all around the living room and kitchen to see what kinds of red things we could find. When we had them all in a pile on the kitchen table, I let Linc take a picture of them. He was pretty proud of that.

Lincoln's pile of red things

After that Ivan woke up from nap, and the boys had a little snack while I put Adelia down for her second nap. Then I decided we'd start on a project. I'm not much into those little boxes of store bought Valentines. Especially when making your own occupies so much of my children's time. :) Not to mention that it's an awesome fine motor skills work out. First I folded some paper in half and drew half hearts so Lincoln could practice cutting on the line. He did really well. His cutting skills are coming along very nicely. And Ivan just had fun cutting and ripping the piece of paper I gave to him. Then we got out the glue sticks, and I cut some card stock into card shapes, and the boys glued their hearts or random shaped ripped/cut pieces of paper to the cards. I found some foam heart stickers in the craft cupboard leftover from last year, as well as some paper heart stickers, and glitter glue. So we spent the next little while sticking, and glittering everything in site.

What a disaster area, hu? But, the boys had a great time, and it's nothing a little wash rag and a broom couldn't fix. I love glitter glue, by the way. I think it's one of the greatest inventions of all time. Especially when it comes to kids crafts. All they have to do is squeeze it out of the tube, and then the sky is the limit. They can make designs, use it as a border, smear it around with their fingers, or all of the above.

Also, I can't remember when, but at some point, we had the tape out. My little Ivan Boy LOVES tape. Whenever he sees that I have tape out, he says, "Mama, tape!" as in, give me some tape. I usually always give him a piece, and he ALWAYS sticks it on his nose. I have no idea where he learned to do this, or why he does it, but that's what he does. It's so funny. And today when he did it, he started mooing like a cow. I think we have another comedian in the family.

When Adelia woke up, Lincoln kept bugging me about wanting to go on a bike ride. And really, I was pretty sick of being in the house. So, even though it was freezing ice cold outside, I bundled us all up (which took another forever) and we went for a walk around the block. It was very nice to get out, but it was really cold. I was glad I'd triple layered Adelia, and that I'd put scarfs and gloves on the boys and myself.

I think I have about the three cutest kiddos in the whole world.

Aaron beat us home (not by much) and we spent the rest of the evening making and eating dinner, and then running to Walmart for a couple things. We decided to go to Springville Walmart (because I HATE the one in Orem), and I was pleasantly surprised by how clean it was, and how non-scary the shoppers and workers all were. Not to mention that they have a subway in there instead of McDonalds so the smell was also infinitely better. I think I'll be driving the extra 7 minutes to Springville when I need to go to Walmart from now on. Totally worth it.

When we got home, I told the boys to run in and get their jammies on. Ivan came out doing this...