Heartsy

The kids favorite part of Valentines Day is this string maze. Which I am way too pregnant to be doing, but my knees and pelvic bone survived the crawling around! It was Kohen's first year doing it and he didn't really understand the follow the string part. He kept just yanking on his string while he ran, trying to get it to follow him. Kasen finished fast enough to help him with his though.

I don't know which happened faster, finishing the string maze or them eating all the the chocolate covered strawberries I made them.

The DeGraffenried's invited us to their sugar cookie decorating party again this year and I think Tai decorated the most cookies there! She was in heaven will all the different sprinkles.

I find it odd that the kids teachers don't send lists home of all the students in class to write Valentines for, but are supposed to leave them blank. Kasen and Tai wanted to write names though- which is the point right? Thinking of others (by name) and letting them know you care. So we pulled out their class picture to make sure they didn't forget anyone! #boycottingblankvalentines

Kasen was so sweet and snuck into our bedroom that morning to leave each of us a Valentine on our nightstands, with a treat! And Tai made me a Valentine heart hunt downstairs. I love them!

The next day we went to Kasen and Tai's Parent Teacher Conferences and they are doing so great!

Kasen's teacher has been such a good fit for him. She hasn't emailed me once about him being distracting in class cause she lets him move when he needs to. 

He's been really interested in maps and has his own desk in the back of the room by the world map to write his book he's been working on, "Kasen's Gingerbread Man". It's like 19 pages of him just writing all the countries of the world that the gingerbread man has traveled to. Kasen read it to me and I'm impressed that he even knows how to pronounce most of them too! "I just want kids to learn about all the countries in a fun way." Mrs. Cable has also given him his own geography and world atlas books. The other thing that helps keeps him busy is that a handful of students in class have been given math challenge books to work on instead of other assignments. I love that she's keeping him learning at his fast pace.

He wrote a second book called "Mrs. Cable's Super Class!' and has made each of his classmates into a super hero. Now he wants to publish his books and keeps asking Alexa to contact a publisher. 

Tai's teacher told us she's well above the kindergarten goals and could have easily skipped kindergarten, but she's still glad to have her in class for all the social aspects. Her favorite parts of school lately have been building snow men at recess!

She had her 100th day of school and got to dress up like a 100 year old. She and Gemma were the cutest little old ladies!

And crazy hair day this month.

Kyle took Tai on a Valentines date to Color Me Mine where they painted her a cute little heart jewelry box and to dinner at Waffle Love. And that's how Kyle got the best Dad ever heart from her!

 I took Kasen on a little date too. It was mostly errands like getting his finger sized for a CTR ring, shopping for a coat, using his Zupas free kids meal for our lunch date and picking out treats to take to his class to celebrate his birthday since he has a summer birthday and doesn't get to celebrate it at school. We also stopped at the Library to pick him out an F22 Raptor book and listened to music from Top Gun Maverick in the car! He sings that theme song all day every day.

And then Tai got to go on her Grammy birthday date. They went glow in the dark miniature golfing at Fat Cats and got Happy Meals. She loved it!

It took a couple weeks, but Kyle and I finally made it to our Valentines date! We went to see A Man Called Otto and to dinner at the Melting Pot. We'd been there once before when we were first married, but this time was better than I remember. I love dates with Kyle! 

This month we also got to go to Camden's baptism. I love the picture Kasen drew of him giving Camden a high five for getting baptized!

I finally got to meet Parker now that she's almost 4 months old! Yay for cousins! 14 girls and 3 boys now on the Liddiard side.

Last week we had a snow day and Eagle Mountain actually got some snow this time! There was still grass showing on the sledding hill, but we got snow! It was a wonderful day too. I didn't have to wake up to an alarm and Kyle stayed home from work and we took the kids sledding! My favorite things were:

Kasen laying down, going backwards down the hill like a dead man,

Tai's big grin when her sled turns around so I can see her face,

and Kohen preferring to scoot down the hill on his bum.

Then stopping for a dirty scoop at Dirty Dough to celebrate he miracle of passing my glucose test this time!!

And the kids were able to go to the RADKids classes this month to learn all about how to be safe in different situations. It was a free class through the city and totally worth all the things they learned about fire safety, animal safety, water safety, gun and knife safety, self defense skills, etc.

I finished Kolt's name letters for the shelf in his nursery, so now all I gotta do is find fabric to make his quilt!

-We finally got the Nissan back at the beginning of the month. Took 3 weeks and us writing an honest review to finally get the alternator replaced so I could have my car back.

-This year Kyle won $200 from the Super Bowl squares! That's a nice change from previous years.

-We got a new fire place! Costco let us return our broken one even though it was 4 years old and it only took Kyle 4 hours to put the new one together.

-We found out that UPD is dissolving so Kyle's job is up in the air and all we can do is wait to see what happens.

The last day of the month we visited Dakota's grave again this year. When I told the kids where we were going Kasen said, "Oh yeah, that was sad. He was a baby that never got to be a kid. I can't believe I never got to meet my baby uncle!" Kids keepin it real.