February 2013

I can hardly believe spring is here...I mean, where did February even go?

Here is a bit of a recap of how last month went for us....

On the 2nd, Ben turned 28. We celebrated by going out to breakfast, but then after nap I headed up to Portland. I had a bachelorette to attend, and my sweet husband gave me the go ahead to miss the evening of his birthday for it. I'm telling you, he's one generous and patient man.

I had a blast at Carina's bachelorette and felt about 10 years younger, if only for an hour while we were out dancing. I also started a 2 week vacation. I figured I was going to be away from my job for 2 weekends, I might as well take off the days in between and spend some focused time with my boys. It was WONDERFUL.



The next day, I headed back home as soon as I could to continue Ben's birthday weekend celebration. After the boys woke up from nap we headed to Ben's parents for a Superbowl/Bday party for Ben. Just a little party with both of our immediate families.

The following weekend was THE wedding. Carina and Reid's big day was one of my favorites of all time. Ben and I left the kids home with his parents for the entire weekend (which was a first and made me nervous- mostly because of their sleep habits). We stayed at my High School best friend's place and had a great time catching up with her and her husband. We had the rehearsal, dinner and then stayed up late talking with Linds and Adam before crashing and then SLEEPING IN (glorious!).

Then February 9th, Ben dropped me off at the Crystal Ballroom and I dove into the preparations that were already underway (While Ben cavorted around Portland by himself, and thoroughly enjoyed it). Things moved quickly and the wedding started just after 5pm, beautiful ceremony, cocktail hour, dancing, dinner, dancing. Ben and I had a really fun night, and we realized it was the first time we really danced together. I passed out shortly after we got back and then the next morning we were off to visit a Portland church and we even ate lunch before rushing home to our boys. It was so good for us, our marriage, our kids...our whole family. The boys did GREAT and Ben and I felt rejuvenated and were so relieved to discover that our children didn't disintegrate without us.

A few days later we took the boys to see Liz's lambs. They get bummers every year and invite everyone to come out for a feeding to see them. I love it just as much as the kiddos do. Ben was there, he just did all the photo taking...

All month we had about a million different types of appointments that kept us quite busy (more on that later and NO I am not pregnant again, haha). Then I came down with some weird stomach thing (yes, I'm SURE I'm not pregnant) and then the next day Ben was out with the stomach flu. Then we had some sort of food poisoning a few weeks later. Hm, perhaps my cooking is killing us slowly.

The weather was randomly dry and sunny and we spent some afternoons and weekends outside. We mostly let the boys play, even though we have a LOT of yard work to catch up on.

Malakai went back and forth with potty-training all month and I wanted to tear my hair out or throw him a party a handful of different times. Yeah, it's been a roller coaster ride.

Desmond is talking up a storm, he started repeating just about anything he hears. He's such a little parrot in that regard. He also LOVES to mimic anything Kai does, so we've had a lot of talks with Malakai about setting a good example for his brother. Good example- cleaning up toys, playing gently. Bad example, running around and literally bouncing off the walls, climbing chairs to reach things on tables. Sigh.

Things at work have been different for both Ben and I. I don't really like to go into details about our workplace joys or woes too much here, so I'll just leave it at that. We are both gainfully employed and while it's often a struggle to make ends meet due to our long term debt (we have ZERO debt outside of our home and student loans, but those 2 things are more than ENOUGH), God always provides somehow and we are able to make it work.

So...that was our February, a short month packed with more activity than should actually fit.