A New Year: January 2019

Yay for a new year! I like new beginnings and chances to start over so I'm grateful for every new day,  new week, new month, and new year. This year started with a visit from Jason's cousin Andrea who is only a couple days older than Jason. Andrea and her family were driving back home to Michigan from visiting family in Texas. They took a break in their day of driving to have dinner with us and it was fun to catch up and let our kids play together.

We also got two big snow storms in January that both happened on the weekends and was enough to cancel church for us two weeks in a row. That rarely happens, so it was kind of crazy to miss so much church especially with the recent change to a 2-hour church block. We didn't experience that change until the end of January!

Next-door neighbor Carly playing with Lydia in the snow.

Sunday morning

Painting fingernails and toe nails. :)

We visited a new library for the first time and enjoyed a cool story time and exploring a new place.

We had a fun visit from Jason's brother Tim in the middle of the month. He had a free flight and so he used it to visit us and see a couple of basketball games. The first night Jason went with Tim to Lexington for a University of Kentucky (UK) basketball game. Kentucky played awesome as usual and won the game. And of course Ethan and Lydia loved having Uncle Tim around to play with.

This is Ethan showing Uncle Tim that he is upside down in the spoon. :)

These two are such good friends (most of the time) and I love to see them give hugs and help each other.

We started the new Come Follow Me curriculum at home in studying the New Testament together as a family. In this lesson we talked about different soil types from one of Jesus' parables. It's new and exciting and we're still trying to figure out how it works best for our family.

Lydia's hair is getting long!

More sledding adventures!

Always the best to come in from playing in the snow to hot muffins and hot cocoa. :)

Ethan also had a bike day at preschool where a police officer came in and talked about safety and then the kids got to ride several times through an obstacle course to practice stopping at stop signs and watching for cars. Super clever activity! Ethan rode his Strider balance bike even though he had ride a real bike. He just still working to maneuver the small spaces.

Ethan was proud of his marble track surrounded by Legos and a cool train track. It stayed in his room for a couple of week. He likes to keep his door closed all the time now to keep Lydia from going in and "messing up his stuff." :)

I volunteer on the board of MOMS Club and as part of that club we have monthly activities at the library. I brought soup to this activity and the girls had toys and a story.

We also coordinated a temple trip with some other couples in our ward so we could all go to the temple. We took over the Relief Society Room and turned it into a play room! We had 9 children ages 5 and under in there and it was kind of crazy at times. :) You can see in the pictures that we had three six-month-olds!

Ethan wanted to show off his "Lego Exhibit" which he labeled on the white paper. :)

I also celebrated my birthday at the end of the month. Jason and I went out to eat the weekend before and that day I worked out with my friend Charlotte in the morning and made some amazing lemon-filled cupcakes with raspberry frosting. They seriously tasted so delicious. I wish I could have shared them more, but got stuck eating too many of them myself. :) Jason was also nice enough to bring home dinner that night so I didn't have to cook or wash more dishes. Yay for thoughtful husbands.

photo courtesy to Ethan for this pic :)

Ethan was told at church that I was turning 20 years old as a joke, but Ethan kept telling his teachers and our neighbor friends that it was my birthday and I was turning 20. I'm sure all the adults smiled knowingly. :) I was also surprised in the evening by my friend Hannah who made me this gorgeous chocolate raspberry cake. It was also super delicious. So you can see why I gained several pounds in the days following my birthday. Yummy cake is hard to say no to. :)