February in Fast Forward

Holy canole folks!!!! March has already almost come and gone. Can you believe it??? I'm pretty sure somebody pressed the fast forward button of life for February too. I cannot believe it's already been a month and a half since I've posted. Long story short... time flies when you are having fun :) Normally at this point I would do a dozen posts to catch up the blog. In the interest of time I think I am going to do all of February in one post. Are you ready for this?? Buckle your seatbelts! And here we go...

My Little Helper

Lydia LOVES when I let her do anything in the kitchen with me. She has a BLAST, and as long as I'm patient I have fun too :)

Mary always watches from close by, looking cute as ever. I cannot believe how big she is getting. Soon she'll be in the kitchen helping me too.

Aunt Aly Came to Visit

Aly came out for a week at the beginning of the month to help out with the girls when I still didn't have the energy to keep up with them. She was a HUGE help and the girls adore her. 

Lydia and Aly spent hours making these decorative chocolates together. Nearly every time we've mentioned Aly's name since Lydia says, "Yeah, I make chocolate with Aly."

Mothers' Group

We have a Mothers' Group in our ward that gets together once or twice a week to do little play dates with all of our kids. It was raining on this day so we went to the church house to let the kids go free with their wheeled toys and bouncy balls. Lydia is getting pretty awesome at her bike.

Lydia and one of her BFFs, Ada

A couple of dads also came to this play date, so they were able to take the lead on supervising the kids while the moms sat and visited. I love my Santa Cruz ladies!

  

Ring around the Rosey!

Making Spotting Scopes for FHE to "Spot" Things We Are Thankful For 

Our New Friend

This is Mr. Bobcat. He's been hanging very closely around our apartment. There was one day I knelt down to clean fingerprints off of our back sliding door and there it was, scratching at our back door. I might have peed my pants a little.

Love Week

Valentine's Day to our anniversary on the 21st is what we call "Love Week." We had a lot of fun spoiling each other the whole week with presents, going on a couple kidless dates, having a family BBQ, and going out to breakfast and celebrating the 4th birthday of us on the day of our anniversary. Robert put a lot of thought and planning into everything, including getting me 2 bouquets of tulips :) I love that man!!

Robert had a little present for me every day the whole week. This is the one he made the biggest deal of which normally means it's going to be the simplest one, and this was no exception. This is a movie we got on Black Friday for Christmas, but when it came time to get the Christmas presents out we couldn't find it anywhere. So for this day's present he found it for me. He cracks me up!!

This is Robert's "I'm a MAN doing MANLY things" pose

Runnin, runnin...

And runnin, runnin

Like Mother... Like Daughter

Robert was very proud of his hamburger. He had to document it.

  

Santa Cruz Diner is AWESOME!

  

Oh, and Lydia got eaten by a shark.

She helped me frost the cake and was quite proud of herself.

Happy Birthday to US!!

I wish I looked this cute when my face was that messy.

    

Singing and playing duets - one of our favorite things to do!

K'Nex rock!

Random Tidbits

Mary conquered her fear of the swings! She loves them now.

Awesome pic I took of a rainbow on a drive back from Monterey

I was finally cleared to drive again!! Yay!!!

Lydia can successfully catch a ball that is tossed to her. Robert beams every time :)

Lydia accidentally bumped Mary.
Mary fell and started fussing.
Lydia went to say sorry and give her a hug.
Mary says "A-PRIZE!" (surprise) and tackles her.
The little sneak!

I turned this...

Into this and the girls love it :)

The girls both want to help me vacuum every time. It's cute MOST of the time ;)

Mary's Officially in Nursery!

At long last, both girls are in Nursery. Just like Lydia, Mary had no trouble going and loves it every week.

My cute 18 month old!

Family Outing

We've decided at least once a week, aside from Family Home Evening, we need to have one planned ahead of time family outing. Something out of the ordinary, meaning going to the grocery store or Mothers' Group doesn't count. Our first of these adventures was going to the "ice cream store" for frozen yogurt. The girls thought it was the best night of their whole lives, especially Lydia.

There you have it! That was our February. On to March!!!

While she was sleeping...

This is Robert. Heidi was fresh out of brain surgery when my mom showed up in town. My two kids and my brother's two kids, who are currently in Monterey, less than an hour away from us, are my mom's only 4 grandchildren. So naturally, we took a little bit of time to play. 

Heidi stayed home, but the rest of us went to San Francisco. We met at a large park on top of a building near the city arts center. Although my girls totally chickened out, my niece Brooklyn and nephew T.J. had a blast. 

The cousins had fun playing around all the landscaping at the park. 

Ring around the tree? Or maybe they're just giving loves to the tree.

We went to Pier 39 and watched the boats and the sea lions. The girls loved playing on the benches there.

A very frequent occurrence is for Mary to undo her hair and it
looks like this. Happens all the time.

They switched off playing following the leader.

My favorite part of the day was when Lydia started dancing to this street performer's drum music. He let her drum on one side of the drum for while. So many people stopped to take pictures and it drew a huge crowd. It also gave him some good business as I saw several people putting in some money after they watched Lydia drumming and dancing.

We finished off the trip with a guided tour (guided by my Navy bro) of this submarine by the pier. Terrel showed us all the cool parts and was able to describe what every cramped corner was for. I can't believe they fit a few hundred people on that thing. 

  

It was a good time lots of fun with family!

Bubbles In My Hair

Every February, Robert and I have Love Week. Our anniversary is exactly 1 week after Valentine's Day, so we celebrate us all week long :) However, this year they both fall on Thursdays which is the one day a week Robert is gone almost all day. So the actual days there's not a whole lot going on in the way of cutesy, lovey dovey stuff. Fear not! There will be plenty of that to summarize in a future blog post to come. In the meantime, here is a lovely highlight from my day of Valentine.

It was just after Robert had gone to school. I got the girls distracted with the TV turned on to their favorite Dora episode as well as coloring books and crayons and toys of all sorts, and went to shower. There had been too many "ponytail today, wash hair tomorrow" days in a row. My hair needed to be washed without further delay, and I've mastered the art of a 5 minute shower for times such as these.

So with the girls distracted, up the stairs I went to complete the task. Two minutes later, just as my hair was getting extra bubbly with shampoo, I hear through the bathroom window Lydia yelling from outside, "Come on Mary! Let's go get the mail!"

It was as if the gunshot sounded to start a sprint race. I burst out of the bathroom to the top of the stairs. Sure enough, the front door (which I might add has a baby proofing knob on it) was wide open. I barrel down the stairs, frantically pulling clothes on as I go, and out the front door to see both my girls in the middle of our parking lot, halfway to the mailboxes, in nothing but their diapers (they were fully clothed when I left them). I ran to them (which is strictly a no no for my recovery, I spent the rest of the day on the couch) and as I was bringing them back I was drilling Lydia on why she should never open the door without Mommy or Daddy there. Her or Mary could get a big ouchy from cars coming in the parking lot. I even went the semi-traumatic route and said a stranger could have taken her away and she'd never see Mommy and Daddy ever again. Is that what she wanted? To be lost forever? To which she responded...

"Mommy, you have bubbles in your hair."

As the shampoo dripped into my eyes I said, "Yes, yes I do."

It'll be a couple years before I leave the girls unattended or look any of my neighbors in the eye that might have witnessed the whole ordeal again.

Happy Valentine's Day!