January happenings

Is it just me or did I blink and January was over? I'm never sad to put that month behind me, though we do celebrate Smidget's birthday toward the end of it. She whined to me for a full week that, "I wish my birthday wasn't in JANuary!" "JANuary is a BORing month" "There's no decorations in JANuary" and finally "I do NOT like JANuary" (the random capitalization is supposed to help you hear her whining, though why you would want to, I do not know.) I told her she was supposed to come on February 9th and that it was her own fault she came early. Take that, whiny-pants! Nevertheless, a good time was had by all.

Brownies for the kindergarten class:

Celebrating at Gma and Gpa Freeman's:

(Presents: More outfits and the shaved-ice stand for Kanani, the AG doll she received at Christmas)

My sil, Elisabeth also had a birthday and is about to GIVE a birthday to her new little one, so she, my sil Crystal (who just moved to Clovis from Utah, YAY), and I had a pedicure and lunch date. I am not in any photos, but I was there!

Now it is already February 5th and I realized yesterday that I haven't even put out my Valentine's decorations, and they are my very favorites. (Ironically, Smidget hasn't mentioned this omission yet!) And my girls have picked out some very specific valentines they want to make from the Family Fun magazine and have been bugging me for an extended period of time -- "Did you buy the pipe cleaners yet?" and no, I have not. I DID buy 4 bags of Hershey's kisses for this project, thinking we had pipe cleaners on hand. We didn't. All 4 bags of kisses were eaten in 3 days, and I had nothing to do with it. (That's a huge lie, I probably ate 50% of them)

Also in January, Mancub had a hair cut. He went from this Who-down-in-Whoville:

To this, expertly-coiffed gentleman:

We went to the dentist (as I mentioned in my post about Queenie). Smidget has 3 cavities (so far the only unlucky child not to get D's perfect teeth genes) and was going to have a tooth pulled next month (the permanent tooth was coming in behind and the baby wasn't even loose). But she immediately set to work wiggling it and had it out in a matter of days. Her first lost tooth!

We went to the park (I love me some California January days!)

. . . and took some walks. I am not sleeping great still, due to Mancub's nightly waking. (He's so cute, but is not a good sleeper!) So I am only waking up at 5:00 two mornings a week. The rest of the days I just have to do my best to squeeze in some form of exercise. Some days it happens, and some it doesn't (sigh).

Bring on the love, February!! We can't wait for Valentine's Day, school holidays and our big trip to Newport Beach at the end of the month. Stay tuned for more adventures . . .