long & rambly February post!

February was loads less bleak and dreary and snowy than January, praise the heavens. Here's a round-up of pictures from the month:

It was Clyde's turn for basketball! He was on a team with friends and classmates from school and loved it, which made the practices/games with me trying to keep Jack happy and contained on the bleachers worth it... mostly :). I love the [blurry] picture of Clyde with the ball in the upper right corner - isn't the kid guarding him huge??

Chuck's in charge of the program for young men at church and lately the Teachers and Priests (14-18 year old boys) have been planning activities to help them prepare for missions/college/life on their own. One night it was a basic cooking lesson at our house: making jambalaya and cornbread muffins!

I tried to respect their boy time and privacy; it's not my fault that they talk loud and I got to eavesdrop on all the hilarity. Plus they needed my instruction for the muffins... and they offered to share the finished product... and I couldn't help but take a few pictures...

Oh, it was Valentine's Day in February! Here are my cute boys before school:

And here are Chuck and me after a temple date later in the month. I love all my boys!

I referenced how much fun cousin time we got on our mid-month road trip to Utah, here are a few more pictures from that adventure:

Poor Will woke up sick the morning we left, so we hit up an immediate care clinic before we got on the road. Sure enough he had some sort of bacterial infection in the glands in his neck, so some antibiotics made the trip with us and we hunkered down at our hotel that night to avoid spreading the love. Our drive home on Monday coincided with a Savers' 50% off all clothing sale, and so I got to stop at FOUR different stores as we drove, hooray! I didn't buy that much but what I got was excellent: two pairs of cargo shorts for Chuck, maternity shorts for me, a cute pink maternity shirt, a cute Sesame Street sweatshirt for the baby, and a suuuuper cute Christymas-y skirt for the baby.

Our February activity for Relief Society was an evening focused on the blessings of the temple. It was such a sweet and profound night; I asked four sisters to share their thoughts and testimonies about the temple and then I opened it up to anyone who wanted to share and it was all just wonderful.

One day Jack and I had spent a lot of the day in the van running errands and I was dreading buckling him back in to pick the boys up from school and it was also a nice-ish day out and I was also feeling randomly ambitious, soooo we walked to school to pick up the boys! And despite the whining that occurred on the looong walk home (by the boys, not me!... mostly...) we might try it again sometime.

Another ambitious project I embarked upon was making some cute personalized onesies for the babe. I had found a couple super cheap plain onesies at Savers and rooted around my fabric collection and hit up facebook for adhesive advice and then got to work! The boys were all very involved - Will very seriously instructed me how to sew and picked out which color of sewing 'rope' to use and Clyde insisted we use the stars on the bum idea I'd found online. Jack climbed all over me while I was sewing, suuuper helpful. I have a couple of white onesies that I want to do now; just waiting for that ambition to return...

February brought an important milestone in Clyde's and Will's little lives: going shooting with Daddy!

Will got to tag along one day when Chuck went out with a couple friends from work. He had a good time but was pretty done after a few minutes.

For Clyde, however, this was a culmination of some serious education and preparation and he loved it.

First up was the book learnin' part: Clyde studied the Rifle Shooting manual from the BSA and some gun safety/history/etc books from the library.

After he could sufficiently answer questions about the proper handling of firearms and demonstrated some other skills we've been working on (good attitude, obedience, etc), he got to go out with Daddy and shoot the new, smaller rifle that Chuck had recently acquired just for this purpose.

And here is the cute boy with his targets! 

[I have to say, I remain as unaffiliated with guns as possible, but I am grateful that Chuck is such a careful and conscientious gun owner and father and that he puts so much time into teaching the boys.]

One Sunday morning we woke up in a chilly-ish house; the furnace had been acting up lately and that morning wasn't cooperating with our usual tricks to fire it back up.

So we made cookies! I'd had sugar cookie dough in the fridge for a couple days and this was the perfect chance to finally use it and let the oven warm up the kitchen for a bit. And happily a friend from our ward came over after church and did some furnace magic to get us back up and running!

The last few days of February brought some more nice-ish weather, so we busted out the bikes and spent some time in the front yard (sometimes with friends, that's cute little Clark in the bottom left):

  And finally, here are a few last pictures that are pretty representative of our lives: after school homework/finishing lunches time, cute brothers, and Jack being my little magnet... 24/7. I think he's going to have noooo problem sharing me with his new baby sister, right??