Back in January

Buckle up and strap on your SWAT helmets for a bit o' time travel: we're going back to January!

 Can't work the strap on your own? Don't worry, Jack is standing by ;).

 Once upon a time at the beginning of January, my friend Grace had a baby! And as we were the only family/friends within a thirty mile radius that were somewhat healthy, we got to keep big brother Clark with us overnight:

 Such a cute kid! And baby Andy came out darling (and quiick! I got to be the on-call helper when Grace went into labor in the middle of the night, and when Jason texted me that the baby was there... like maybe forty minutes after they had left their house... I thought he was kidding!) and we're so excited for their family.

Because as Jack can tell you, babies are the best, particularly at very close range...

 Apparently January was a good month for getting up close and personal with siblings (baby, it's cold outside?) because here's another dose of sibling love, haha. I just thought my big boys were so cute that day so I started taking a few pictures of them and things escalated from there ;). So glad they're best brothers!!

The medium trampoline provided some chances for sibling bonding, including this chilly day when Carma and I definitely watched from inside the van, haha:

This was my favorite activity there for a while: plop Jack in the tub with Carma happily standing guard, while I sit three feet away in the hallway and read for a half hour. 

This bit of sibling... bonding... happened during Family Home Evening one night. Will was in charge and orchestrated the acting out of the story of Nephi's brothers tying him to the mast ... and for some reason, Will appointed himself to be Nephi, haha. But it was an excellent lesson about keeping ourselves worthy to receive guidance and inspiration and also being humble and listening to our leaders. I'm SUPER sure the boys remember all that, not just playing with the rope ;).

January also provided lots of time for friend bonding! Not only did my awesome friends show up to my exercise bday party, but we also had two different girls' nights... what?? This is the first one, at IHOP because we were trying to avoid the infamous Angel over at Shari's, haha. OH, and who's that cute girl on the very right? NYCOLE, yayyy! They're back in the Treasure Valley and Brandon's doing wonderfully and I may have teared up a little when she got out of her car. (PS is anyone else as amazed as I am that I have friends that will be seen with me in public? Look at how cute everyone else is dressed? And then I am straight up wearing my athletic shorts. And a rock/paper/scissors t-shirt...)

Our second girls' night happened a week later because Kara and Melinda missed the first one and it was Kara's birthday month so obviously we couldn't let that slide. So we all got together and maybe the Panda Express was tainted? Possibly the sparkling cider was extra sparkly? Whatever the cause, things got pretttty crazy and our inhibitions were non-existent enough that we preserved some of the hilarity in these pictures:

Do I have a video of us posing? Yes. Am I saving it for future blackmail purposes/to keep my spot in the group once they realize I'm way less cool than them? Yes.

Chuck (and Carma) and I had a date night out and about for Chuck's co-worker Sean's birthday:

Carma got to snuggle with Sylvia (left) and Demenee (middle) and I struck up a friendship with Sean's dad (lower right). He was such a nice guy, we talked all about Carma and his grandkids.

Carma and Jack and I busted out our best red/white/blue for a two-day extravanganza in January: the State of the Union on a Tuesday, followed by PRESIDENT OBAMA COMING TO BOISE on Wednesday. Sooo cool. Granted, I didn't actually go hear him speak but I wore my Obama shirt and flag shoes to the dentist and Carma got two more chances to wear her darling skirt, so it was a win all the way around. AND (to my knowledge) no one unfriended me after I put a picture of Carma on fb that day with a "Blue Girl / Red State" caption, so that's good!!

Speaking of Carma, here's some cute pajama shots because why  not??

And here's how she felt about some sort of banana/orange medley concoction I attempted to feed her:

Aaand here's how cute she is sleeping, snuggled up with Chuck and all alone:

(I promise we're almost done)

OH, one time in January I convinced Clyde to take some pictures with me:

We were just hanging out, eating oranges, nbd.

AND SPEAKING OF ORANGE, I neglected to document some amazing bday gifts I received, so here we go. Janell Hyer is probably the most thoughtful person in the world, and for my birthday she brought me a huge gift bag of surprises... all orange and all in groupings of thirty. SO cool:

Next up was Heidi, whom I will now forever refer to as my super hot sugar mama because she sent me birthday money and swallowed her fashion sense and fully supported my choice to spend most of it on orange coats for Carma and me:

Have I mentioned how much I love Heidi? I'm pretty confident that I could tell Heidi anything and she wouldn't judge me... in fact, I test out that theory on a pretty regular basis ;). Such a good BFSC.

And HOLY toledo, that was January!