Valentines Day and February Fun

 Time for updates on all the kids!

Brett is a superstar kid! He is growing into a responsible, funny, sweet, level-headed, kind guy and I really like being around him. He loves math and science the very best in school and has been rocking all his math lessons lately. I am so impressed with the difficult problems he is able to work through. He just finished a unit on order of operations and got 100 on the test. He is now working with variables and loving the fun puzzles they make. He loved chemistry and loves history and reading. He stayed up till midnight the other night finishing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He is writing a book a called Phoenix the Fire Champion. He plays really nicely with his sisters and is a great friend to the boys on the street. Brett has been rocking it at karate and just earned his purple belt this past week! He is always excited to go to his class. He loves playing the Nintendo Switch. His favorite games right now are Startdew Valley, Splatoon 2, and Ori. All the kids are working on certain goals right now. Brett chose to work on reading scriptures and having personal prayers. He is doing great and I love his insights about Nephi and his brothers. His comprehension of the scriptures is so incredible to me! His testimony is amazing and watching him pray and receive personal revelation is so wonderful! He likes homeschool but is excited to go to public school hopefully next year. 

Alana is doing so so well right now. She has gotten into a good regime with taking her medication and it has made such a difference for her. She is able to work through anxieties and stresses so much better and has been able to get dressed without stress more often than not. In an attempt to help Alana take her medicine better and quicker, she is earning stickers to help encourage her. If she finishes the medicine in under 2 hours she gets two stickers and if she finishes it during the day she gets one. She has earned all kinds of things like a trip to the dollar store, take out from noodles and company, rootbeer floats, and homemade caramel apples. She is now working on earning her own American Girl type doll. She has recently started enjoying my Molly and Kirsten from when I was little and she is earning one of the My Generation ones from Target. She has a little doll world set up in her bedroom with beds for all the dolls. She loves to get them dressed and into pajamas. She still likes to wear the same clothes over and over again and somtimes its hard to get her to put them in the dirty clothes because she has her favorites. We decided to go shopping on Saturday morning to look for some new pants. She found several options that she wanted to try so we got a bunch of things and came home to try them on. We only have one thing to return and the other things we bought seem to be working so we will keep our fingers crossed. We had so much fun shopping and being together. She also decided she wanted to try some bras since one of her friends is starting to wear them. She is getting so grown up! 

Lizzie is growing into a gorgeous little girl.  She and I went through our bin of hand me down clothes and pulled out all the 5t clothes. She has been loving wearing all the new things! She is learning lots of things in preschool and has been enjoying doing the online waterford program all year. It has recently gotten too difficult and frustrating for her so we are stepping back from that and trying some other fun learning things. It is so important to me that she has good associations with school this early. She gets really excited when we talk about how she will be starting kindergarten soon! Lizzie LOVED making a volcano in science this past week. She seems to love science best of all and is so excited about being a scientist. She has been doing lots of art (drawings and coloring) and then she hangs it in her bedroom. Its fun to see her decorate her own space. She really loves her bedroom and loves having all her things in there together. I think she lives mostly on chocolate and I don't really blame her, but it is frustrating that she won't eat much of anything else. She is working on getting dressed independently and remembering to brush her teeth morning and night to earn a My Generation Doll too. She loves Dinosuars and is so excited for her birthday coming up in April. Sadly her fish died this past week, but she didn't seem to upset about it and doesn't want another one. 

Now for some fun pictures 

Here is our annual fondue dessert for Valentines Day. 

I went overboard with Valentines Day this year. I bought all the kids lego sets with school funds and then I got Brett a morgan dollar and the girls some barbies. On top of that they got chocolates and love notes every day for 14 days! I also got Sean a new sweatshirt and he got me some beautiful roses. 

Sean organized a date for us on Feb 13. We went to a fun escape room with our friends the Saffrons and we beat it with 20 min to spare. I actually had a really fun time even though I wasn't looking forward to it lol! After the escape room we played in the arcade for a while. Sean had the top 3 scores on the piano game and a few minutes later Brianna played and got number 4 and 5. 

The night before our neighbors went on a painting day and made these darling parrots kissing. We babysat their kids and it was so fun! They babysat for us the next day. Of all the good things about living in this house in Bluffdale, the Ellis family is the best thing ever!!

For our homeschool Valentines party we hung out with the Ellis family, heart attacked a neighbor, ate pancakes and candy. 

One morning Lizzie was feeling sad and Alana was so sweet to give her hugs and comfort!

We played a fun game one night where Oreo would bring us the ball and then we would all wrestle with each other to try and get the ball and throw it. 

Sean has been working so hard to get the custom built ins for the mudroom finished. 

Heres Alana with my American Girl dolls. 

My sister sent me these pretty earrings for Valentines day.

The church put together an event especially for the primary. It was called Friend to Friend and we watched it together on Saturday morning. It was SOOO well done and the kids loved it. We all felt the spirit! There was a portion where we learned to draw a child praying from one of our favorite youtube people. 

I made a new chocolate cake recipe that was just using a box mix and adding sour cream and pudding. It was so so yummy! There were tears when it was gone. 

We made a volcano for school last week. We molded it out of plaster, painted it, and then put it bicarbonate and citric acid to make a reaction. 

Sean worked so hard to build this new shelving.

It snowed a lot and we went to the field to play. Brett brought this giant snow ball home.

Alana, Brett, and Lizzie made bug goggles out of paper cups.