January

We had so much sickness in our house in January and February this year! It was more like what normal families experience with kids in the winter. We have always been so healthy that it was kinda crazy to have one sick kid after another for months! It made me grateful for our normally healthy bodies! We still had lots of fun! Brett having his own phone is super fun to see what kinds of things he takes pictures of. They all automatically upload to our icloud account. This must have been some fun thing the deacons did one Sunday. 

Oreo has been doing so so much better! I can't put into words how amazing pray and fasting is. I asked my friends from work Tiffany and Shulamith to pray for Oreo with me. They are both amazing women of faith and I was so grateful for their willingness. Tiffany told me later that she had prayed that angels would come down and whisper to Oreo that he needed to calm down and that things would be ok. I can't get that image out of my head. Angels ministering to my sweet puppy so he can stay here with our family safely. He is still grumpy sometimes but his aggression has gone down to basically zero! He still refused to take a walk for all of January and February. We finally stopped trying to persuade him to go when he was visibly shaking and crying one afternoon. 

We have our treadmill downstairs and Sean has been wanting a bigger, better TV for down there for a while. So we upgraded and it is so nice! This is the old one. I'm not even sure I have a picture of the new one. We took the upstairs console down there too, it looks so nice and the TV loads so much faster which makes it easier to want to exercise! 

Mimi got some new surround sound speakers installed! So we had a movie night at her house and watched inside out. 

I love that Brett will still snuggle with me! 

Cookie is thriving! He is so happy to be in our loft and squeaks so so loud every time he hears the fridge open in the evenings in hopes of a big salad. 

Mom Z had her second knee replacement and she didn't want Winston to be home alone all day. There was a chance she would need to stay overnight in the hospital too and so I went and got Winston and brought him out for a playdate. He stayed all day. It turned out that Mom got to come home that night so I delivered the puppy back to them. 

Here is Lizzie sleeping on me during one of her nasty colds! 

We found a new recipe for artisan bread. It is so easy! Just flour, salt, water and yeast! You mix it with a dough whisk or wooden spoon then let it rise and bake it in a dutch oven. 

Not sure where Lizzie and I took this picture or why =) 

We have a solid routine lately of reading scriptures and then reading some Harry Potter. Sean and I both felt prompted at the beginning of the year that it would be good for our family to read the Book of Mormon cover to cover this year. It has been amazing the spirit that comes into our home and the amazing gospel questions and conversations that we've been having. Our kids are so cool! I took this picture because I think its funny that we often all sit on the same part of the couch. Sean does an amazing job at the voices in Harry Potter and we all wish he could read for hours each night! 

Neil asked me to make some t-shirt quilts for him. These are two of them. I have one for Lexi and one for Kaden too that I am still working on. 

I got a gift card from my class to Olive Garden for my birthday and Brandon and Michal sent us a gift card to Olive Garden for our birthdays as well. We decided to go one Saturday but when we arrived there was a really long wait. We didn't want to wait and Brett in particular was very upset. He struggles with having expectations change. We worked through the big emotions and ended up going to pizza pie cafe. The next week we went to a different Olive Garden at a different time and were able to get right in. We all enjoyed the food and got two yummy desserts to share. Its fun helping the kids develop restaurant skills and watching them experience new things.