WEEK 1 & 2 (February 1st - 13th) - February always starts with Groundhog Day and that means making groundhog cookies with Kinsley! The groundhog saw his shadow so it looks like 6 more weeks of winter for us. But the cookies were good. Dallin has been sneaking the home phone to play games and I found him under the stairs and thought "Wow he looks grown up and those legs look so long!"
Sunday I saw this orange shirt hanging in Dallin's closet and I realized it was the same shirt Kasen had worn to Malorie's wedding 10 years ago! I asked Dallin who wore it better and he said "me obviously." It is crazy how fast time passes. It is hard to believe Kasen was ever that small. I think Dallin looks a lot like Kasen, but in these pictures they definitely have their own looks at least at this age. Dallin is almost 4 and Kasen was almost 3. I'm really so thankful that Dallin joined our family. We were convinced three kids were all we were supposed to have, but wow I can't even imagine life without Dallin and his curly hair.
We ordered some sweatshirts in honor of Evan and they came today. Contrary to some of Dallin's facial expressions, the kids were very excited about them. It is still really hard to think about his death and how much it has effected so many members of his family and our extended family. Suicide is never the answer. It is a plague of our days we have to educate against.
Sunday we spent the day at Jake and Megan's house for the Superbowl. We made sure to keep our Superbowl tradition of getting everyone their favorite cereals for their super bowls.
We had a big snowstorm come through and so we spent most of the week homebound. The younger kids played with toys, Dallin became obsessed with the piano, and took some naps. One afternoon I walked into a room and saw Kinsley's doll like this and I thought "I can relate to how she feels right now." February is ironically the longest shortest month of the year.
It was Valentine's weekend and I wanted to celebrate in a fun way but didn't know what to do. I was talking to Sydnee on the phone about it and she said the snowmachines were in the shed by her house and we should come up and do that for fun. It was a great idea so we bundled up and spent the day riding through the potato fields on snowmachines in all the new snow. It wasn't terribly cold, but it was definitely snowy! Out in the fields you couldn't see anything. Jed was extra careful pulling all the kids and we had a great time. We warmed up afterward with hot coco and Jed and I went out to dinner that night.
WEEK 3 (February 14-th - 20th) - This Sunday was actually Valentine's day so the kids made some cookies but I didn't even get them any candy or anything. Ava made herself this biology valentine card and we teased her about being nerdy but we had to admit it was clever.
That weekend Ava had a volleyball tournament in SLC and I had a doctor's appointment so her and I left a day early and drove down. We drove straight to my appointment and then stopped at Olive Garden for dinner (Ava's favorite.) Afterward we went to Mal's house to stay and stayed up playing card games with Mal and Trevor and using their cool foot massager. It was a blast. The next morning Ava had her zoom leadership class and was just planning on doing homework all day, but I convinced her it would be more fun to go have an adventure together. First we went to the mall to do a little shopping but we couldn't find anything! Then we went and had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Afterward we did a walking city scavenger hunt together. I downloaded an app on my phone and we walked around the city searching for different landmarks that the app gave us clues for. Even though it was cold we warmed up pretty quick with all the walking. We had a great time cruising around downtown Salt Lake learning some fun facts. We learned about and found the Salt Lake city-county building which looks like a giant castle. It was designed by early Mormon settlers and cost about 4x the amount they thought it would to build. We also saw the city library, the St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral (3rd oldest Episcopal church in the US) with it's cute red door, the original Zion's bank, the Leonardo, the Capitol Theatre, lots of booming hotels back in the day, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and lots of cool murals and signs.
During one part of our scavenger hunt we walked past this used book store and Ava really wanted to go back to it after we were done. Luckily we had time on our parking meter so we sprinted up to the book store and spent the remainder of our time there. It was amazing. It felt like something out of a movie. We found lots of cool and out of print books. Ava even found a complete set of Mark Twain's collections with his signature. It was on sale for a little over $3000.
The rest of the weekend was spent at the tournament. Ava is playing with her 2nd cousin Avery Berry this year. Their team didn't play very well and pretty much lost every game. It was a little painful to watch. Ava played outside and had a lot of great hits, but overall the team just struggled to get in sync. Hopefully they will get the kinks out this weekend and play better next time. It was still a great weekend and it was fun to spend time together and also see the Monsons. Before we left Ava played video games with Liam and James and they thought it was the best because they could beat her. Liam came up to me and gave me a necklace of Fruit Loops for Kinsley. But about 15 minutes later he came back and said, "Umm Aunt Emily, I changed my mind - I'm going to need that necklace back please." Meanwhile back at home Kinsley had another dance performance and this time Raleigh could go so Sydnee took them down. Dantzel was able to dance with her group too. By the looks of it they had fun.
WEEK 4 (February 21st - 28th) - The rest of the month was pretty quiet. We had our normal stuff going and Kasen had a tournament in Pocatello. I did get a calling to teach Sunday School after helping out, but it is Kasen's class so it will be fun to be in there with him. It's been 5 months since Jed has been the bishop and our ward is functioning pretty well. We go to church for 1.5 hours each week all together and the kids have mutual and activity days regularly. It is nice to be back at church for the most part. We have to wear masks and space out every other row in the chapel. I think church is probably the only time most of ward even wear masks at all. The kids are still going 4 days a week to school, but I did receive an email that said at the start of the next trimester they will go to 5 days a week again. Not looking forward to that. People are starting to get vaccines but we won't be high on the list for that. Not sure if we will even get the vaccine at all to be honest. However, I am hoping that life starts getting back to normal for other parts of the country so we can do some traveling this year.
