February

In February, I did a lot of nesting/cleaning/magic-art-of-tidying-up before baby came.  Here is Mason with his collection of preschool masterpieces, and Kate with some toddler-art I hadn't the heart to part with until I took a picture:

David indulged this irrational phase of mine and assembled this bunk bed for the girls as part of my kids-bedrooms-makeover surge.

Grandma "Jo" came to visit over Valentine's Day weekend with it being a 3-day President's Day weekend.  It was so fun to spend time with her, and David and I were able to go on a fun date to a Da Vinci exhibit where we saw models of a lot of his inventions and paintings.  We also impersonated Mona Lisa.

 

Mason had his 6th birthday!  We went as a family to the Great Wolf Lodge and enjoyed the arcade and water park.  Highlights: Me winning a pink horse Kate had her heart set on in one of those claw-drop games (which I had previously assumed were impossible to win at), and David winning 1,000 tickets at a fishing game--it took us 15 minutes to finally collect all the tickets and insert them in the ticket-counting-machine.  It was pretty exciting!

 

Valentine's Class parties with Kate and Mason:

 Taking a break and playing in the dirt by our neighborhood 

 Kate got the stomach flu... and then I got the stomach flu the next weekend.  Horrible stuff.

 These three!  There were several times during the last few weeks before I had the baby where I wished that time would just stop.  Like the impromptu dance party after we blew out Mason's birthday candles, or sitting with David in the basement on a Sunday afternoon watching the kids play together.