February 2021

February is always one of my least favorite months. It’s usually so dreary, rainy, and cold. However, this February we got a big surprise of SNOW and found lots of ways to stay entertained.

Nora Kate turned the garage into a roller rink and has been practicing her roller skating.  We also attended skate school once this month, but Whew! Skating in a mask gets a little warm.  

Basketball season came to an end for Carter!  At the end of the season, he was nominated for and made the Athens All Star Basketball Team for his age. His coach told us he had nominated him, and honestly, we had no idea that there was an all star team for basketball. So we were all surprised and thrilled.  To recognize the All Stars they announced the All Star players after the season championship and awarded them the medal Carter is holding above.

Below he is holding his basketball trophy for the season.

And, just because I can’t remember if I documented this in the blog or not, Carter wore these ridiculous socks that in no way match his jersey to a game one night. Well, he played AWESOME and declared they were his lucky socks....so then he wore them to EVERY game there after.

Dawson had a great season this year too!  Dawson played with against a lot of teams who had taller and bigger boys...I guess that’s the way it is when you are 11 and in the 11-12 age group-this is an age where the boys are growing! Thankfully, Dawson held his own and played a great season. He really enjoys basketball!

Here is Carter with the rest of the All Stars.

One day we grabbed lunch out (a rare treat in these COVID days), but we literally had the whole restaurant to ourselves except for one other man....Clayton was SUPER excited to get to drink sprite out of a can while we were there.  Look at that smile.

Clayton and I continue to work on his school at home, but on gymnastics days we take his school in the van to do while Nora Kate is inside doing her class.  Clayton grabbed these sunglasses one day and put the on his head like this cool dude to do his schoolwork in the van.

The dinosaur playground is still a favorite stop!

On Valentine’s Day I tried to think of something fun for the kids because it seemed like Val Day maybe wasn’t as exciting at school this year without sweet treats etc due to COVID, so on Valentine’s Day we had set up a scavenger hunt.  Here is the first clue...

And here are the rest of the clues before I cut them and put them on colorful hearts.

All 4 kids had a blast reading the clues and running to their guess of the location of the next clue.  Finally after 11 clues, they got their Valentine’s Gifts...Candy and a ticket to a hockey game in 2 weeks!

The treasure at the end of the hunt! The ticket is on top of the candy.

They had so much fun and are counting down the 2 weeks until the hockey game.

Clayton did still get to have a party at school, I should add with sweet treats, Valentine’s and friends.  Here is a picture from his school party!

Church on Valentine’s Day

After church on Valentine’s Day.

Our 4 Valentine’s!

This picture is technically from January, but since I got it I wanted to include it. I mentioned that in January Nora Kate got to attend Bible Adventure Day. Here she is unwrapping one of the layers of paper on her Bible.  Thankfully since I don’t think we managed to get any pictures, the church had posted this one of her with John at Bible Adventure Day.  She and John didn’t realize they had taken it.

And while I’m borrowing pictures from church, here’s a picture the church posted of the current confirmation class.  Dawson is pointed out by the red arrow.  We are proud that Dawson has started the 10 week confirmation class at church.

We were working on handwriting one day, and Duke had to come check his brother’s work!

Duke thinks he needs to be involved in EVERYTHING his kids do!

SURPRISE! We got snow in Alabama...and a lot of it!

John actually surprisingly got to work from home for 3 days for ice and show on the roads. We were so surprised, but we remember how Alabama is just not prepared for weather like this-ie, no salt trucks, no snow plows, etc. It was a fun change of pace to have John working from home and be snowed and iced it. We had a blast playing in the snow.  We made a snowman.

Snow angels

When we built this house I never figured it would see much snow! But surprise we got around 4 inches!

More snow angels

Made snow cream

Giggling snow angels

Hot chocolate

And had the very best time!  It really did lift our normally dreary February mood to have snow and a change of pace.

Then, the very next week it was in the 70’s...crazy.

Clayton and I had a rare hour together one day without the big 3, and he wanted to spend it picnicking, feeding the ducks, and playing at the Dinosaur Playground.

Duke loves to watch his people out the window.

Duke put a scratch in our hardwood this month (yikes!), so now he gets to wear these fancy nail tips made of rubber.

We avoided places like Altitude since COVID hit, but it’s getting harder and harder to do our limited amount of things-especially on rainy days when my go-to entertainment is just being outdoors hiking, biking, etc. On a Friday afternoon, Dawson and Carter had been invited to a friend’s birthday party, and initially I had planned to take NK and Clayton to the park to play while we waited to pick up the big boys.  Well, that day rolled around and it was absolutely monsooning. What to do?! I decided to give Altitude a try.  Thankfully with it being the middle of a the afternoon on a week day there were only 2 other families in there and one was just a mom and her kid. So we practically had the place to ourselves.  We jumped with out masks on the whole time and hopefully did our best to stay healthy.  The kids had an absolute blast! It made me realize how much they’ve probably missed doing these types of outings like we used to do before COVID.  Here is NK above jumping into the foam pit.

Clayton on a trampoline.

Nora Kate and Clayton spent so much time on the trapeze that they both had sore arms the next day.

Look at Clayton! He loved it!

I got this picture from the bowling birthday party they went to while we were at Altitude. It was their friend beside them Henry’s birthday.

The next night was the long awaited Hockey game.  We had told the kids we would get dinner out. They all wanted Hops and Guac-they like the big Jenga set and connect 4 set there.  Above they are playing jenga together before we finished dinner and headed over to the hockey arena.

It was especially hard to get tickets to the hockey game this year because they have limited seating.  You can see the chairs in front, beside, and behind us are unavailable because they are zip tied together.  It was honestly nice not to be crowded in with people.  The kids had the very best time and for the first time ever everyone made it through the entire hockey game!  Also, as a plus-Huntsville Havoc won beating Birmingham 5-2!

John knew one of the men working security, and that man managed to get 4 hockey pucks the team had just been warming up with and give them to the kids! The kids thought it especially neat that they were still cold and wet from being on the ice!

I think we ended up having a great February for a usually dreary and drab month.  We are still looking forward to spring for warmer temps, soccer, baseball, Dawson moving up to big Boy Scouts, and more-but February was pretty great!