February

 February was a nice little break from birthday parties for the kids. We did go to a sushi restaurant and to the Rec Room for an adult party for Ryan's birthday though! That was a lot of fun. We also continued dates with the kids and took Bentley and Deacon to "Color Me Mine." It's a really cute place where you pick what you want to paint and just go for it! Then, the workers there set and glaze it, so you pick it up later. Bentley painted a cat, Deacon did a dragon, I did a dolphin, and Jeff did a car. It was actually a lot of fun to do that together and lots of fun to see the masterpieces!

The kids had crazy hair day at their school, which is always a fun time to be creative! We put a barbie on Bentley's head and made her hair look like her skirt, and we put some pipe cleaner spikes on Deacon's hair. Valentine's Day came and we had some heart shaped pancakes, a few little gifts, and some surprise donuts from Glazed and Dazed. I also made the kids do a little photo shoot as always! I did not go all out this year with cards, and instead just let the kids pick what they wanted at the dollar store and do it all themselves. It was great!

Near the end of February the kids always have a week off school, so we decided to head to Edmonton and stay at the Fantasyland Hotel in West Ed for 3 nights. Full disclosure: it was a bit of a rough start to our trip! We ate at the Spaghetti Factory when we got there, and Boston was being a little monkey. The first night our room was freezing, Boston screamed more than slept, we expected a buffet breakfast at the L2 Grill (when did they change that?!), which was followed by some bad attitudes and lack of sleep. But we pushed through and had a great last couple of days!

We stayed in the Polynesian Room again. It didn't have the waterfall bath we were expecting, but it was still a really nice room. All of the activities were super fun, but some of the best memories included Boston falling asleep on me in the hot tub at the water park, getting the Rec Room almost all to ourselves and having the most relaxing meal in there, riding rides, free pokemon cards, Bentley getting lost in the mirror maze, and sharing the most delicious candy apples! We also had a really great time mini golfing. When we were getting ready to leave, our valet guy told us our car wouldn't start (it was -30 outside the whole time we were there!), but was so nice to use his personal car to boost it for us. Then Jeff drove it to get another battery that we needed anyways, while I started at the Rec Room with the kids until he joined us later. It worked out so that it wasn't too big of a hassel. It had also snowed a crazy amount in Calgary while we were away! My ministering sisters were really nice and had shoveled a path to the garage for us so we didn't have to start from scratch. Luckily we still had our snow blower which helped a lot to finish the job, but it was crazy how much snow we got!

The rest of the week was for relaxing and dentist appointments.

At the end of February I had a girls night with our mom group from a long time ago. Deacon had another Karate assessment and got his orange belt, which he was so excited about! This time Jeff and Papa were there to watch and support him. We also had a date night with the Manville's to a candlelight tribute to Taylor Swift. It was a string quartet that played Taylor Swift music at a church, with lots of candles all around. It was really neat, and we had a lot of fun together! It also made me get really excited for the Taylor Swift concert coming up in March!! And finally, a cute photo of Leo with his friend Arthur at the library.