Catching Up: February

We just finished about the fullest season we've had and blogging has just not happened!  But this week was my last week of preschool, sports have slowed a bit, and I feel like I can attempt to catch up.  Going to take it one month at a time.

February:

Allie and I started off the month with a fun tour through some local Chinese grocery stores by my assistant Jenny.  She hustled us through a few stores, showed us the best deals, and helped us try some new foods for the upcoming Chinese New Year.  Joshua, Julia, Allie, and I had a nice dinner with Lisa's findings to celebrate the New Year while Gray and Matt went to a Duke basketball game.

The boys took a trip with their Wyldlife group to a camp and had a blast.  The most memorable part, though, was an unfortunate series of events in which Gray's good friends came on the trip with a stomach bug and/or the flu and most of the group begin to contract one or more of these illnesses and spread throughout the frisbee team for weeks following the trip.  Gray told me as an afterthought that he threw up on the bus on the way home.  

We had our annual big adoption group Chinese New Year party.  3rd year now and so many new little ones have come home.  It's always so special to be with this bigger community of families like ours.

This year, the adoption group party fell on a night Matt had work and the boys had a tournament basketball game.  So there was a lot of shuffling around to be present here and there.  The boys played great but lost.  They were so much fun to watch this year and Matt enjoyed assistant coaching.

Post game, returning to the party.  All decked out in their ACC gear.

The whole big group at the party.

Annual Rise Against Hunger meal packing event.  Always a hit with the kids!

Julia switched over from ballet to gymnastics and loved it!

Allie helped me get ready for her family day.  She looooves to help me bake and lick anything she can.  I think this was the time she asked if she could lick my fingers.

Allie's family day!  She had preschool and wore her fun panda dress.  They also did Valentine celebrations in her class, hence the hat.

Everyone doing Allie's famous cheesy smile.  Having a toddler in the family again can be tiring and challenging, but she is so special to us and usually such a bright light.  She and Julia have had some growing pains lately, mostly over Allie getting into her stuff since she's not crib-bound anymore, but they have had some sweet moments too.  Allie loves her and wants to be just like her.  Gray continues to absolutely adore her and spoil her and sometimes smother her.  

Opening her gift...some Hello Kitty stamps we got in China.

Our annual Valentine's Day treasure hunt continues.  So much love and many celebrations this month!!

Valentine's night Joshua got this beautiful cake from his friend Katelyn.  They are so cute.  Also, check out the little face in the bottom corner, ready to dig in! :)

Speaking of that little face, this little one loves her Daddy time and likes helping him make coffee.  

More parties!  We have played The Newlywed Game with several different groups of friends in the past and carried the tradition to a new group this time.  So many laughs!!

Love having friend time and lately we find ourselves hosting quite often.  Thankful for our community of families.

Julia started up with the volleyball instructional sessions in February.  She enjoyed attending with her friend Emery this year.

Wyldlife "banana night".  The boys sure do love this group.  For all the challenges that students and teachers can have in our public school system, there are some pretty great positives at our local middle school, where they attend multiple Christian groups each week before school and get a lot of love and encouragement from some great teachers and college students.

And I'll end on this...me and Matt sometimes send each other good morning pics while I'm about to teach and barely awake and he's about to finish a shift at the hospital and barely awake.  :)  He's still enjoying his job and for the most part, I'm enjoying mine.  I recently taught my 500th child.  What?!  Crazy.  I still remember so clearly going through all the online interview process and it does not seem like very long ago.  I now have about 15-20 regular students and teach about 10-15 hours a week.  

And that's a wrap for February.  

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc.

I inadvertently skipped almost 2 months of blog updating, which I hate to do because I so easily forget things that happen, but....life happens.  And in the last two months, LOTS of life has happened around here...
 
Boys started frisbee for their school and rec basketball.  They are on the same team for both, so it's like having each do one sport, which makes it doable.  Frisbee games are usually COOOLLLLDDD.  But it's fun to watch and quick.

Our friends who moved to New York (Rebecca and Rani) came and visited for a few days...and brought almost a foot of snow with them!  What a crazy week this was.  We so enjoyed reconnected and sharing life together again.  We began with an awkward surprise at Julia's school.  She did not even recognize Rani at first, then didn't know what to do.  But soon they were chattering away and spent their days playing in the snow, crafting, etc.  

We had a lot of extra friend time during our snow days.  

Rebecca was here for her birthday and we enjoyed having some ladies over to celebrate.

Though many of our planned events were canceled or postponed (like holiday concerts we had to redo in January...not quite so festive!), the snow melted just in time for this one crazy weekend, in which we had Kids' Night Out Christmas party, with Gray's chorus concert to run off to in the middle....

 ...then the boys' first basketball game the next morning, followed by watching Joshua's friend Katelyn skate in the Nutcracker, followed by the Christmas Shadow Play at church, followed by an Ugly Christmas Sweater party for me and Matt.  So much fun crammed into one weekend...with Mimi and GrandGene visiting to top it off!

Just before Christmas, Matt's parents took us to a nice new Mexican restaurant called Uncle Julio's to celebrate Julia's birthday.  She got to break open a delicious chocolate piñata for dessert!

Then we headed off to celebrate Christmas at Mimi and GrandGene's.   Julia, Mimi, and I saw a beautiful Nutcracker performance in Charlotte.  The boys got their sports time with their cousins.  We did our gift exchange with family and enjoyed great food as always.

The day after we returned was Christmas Eve and we celebrated that as our Christmas Day, because Matt had to work those nights.  We had a nice big, traditional breakfast and then opened gifts--first the ones the siblings got each other at Durham Rescue Mission...always some interesting choices.  The kids' favorite gifts from us seemed to be laser tag for the boys and microphone/disco ball light for the girls.

 On Christmas Day, we went over to Matt's parents' house in the afternoon for games, gifts, conversation, and food.

 After Christmas, it was FINALLY (or so it felt to Julia) time to go to town on birthday party plans.  She had already gotten an early celebration with one friend, who took her to a Chinese restaurant.  But there were many more friends she absolutely had to celebrate with.  She planned a huge, detailed, sugary event that included shopping, dessert out (but bring decorations to enhance your dessert), sleepover, and stations of all her favorite activities, complete with a dessert for each one.  We pared down quite a bit.  With Mimi's help and the help of my friend Lisa, we pulled off several stations with crafts, a science experiment, yucky jellybean tasting game, dance party, movie with candy choices, and sleep.  Thank you Matt and Barnette for that loft, in which we shut them all up for the night and didn't hear a sound till a reasonable morning time.

 The next morning was Julia's actual birthday.  After playing with a couple of her party guests for the morning, we had a laid back day, then went to her favorite place to eat (Subway) and headed to another basketball game...or social hour for the girls.

 This year, Matt is assistant coaching and though the boys have only won 1 game, they have learned so much and improved a ton.  They are so much fun to watch with many, many steals throughout the game...just not quite enough baskets going down.

 New Year's Eve was another fun one (though sadly, Matt had to work and missed it).  We had a game afternoon with a couple of other families and then headed to a big party with neighborhood friends.  They did an early "balloon drop" countdown, we ate tons of food, watched sports, and had a great time.  We stayed ALMOST till midnight and the kids did surprisingly well-- even Allie.  At one point we were trying to locate our kids to make our exit and my friend opened a bedroom door to find Allie standing in the doorway aiming a big nerf gun, as it was her job to protect something or somebody.  Her brothers have taught her well.

We celebrated Matt's dad's birthday on the 3rd with a short dinner, as he had just had a big surgery on his ankle.  

 Gray got contacts the first week of the new year!  He loves them and we love seeing all of his sweet face.

 We continued to brave the cold for frisbee watching this month.  There are actually two girls under that blanket by Allie.  Did I mention these games are cold?!

 Thursday tradition:  Matt began a new regular work schedule that has him home every Thursday morning, snuggling Allie on the couch while I teach.

 We had another KNO meeting in January...we got several classes to each color a small paper with part of a letter on it...then we put it together in a big mural (it says KNO).  Love these kids.

 Big news.  Little Allie moved to a big bed!  She was so proud.  She did comment that her legs don't go down to the end (by a mile), but she likes it.  Julia was very attentive the first night, checking on her until she went to bed herself and moving down to Allie's bad when she was scared in the night.

 January marked the end of the first semester of school.  Joshua had an art show, Julia had her Christmas concert, and Gray had his band concert.

 And that brings us up to the present.  We enjoyed doing a couple things this weekend out of the ordinary and very fun.  First we went over to UNC to watch their gymnastics team compete against NC State's team.  Julia was fearlessly dressed in her wolfpack attire, distressed at not being able to find her pom poms and settling for bringing an NC State pillow.  We sat conspicuously in the front row.  It was so cool to see such strength and talent.  Lots of fun.  Then last night we went with a group to do swing lessons.  We laughed a lot and enjoyed meeting so many different shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities of people, as we had to rotate partners constantly during the lesson.

The last two months have been so full.  The next few are sure to be the same, as we wind down with basketball and frisbee and gear up for volleyball and lacrosse, not to mention Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day festivities, Allie's Family Day, and Gray and Matt birthdays.  As always, so much to be thankful for.