FEBRUARY

 LOVE month 

I walked while Sia rollerbladed everyday one week when my back was too vulnerable to work out hard.  

It was lovely.  

My sweet Noelle was baptized on February 12, 2022. 

Me & Michael were pretty sick days before & we considered changing the date but we had already done it once and the devil is real so we did not want to push it off anymore.  Noelle is such a great woman, easy going even in the hard circumstances of things, forgiving & really is compassionate when it comes down to anything going wrong.  Poor girl.  Her water was COLD.  Ugh.  I cannot go into detail about the why & the regrets I personally have about things because it is a dark hole.  I also fished two very large spiders out of the water  in the font before most people got there… 

Moving onto the happy parts of the day. Our families came & that alone was the greatest for her to feel so supported & loved.  They came to celebrate her.  Grandpa Stan blessed her to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.  So awesome.  Grandpa & Grandma witnessed her baptism, which had to be done twice, because her dress came up.  😢 I did not catch her face in this moment but Gwinna did & said she looked scared and like she could have cried 💔 which, of course, I hated to hear this later.  Ugh…back to the negative.  I had a major breakdown crying moment to Michael about it all later when we left the girls at Tia Stephanies.  I am still just so prayerful that the good outweighs the hard of this day for my Noelle.  

OK, back to happy.  Tia Sophia spoke about baptism, the blessings of it, the light that Noelle will be, Noelle’s favorite song “When I am Baptized” and of course, the significance of rainbows.  Beautiful. 

Grandma Debbie spoke about the Holy Ghost and all of his roles & presented Noelle with a bright rainbow, cozy blanket to represent the reality that the Holy Ghost is our comforter.  Gwinna and Sia offered very sweet prayers & Yuphaa was like Mary Poppins, pulling so many fun little things out of a bag for Noelle to remember the significance of this day.  Bishop Martinez bore his great testimony & was his sweet, funny little self.  Everyone wrote on the note cards for Noelle and I so appreciated 1 out of 2 that Jeff Call wrote because he told her that he too had to be baptized twice because his dad forgot to say Amen.  She found comfort in this later:)

She said to me after coming out of the (not clean) water that she felt “happy & clean.” SO that is what I will hold onto forever.  Regardless of the dirty, cold, spider infested, (oh…also TOO low!) water the ordinance still held its power & ability to make her feel spiritually clean & joyful.  

Thank goodness. Our rainbow girl.  

We had pizza at Tia Stephanie’s house for lunch, and actually ate at their fancy front room table for the first time ever:) kinda fun.  They offered to hang out with the girls for a few more hours & this is when I went home & had a little breakdown about the day… really, really trying hard to focus on everything that did go right.  

Sugar cookie tradition at Grandma’s ❤💗

Ugh . . . I do not believe this will be a new tradition at our house.  Sugar cookie houses?!?!

 I ALWAYS get so angry trying to get them to glue together.  Save gingerbread houses for Christmas! Also note to self: must look for the PREBUILT. Hehe!

We got fancy & bought the pretty papersource valentines this year. I did not get a good picture of Gwinnas but she got cute sharks with googly eyes (and probably too much assemblage for her liking 😝) Sia got the sloths & Noelle got cute gummy bears. 

This girl is funny.  One morning she came out, ready for school with jewel stickers in the corner of each eye, so serious.   I just said “oooh you look pretty” and moved on.  I love her little moments of style.  A couple weeks later she was done with this trend.  

Noelle SELFIES 😍

VALENTINES DAY chaos💝

I bought this gnome for the girls room….& then I stoles him! 😁

LOVE DAY hunt in the morning.  

Note to self: they are WAY more excited about the hunting than the finding . . . Make it more challenging & longer next year! Jelly beans, books & Dino love shirts this year.  

My sweetest valentine from Remi ❤

Sia painted the dog for me & Noelle made this little marshmallow guy out of clay.  LOVE BOTH!

CUTEST GRANDPA in the Navy. 

He LOVES when I refer to him or anything as cute. LOVES it.  😂

My boys, making me SO lazy. 

Hair dye day.  I still say to people that I am not sure how I agreed to doing this.  I must have blacked out for a moment when I said yes to Gwinna,  It IS temporary, but still a big deal! And it was a HUGE deal for Gwinna, she has been especially nice lately:) We did this on Friday February 18th…they didn’t have school for the next 3 days so in case they hated it we could wash it 10 times before school started.  Of course I had to make the day harder by getting them to first do a major clean out of their room, which all worked out very nicely, extremely motivated & focused girls that day! I hardly had to do anything.  Tia Sophia came when we were finishing up with the fake food! 

She did the rest👆👏👏👏YES!

BEFORE

IN PROGRESS 

 WAITING. . . 

We ended up figuring out a faster system wherein I did the long parts and Soph did the roots.  Noelle was our guinea pig, poor girl.  And Sia was impatient in the waiting game & initially upset that most of hers ended up lower on her head but she is happy with it now:) Of course Gwinnas is the most dramatic!

MASON! 😍

CUTSIE!

DONE

& 

SO HAPPY!

Michael came home with good news about the business and wanted to celebrate so we brought sushi & a cold stone cake over to Grandma & Grandpas house to end a very long, fun, successful day! 

Chillin with the adorable Asher. 

Sunday walk to the property one night.  Grandma Florence wanted a picture of Michael’s truck so I took this one with the girls.  We had taken Uncle Don to see Death on the Nile & she didn’t get her camera in time:) 

Crazy peoples

OH. Sunday after we dyed their hair Sia was assigned to give a talk.  

  Sister Silcox told them they are so brave to have their hair dyed.   I agreed.  

They are pretty fun, cool, brave girlfriends. 😄

Family quoting times:

Talking about Abraham Lincoln art Michael bought for a lot of monies accidentally. . . 
Me to Michael :
“I will have a hard time if it comes back valued as way less…I may need to say something …” 
Me to everyone:
“If it comes back valued higher we don’t need to tell those antique ladies.”
Gwinna:
“No…we’ll tell them we love them and to come join our family!”

“AL- ert, that’s quite the name”

Noelle reading “alert” on the bottom of news about Russia invading Ukraine 

(2/24/22)