February: The Most Bland Month Boise Can Offer

Ohhhhh I hate February in Boise.  Gone are the crisp blue-sky mornings of January.  It's just 28 (or 29 during leap year) days of INVERSION.  Fortunately my birthday falls in February.  But I'll get to that later. 

I guess since Simon's pizza was cheese-less his smile is more genuine.  Cameron, Eli and Miriam have cheese oozing out of their pores.  I'm not sure what instigated this photo session but the minute I get out the camera and take a picture of one of the kids, the rest have to have their moment to shine.  As a side note, because I'm thinking of it, in Miriam's picture you can see the top of her Tangled microphone.  The other day there was no school so I took the kids downtown to have lunch with Richard.  Miriam carried her microphone with her everywhere that afternoon.  It's a different demographic downtown, I get the feeling many of those people don't have much exposure to kids, let alone a family with four of them. We get attention whether we like it or not.  But Mim likes it.  She performed or posed for everyone who asked about her microphone.  The girl is not shy. 

Darth Vader

Yoda

Darth Maul

Eli is a project oriented kid, and for several weeks his projects were these homemade Star Wars masks.  I really am quite proud of his creativity, but the masks were severely irritating my OCD.  I have a zero tolerance for clutter, everything must have it's place and there was just no good place for these awkward creations.  So I took some pictures to immortalize his hours of hard work before the masks went the way of the landfill.  

We have been part of a babysitting group for several years now.  One Friday night each month we take our turn being in charge of all the couples' children.  When we started there were only six or seven kids.  At one point we were up to 13 kids but then one of the families moved away and a smaller family replaced them.  The other three Friday nights we get to go out, and have free babysitting.  We love this arrangement, it's a brutal three hours once a month, but it's not even really that.  And the kids love it too of course.  On this particular evening Simon had to be quarantined to our bedroom because he had a cold. He ate snacks and watched cartoons on Netflix.  He's adorable even when he's miserable.  Note to self: Squinty eyes can be cute even when they are puffy and red, just smile!

This must have happened after the Busy Hands post.  It happened twice that day.  Simon and/or Miriam dumped out all the plastic little hairbands.  I made them help me clean them up the first time, but since that lesson apparently wasn't effective, I just cleaned them up myself the second time.

Mim started gymnastics in February. I think I smiled the entire hour as I watched her the first day.  She tried everything with gusto.  She isn't super coordinated, but she makes up for it with enthusiasm.  It was her first social experience too, and I think she felt so grown up having her own activity to tell everyone about. 

This is either a movie-night or a cartoon-morning.  Hard to say.  I'm trying not to raise a bunch of couch potatoes but I think they would be if I let them.