In January I decided to try to catch up on some of our family picture books. Our kids are at an age where they love to look at old family pictures, but the only picture books I've printed are 2015, and our trip last summer to Colombia. So it was time to fix that! I spent probably 50+ hours sorting through old pictures, editing, moving to our new laptop, then actually creating the book and copying text from my blog. I am now waiting for my "2018" and "2016" books in the mail, and the kids better LOVE them forever. 2017 will have to wait, because I'm burned out.
My next step was to figure out a better way to organize and store my current pictures. We have a new laptop now, and it seems like cloud storage is the new way of life, so I think I've finally got a grasp on my google albums and pulling in my favorite pictures of the month (out of hundreds.) My new goal is to take fewer pictures...
So now I am at a point where I'm catching up with documenting present life. Here are all our pictures from January. I already wrote about a weekend trip I took with friends to Waco.
My kids used to request going to Target almost every day. But all of a sudden they stopped having cookies, and when we asked, they told us they were transitioning to brownie bites. Well, that was over 2 months ago and I think they've just done away with it altogether. Also... Tiago sometimes dresses himself 'fancy' and tucks his shirts into belted jeans. :)
Sometimes Tiago has some fun school projects. They read several versions of the gingerbread man, and each got to decorate their own using materials they found. Tiago knew just what he wanted to do, and just asked for help making the fabric cape. The hair curl was too funny. (That's what the lego version of superman looks like, I think.)
A few times, the kids have requested science experiments. Baking soda, vinegar and food coloring is about as advanced as my science skills get. I thought these looked pretty in the end.
The kids have been playing a lot with legos. They use Tiago's train table to contain all the pieces (in theory) and usually play nicely. Tiago built a guy repelling.
A few days after Waco, my sister came to visit with her kids, and my mom came too! It was a crazy 4 days, but I think everyone had a lot of fun. My girls and Talia are best described as frenemies. They love having each other around but can find a billion things to fight over.
We spent a lot of time just hanging around, but one morning we adventured to the Perot Museum to play. The kids claimed they were starving, so we went to buy them french fries in the cafe. That turned into fries and a cupcake to share, which turned into Tiago crying that he wanted his own. And when Grandma is around, kids get their own cupcakes. He was so happy biting into that thing.
We went out to eat one night at a Thai restaurant nearby. That was fun, but it was probably easier to have dinner at home with this many kids. I think another night I had Amie order us ramen bowls from a restaurant, which we took home to eat.
A few other highlights.. my mom watched the kids while Amie and I went and got massages. And Talia (being on Utah time, and naturally going to bed later) was up partying with the adults. Tiago offered to put her in bed. He helped her brush her teeth and read her a story. She laid down on her mattress. Of course, a few minutes later she was up walking around again, but it was cute while it lasted.
Hyrum spent the last two weeks of January in San Antonio working at their MEPS office. It came up last minute--they were trying to cover someone taking maternity leave--and we felt grateful it didn't get in the way of any of our plans. The week before we had visitors, and the week after, he took a trip to AZ with the girls. So it worked out. And honestly... two weeks without him around feels like nothing! (It's obviously better with him around, but I can mentally prepare myself to 'do it all' for a few weeks.)
He got to explore around town on the weekends (it was a bit too far to justify a drive back to Dallas)--he saw a cave, some natural forest/hiking, the Alamo and Riverwalk again, the temple, and visited friends he knows from Colombia.
We took a big adventure to the Perot Museum, and saw some of the areas we hadn't been to before.
This is Tiago one day at school drop off. We arrived a few minutes early, and there are always kids outside the door playing.
In January we bought a new mattress. I've wanted one for a while, and we got some money after our move because they bent our old mattress in half. So it seemed like a good time.
When Hyrum got back to San Antonio we went to Soccer City, because Tiago always commented on it when we drove past. We found a Colombia Jersey 50% off in Tiago's size, so we had to buy it. (Kidding. But Hyrum couldn't resist the chance to match Tiago.)
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