Where does the time go????

Soooo...  People tell me today's the first day of February.  No way!  Where did the time go??  Wasn't it *just* Christmas??  

All drama aside, I have had to come to grips with the fact that time does not stand still - EVER.  Even when your baby's teeth start falling out.  Even when you're still trying to wrap your mind around the first two teeth that fell out and the 6-year molars that are popping up and your "baby" shows you yet ANOTHER loose tooth.  That's right folks.  Time has no mercy.

And so we find ourselves in February.  

The bright side to all of this is that there are TONS of crafty things to do in February!!  

The first craft we did was centered around the knowledge that GOD IS LOVE.  I stole this idea from someone at BLOOM, my mom's group at church.  LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!  Had all these grand expectations of pouring over each verse with the boys, talking about examples of how love is patient and love is kind and love is not rude, all the while helping them with their cutting and writing skills.  

Things never go quite the way we imagine them do they?

Little hands got frustrated with scissors, little fingers got tired from writing, and I was left praying last night that somehow God spoke to my boys in spite of me.

When it was all over and the dust had settled, we actually did have quite a cool little craft to show for it.  The boys were happy with their work and now we have a wonderful tool to point to whenever we need to use an example of loving behavior.

It should be noted that the hole punch NEVER got old.  In fact, I am sure great battles have been waged over such an awesomely fascinating tool.

KABOOM!!!

What was that again?  Ah yes.  Love endures all things.  Including Mom's photo obsession.

The finished product.  

I made these on Photoshop.  If you would like to use them feel free to copy and paste into a Word document:

We also made these cute little Valentine mailboxes.  Found the mailboxes at Target in the dollar section and then bought three sheets of heart stickers for $1 apiece.  That's not bad for a project that will last for the next two weeks!  We decided to put little notes of affirmation, drawings, or sweet treats in each other's mailboxes each day to show how much we love each other.  I am hoping that it will be a nice reminder for the boys (and us!) of how much we are loved.  Plus their future wives will thank me for it one day ;)

What else has been going on?  Well, we've adopted several new family members.  Meet Annie.  And Annie.  And Annie.  And you get the idea.  

I have to admit...  Tristan has been asking for an Ant Farm for about a year.  The whole idea made me squirm.  What if they got loose?  What if it turned into a massive death trap?  Oh the horrors that could happen...  

And then one day I snapped.  I don't know what finally pushed me over the edge of reason but...  I gave in.  Tristan finally got his Ant Farm (Thank you Pop & Mimi!) and it is FASCINATING!  We keep it on our kitchen table (I know - EW) and we all stare in amazement at these little creatures digging and tunneling.  We've learned so much about ants too.  Like how strong they are, how they kill off the boys (hence they are all named Annie), and how they "bury" their dead.  Truly, truly fascinating.  If you are on the fence about getting an Ant Farm, I highly recommend you go ahead and do it.  When dinnertime is blissfully quiet for the first time in YEARS you'll be happy you gave in.

 And, as promised, here is the picture of our beautiful laundry room!!  Finally finished!!!  Chalkboard paint, artwork hanging area, and metallic paint.  Every time I walk in there I want to do a little dance.  I love it!!!

Here is another project we've been working on.  Tristan's 100th day of school is coming up this Friday.  They were told to make something out of 100 pieces of something.  They gave examples - Cheerios, M&M's, fruit loops, pieces of pasta.  But Tristan will want to hang his project up in his room and he will never, EVER want to take it down and if, God forbid, something happened to one of those Cheerios (like, say, some other family member peeled it off and ate it), fists would fly.  So we decided to go with something non-edible (hopefully) and fairly permanent.  We used Gorilla Glue and a hot glue gun just to be sure.  Tristan picked out 100 pieces of metal from Mark's extras bucket in the garage and we glued them in the shape of an airplane.  Then we used Bendaroos to outline it and make some clouds.  Voila:

I think that's all the news here for now.  We are definitely ready for the warmer weather to get here but trying to stick to our guns about enjoying each moment for the precious gift that it is.