I love little holidays! I feel like it is so good to have a day where, for no practical reason, you just do things a little special! (Is special an adverb?) I also love any reason to dress up my cuties and decorate the table! So Valentine’s Day is just fun for me!

Also, I have been taking this photography class, and I thought festive photos were a great way to get in some extra practice. I had a little photoshoot with my kids in their Valentine’s outfits and invited my sister to bring her adorable baby, Daniel, to join. Not a ton of the pictures turned out great; but here are some decent ones.

Portia made herself a casualty in another way because as soon as we were done with the group pictures; she high-tailed it out of there to go eat the pizza Grandmother had brought. I promise we love her just as much as the other two; she just loved pizza more than getting photographed.

We did the photoshoot last week; but on Valentine’s Day itself we did the real celebrating!

I decorated the table for breakfast, and we had festive foods! I think it is an extra bit of fun for the kids to wake up to special stuff. They all seemed quite excited about Valentine’s breakfast. 🙂

See! What’s not to love about Valentine’s Day?! I am also pleased to report that I am more in love than ever with my Valentine! Josh really is so good and he is rather effortless to adore and cherish! I wish I had a good recent picture of him to show; but I have mostly focused on the kids. 🙁 I will have to repent and get more pictures of him and me on here.

 

Last Friday I was driving home from the park with the kids thinking I needed to get away somewhere.  January always seems to wear me out by the end and I was just feeling antsy.  Approximately 2 minutes after having that thought, Josh called me. When I answered and asked what was up, he asked how spontaneous I was feeling. I replied that I was feeling up for pretty much anything! He asked “Even if it means not sleeping at our house tonight?” And I said “Sure!”

So only an hour and a half later, we packed everyone up in the car and started heading south to St. George! We knew it was only going to be about a 24 hour trip because we needed to be back to fulfill callings and all that Sunday jazz; and considering the spontaneity and rapidity of the trip, I feel like it was pretty fantastic! Here’s what we did:

When we arrived, we checked into our hotel and walked across the parking lot to a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we took the kids to the hotel pool–their most favorite part of any trip! After splashing and playing, we dried everybody off and went to bed.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel–another thing the kids were incredibly stoked about–followed by returning to the pool! Though, this time around they mostly just wanted to hang out in the hot-tub because it was pretty chilly first thing in the morning.

After the pool, packing, and checking out, we went to the children’s museum. It was really fun and the kids loved it!

After the museum, we grabbed lunch and took it to a seriously cool park. It was GORGEOUS weather and we had a delightful picnic on the grass! Then we played on the toys for an hour or so before packing up and heading north again.

It was short and sweet; but it was just what we needed to help us recover from January!

 

This past week has been busy. Friday got here and we didn’t really have plans. Josh usually comes up with all the cool stuff for us to do. but this time I told him I would do it. So we had an indoor campout!

We had a picnic dinner of hotdogs, fresh fruit, salad, and chips. (Doesn’t it just sound like summer?!) Then we set up the tent in the family room and gathered almost all the sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets we have and just let the kids party it up in the tent! Then Josh brought out the banjo and we sang campfire songs together! It was pretty great! But then the kids wanted to sleep in the tent, and the parents wanted them to sleep in their beds. We made a compromise of the kids sleeping in the little tent in Portia’s room. That turned out to be really bad. Carter was up raging for about 2 hours in the middle of the night because he couldn’t get comfortable in the tent, but refused to move to his bed. Finally we got him to sleep in his bed! But it was definitely a struggle.

So despite the fact that the kids loved every minute of the campout, we probably won’t be doing it again any time soon. 🙂

On a different note: I am, during the month of February, taking a continuing ed photography class. I am mostly learning better how to use the different functions of my camera, which is just what I was wanting. So this means, hopefully, that the quality of some of pictures I display will increase. But, after two of my 4 classes and lots of picture taking, I have noticed some things: Just because I am more knowledgable about how to work a camera, it doesn’t mean that my pictures are magically all turning out fabulous. Another thing I have noticed is that taking pictures of moving kids with only indoor lighting is probably just always going to turn out sub-par for the most part. Also, I do this blog primarily as a family history, not as a showcase for flawless art, so if a less-great picture is showing what I want to remember, I am going to use it anyway.  So, I’m hoping that with continued learning and practice the general quality of the pictures will improve, but I’m not going to place my personal value in my ability to have a blog with exclusively perfect pictures.

Though, I would like to mention that I am particularly proud of the picture of the family in the hot-tub. Feel free to go take another look at it. 🙂

Also, here are some cute kids.