happy valentine's day!!

by david's own admission he "sucks" at valentine's day.  the first valentine's day we were married i was so excited that i'd put together a "guy's bathroom kit"--i woke up early, made heart-shaped pink pancakes, pulled out the romantically-decorated bag, and sat on our futon-bed, expectantly waiting for a love gift from him, like a puppy waiting for a bone.  

well.  

that bone came in the form of an oversized container of generic-brand pink grandma-smelling bubble bath thrown in an even more oversized box with no hearts, flowers, or any sign of lovey-dovey special attention given to it.  and it was tossed at me at the end of a very long work day.  kind of like an apology.  only without the bells and whistles of a good apology.  poor david.  poor me!

...ha ha...kind of...

after a few years of failed expectations, then setting no expectations and just going to target for the post-valentine's day clearance candy sale, we finally settled on a valentine's day compromise:  lingerie...that's what worked to have both sides feel like they'd won a great valentine's day...  this year i had absolutely zero expectations, having decided we weren't going to spend anything extra, at all, due to saving for our house.  so when a couple of valentine's day celebrations popped out of a magical hat, i was definitely surprised!  

i've had a killer cold from the seventh circle of purgatory this week, and was really looking forward to my scheduled massage/chiropractor visit to work out those extra aches.  just as i was leaving for my appointment, the doorbell rang, and a ups guy was running back to his truck (and it wasn't david!)--david had ordered a dozen beautiful colorful roses!  the card said "love, david & max".  i looked over at david and said, "what about pace?"  david said, "yeah, pace wasn't interested in helping.  he was too busy watching a show.  but max was very involved in picking flowers for you.  i asked him, "max, should we get these flowers for mama?"  and he'd point and say, "no, those."  "ok, these colors, or those?"  "hmmm,  these."  so the flowers are from me and max, because max was very sure in what he wanted to get for you."  

then, at my appointment, david had upgraded my normal massage to include hot rock therapy...yes!  let's hot-rock this virus right out of me!...yeah, i know it doesn't really work that way... 

and then i came home and painted my toenails with sparkly pink love.

i didn't even notice the text we'd gotten from our realtor until that evening:

so we decided to go for a drive and check it out--we have a hole in the ground!!  it's for real!!  i cannot even say how many things have run through my mind--it's a scam, they're going to run off with our money, everything's going to fall through... 

here's the hole!

our backyard!

our address!

our sidewalk!--this is actually where our driveway is going to be!

our view!--all the lots around us are sold, too, so we'll be moving in with neighbors right away!

the boys were very excited...

men at work

i can't resist these boys and their tools!  a few weeks ago i found these jackhammers at tj maxx to go along with their chainsaws...they were in heaven!

max frequently asks, "nine ack-hammer doh?"

sunday traditions

we always say prayer first thing.  who can resist those cute bottoms?!

today at church max sat next to me with his feet crossed at the ankles and held a big hymnal on his lap.  he "sang" along with the opening hymn, and after each verse he grinned his huge max grin and said, "see that?"  he was very proud of his skills!

if it's nice out (as it has been, oddly enough, for most of december, the entire month of january and february so far!...no winter for us!), we have a picnic lunch after church.  our apartment complex conveniently has a picnic table out back, and boy have we gotten our money's worth out of it!  last sunday after lunch david and the boys did a "whirlpool experiment" out of pace's experiment book.  a new natural disaster pace has recently gotten into...

wee school letter o!!

how do you top pinning the nose on the narwhal?!  another mama and i switched weeks due to a scheduling conflict, so i unusually had the kiddos two weeks in a row.  we started off our letter O week with an Octopus hunt!  instead of a lion hunt, we put on our letter O goggles and hopped in the Ocean to go on an Octopus hunt.  we took a huge breath and jumped into the Ocean, smush-smush-smushed our way through a sandbar, 

swish-swish-swished our way through seaweed,

splash-splash-splashed our way through some big waves,

and then found the Octopus cave in which our Octopuses (Octopi?) were hiding!  

after being captured, the Octopi were pretty hungry, so we brought them back to the activity table for a snack.  we traced around the letter O, then we brought out an alphabet soup.  the Octopi only wanted to eat letter O's, so the kids had to find all the O's in the mixed-up letters on the table and only glue O's on the Octopi's tentacles.

then we read "Oliver Octopus Takes a Job" from the two-minute stories book and counted all his arms and legs (8!)

then we used our four fingers on one hand and four fingers on the other hand to make our own little Octopi swimming in the Ocean.

on day 2, we had the O-lympics!!  first the kids had to paint their noodle letter O's.  once they finished painting, they would go down the slide and get a bike to ride around the big letter O on the ground.  after that they would go to the bowling lane and knock down the letter O (monsters were extra points...), and then back to the table to put together a letter O picnic plate--only foods that started with the "O" sound were allowed on the plate!

i seriously thought these activities would take us until 1015, at the very earliest, but these smarty-pants whizzed through all the activities!  they had more time to play!  everyone loved the slide, riding bikes, and coming back to paint more and more.

say "O"!!