Winter's End

February has been the month of birthdays and play dates! We've been extra social and I sometimes have to stop and slow us down a bit. But I'm so thankful that things are blooming and the days are warming up! It's nice to get out a lot more.
We sure enjoy seeing these beautiful camellia flowers just outside the living room window.

I went up to Portland recently to do some work for Jude's Foods and I stopped to see my friend Mauria and her beautiful new baby girl, Karis. She's such a precious baby and I loved snuggling her and getting to hold her as she slept in my arms. Ahhhh, that's the best! Mauria made us a great lunch and tea and I just loved the time with her. Mauria was my first "mama friend" when our boys were born. We were in a new moms church group together, and she became an instant friend. This journey of motherhood has sure knit our hearts together and I'm so thankful for her.

A couple months ago our farming friends who butcher chickens here on the property had a chicken get loose. Selah excitedly noticed a new chicken roaming around and promptly named her and fell in love with her. A couple days later our farming friends let us know about a lost chicken, and they said that they'd find her and catch her. I said, "Oh, do you mean Glimmer?" They smiled and said, "Oh! You've named her?" I asked if they'd mind if we adopted her because Selah had already fallen in love with her and she had already been welcomed into the chicken fold. ;) They're so sweet and graciously let us keep her! Well, Selah has been on a mission to win Glimmer's trust and affections, and this week Glimmer finally allowed Selah to hold her! It was an exciting moment that needed documenting.

We enjoyed a little pre-birthday celebration for Nora's second birthday one evening at their house with pizza and cupcakes. She's such a doll. The kids always love playing with her. Grandma Jill joined us too!

Grandma Jill & Grandma Chris celebrated birthdays this month too! For my mom's birthday, Gina, Jen and I went out for a girl's night at Magenta and out for desserts at New Morning Bakery. I sadly never got a photo of us girls together that night! 

For Grandma Chris' birthday we met her for frozen yogurt and had a great little visit with her. 

I'm so thankful for these moms/grandmas and how they lavish us in love (you too, Grandma Janet, even if you'r birthday isn't until September!) :)

I recently got together with a friend that I hadn't seen for about 18 years! Susannah brought over an old photo album and we laughed and reminisced about fun high school memories. :) This photo was from a "summer party" held at her house in the dead of winter, but we all dressed like it was summer.

And this one appears to have been from our friend Julie's birthday party, where we were eating oranges, and what's so funny about this pic is that Sheri is blocking out Josh's face with her hand, which would probably still happen today. Too funny!

Sheri and I are still taking amazing photos together all these years later! ;)

The kids only have 6 weeks of their co-op school left for the year, I can't believe it! We still have our regular charter school program we're a part of until June, but this little class of girls is so cute and I love seeing them all together each week.

The Hilton's had us over for fish tacos the other night and oh boy were those tacos delicious!! They have some pretty amazing cooking skills. We ate ice cream by their warm fire place for dessert and then sat and drank tea and chatted for a while before we took the kids home to bed. These girls dressed up and enjoyed some tea too. Elena is Selah's best friend and the Hilton's will most likely move back to California after Michael gets his PhD, so even though we want him to get it quickly for his sake, we selfishly never want them to move, or at least not for several years! ;) We sure love their family!!

The other night the kids got super inspired to take things apart to be able to build robots. The first stereo I ever bought with my own hard earned cash finally bit the dust (it lasted 20 years!) so I told the kids they could go to town on it. They took some old toys apart too. Since then, Ben has repeatedly ask to have his own workshop to be able to engineer robots. ;)

Jude has started doing occupational therapy, speech therapy and social skills therapy each week. He's doing great and works hard at these things.

I was heading out to meet with a friend the other day and Jude asked to take a picture together before I left. I sure love this boy.