I decided to write about all of January in one post, so this is a long one!
The biggest news at our house is that we have a house-mate renting from us. Her name is Maddie, and she is wonderful! We know her through church, and she needed a room to rent until the summer when she will move back to the cities. Maddie works two jobs and is a speech therapist. She uses our basement guest bedroom and bathroom and then shares space in the kitchen for her food and cooking. The boys like her a lot, and as time goes on they are getting more and more used to having her and her kitty cat living with us. Since she works so much, we mostly see her just a couple hours a day. She also babysits for us from time to time, which makes things really easy!
Our January was filled with lots of activities centered around trying to keep busy indoors from the extreme cold. One day, Jeremy took the boys to the gym at church. They played basketball and rode their bikes/scooters in the gym. They also braved the very cold weather for a few minutes before getting in the car.
The boys have enjoyed their tablets that they got from Gramz and Grampz. We found a funny letter game that teaches the letter sounds, letter identification and vocabulary. Dallin is learning really fast with it and has started naming letters on signs when we drive around town.
One day, we woke up to this beautiful frost.
The view from our couch was so pretty!
Jeremy figured out how to make a panoramic photo of our kitchen and TV room area.
Tanner tried making a sculpture of a nutcracker. He was disappointed that it wouldn't last forever, so we ordered modeling clay online together. He used his calendar to help him wait the long 2 weeks for it to come.
Jeremy finally broke down and got himself some real snow boots. When they came in the mail, we could not believe how huge they were!
Painting is a good way to keep the boys busy with all this cold. I try to put them by the window so they can get some Vitamin D, even though it is hardly ever sunny out (about 1 in 7 days), mostly just white or grey weather.
Jeremy got some nice gifts from his co-workers in grocery marketing at Hormel. He is now switching over to meat products marketing (to be the brand manager for Natural Choice Deli Meat), so they gave these as a goodbye gesture.
This picture (above) represents the awesome work that Jeremy did on Valley Fresh canned chicken. In just one year, he redesigned the labels, recipe, and marketing strategy for this brand, and made a really cool video for the sales conference, which involved him dressed in a farmer costume at a real barn. The farmer's neighbors weren't too happy about the filming, so that's why there is a cop car in the picture, even though there wasn't actually any cops involved in the filming process.
The boys really like to read and write/draw. I found them like this when they were waiting for me to read them stories for bed.
For family night one week, we made rice crispy houses from a leftover Christmas project.
We met up with a bunch of friends for playgroup at the dome one Thursday. The kids walked around the walking path for an hour! They loved walking, running and holding hands with each other. We were all really surprised at how well they did.
Dallin is just so cute.
And he is a Mama's boy, always giving me loves.
Every night before I go to bed, I check on my boys to make sure they are breathing. They are so precious, and they smell so sweet- a tad of cozy mixed with vanilla. Tanner's cheeks are always so poochy when he sleeps!
And Dallin's fingers are so long and dainty when he sleeps.
Tanner has gotten in the habit of making lists of what to do with us. He comes up with a lot of fun things even though we often cannot go outside because of the weather.
I should also note that this month, Tanner started doing 5 days of preschool a week. He has been loving it! And I love it too, because it gives me more one-on-one time with Dallin.
Dallin and I enjoyed a little birthday party at a friend's house. It was a great way to pass the time on one of the coldest days of the year.
On Martin Luther King Jr Day, we had Leighsa's girls over. I got a lot done while the boys played with them.
One evening, Tanner decided he would make his own recipe for dinner. He mixed water, salt, bread and oranges together. He put about 1/4 cup of salt in his recipe. He was so excited to taste it!! Bwahaha. He of course hated it, and was very shocked it tasted so bad. Lol.
Jeremy helps a lot with dinner if he gets home before it's done.
I've been trying to get the boys more involved with cooking, and it has been fun.
Another day at the dome!
This time we got to play on the field! (Tanner was at preschool)
One day I snapped a couple pics of Dallin getting his own water. He is really independent.
We took a Day Trip on January 23 to a city called Mankato, about 1 hour 20 minutes from our home. During the drive, the boys sang, ate snacks and danced in their carseats.
When we got to Mankato, we spent nearly four hours at Bouncy Town. It's an indoor play place filled with bounce houses. The boys LOVED it!!
They even played on the big kid bounce houses and had a great time! No injuries, despite the large amount of kids there. They also had an area with toys, play kitchens and houses. It was really fun!! Also, halfway through bounce time, I left to go shop at Once Upon a Child. It is twice the size as the one in Rochester, I was in heaven!
In the late afternoon, we saw the Good Dinosaur at this cool theatre. It was only $3.25 a ticket!
Dallin liked playing with his reclining controls on his seat, but he preferred to keep it upright when he watched the movie. It was his first movie theatre experience, and I'm glad there were lots of other little kids in the audience. At a boring part in the movie, Dallin hollered, "Marco! Polo! Marco! Polo!" and he got a few giggles from our neighbors. What a funny kid, he was clearly doing it to get people to laugh.
For dinner in Mankato, we enjoyed the Country Buffet.
Back at home, the boys had a moment where they being nice to each other on my bed. So I took a picture!
Every day when Dallin wakes up from his nap, he cuddles with me while I finish work on the computer.
The first ten minutes after he wakes up is one of my favorites parts of the day.
He was annoyed with all the pictures I was taking of him, so he knew how to get me to stop!
Another play day at the dome was a big success! We had over 12 mamas there.
The boys did a great job making French bread for dinner a few nights ago. For most of the month, we have been putting all the dinner on the table and letting the boys serve themselves. They are eating much more food than if I pre-serve them up dish, maybe because they feel they have more control over what they are eating. On this particular night, Dallin ate four servings of broccoli! So it's fun to see what they end up choosing to eat at the dinner table.
Open Skate at the Packer Arena was really fun! The boys remembered what they had learned and were able to keep practicing from where we left off on New Years Eve. Maddie came with us, and we met up with several friends, so it was a really great evening.
Dallin liked riding around on the chair. When I said we can go get a snack, he got off the chair, and pushed/skated all the way across the rink to our stuff. Food was a great motivator for him to do skating!
Tanner and his friends had fun crawling on the ice for awhile. Jeremy came along and started pushing them across the ice, so they had fun sliding around on their knees and bums!
Yesterday, the boys enjoyed playing cars in the light of our window. I love this room!
