JANUARY + FEBRUARY

 The kids put stuff in a box and buried it. It's so long ago now, I can't remember the details, but I feel like we watched something that had buried treasure in it and then they did this.

Marius has gotten really good at coloring and can do it for an hour straight until he's colored everything that is possible to color. He loves it.

The kids learned how to text and got pretty crazy with it- sending all kinds of emojis and Scarlet typing the messages. When they figured it out, they kept telling me to go upstairs to be alone in my room. I thought they were going to do something really naughty, but they just wanted to text me. This is a picture they sent. They are the cutest kids and we love them.


The kids Facetiming somebody. Probably my mother or Greg.

The kids made a DVD player/TV set out of cardboard boxes. They even cut out DVDs and made a slot to put them in. I am always so impressed with my little inventors. They really have so much ingenuity! It makes me so happy that they're so creative and intelligent.

The kids have REALLY gotten into legos. Brighton made all these by himself by following directions  and I was so blown away I took pictures to send Greg. And every 20 minutes or so he'd come out of the playroom to show me something he made, again and again. I love legos. They are amazing. The creativity and thinking that has to happen to make the things that they do. I love it.

More of Marius's coloring. He's very proud. He's really done well!!!

We got a lot of games for Christmas and Operation was one of them. It's been really fun to play with the boys. Marius particular has really been getting good at everything. It's been really fun to play Go Fish and Spot it and Dominoes. We love to play games together, he and I. It's been great for us. I've been really trying to spend more one on one time with him these days. 

 Marius has blown us away with legos too! He will spend a LONG time in the playroom looking at directions and completely build things all by himself! And it's all correct! He's 3! I don't know how he does it. He is so smart. He's made several things. He's also gotten really good at puzzles. Far more advanced than our other kids at his age. It's been really fun to watch him and do them together. He's growing up. I like to think he's my baby, but he's not even close. He's a boy now. Super independent.

MARCH-

Scarlet has had 2 teeth pulled and is terrified to do it. The first time terrified her to ever do it again. The others fell out naturally or were accidentally pushed out when eating. The last time we pulled a tooth, it was dangling and we had to physically force her. She was screaming, clamping her mouth shut and Greg held her body down and I pulled her mouth open somehow and I pulled it out so effortlessly, she didn't cry until she saw blood, then started to freak out, of course. Once it was done and she was calm again, she said she was so glad it was out, but that she never wanted to pull a tooth out again. So we waited and waited and WAITED for these to come out, and it has been painful. The tooth UNDER the tooth in the front- was accidentally pushed out by her finger.

APRIL-

OH this next one has been hanging on forever and it finally came out today. It has been driving me crazy. I'm so glad it's gone. She looks so different with all that space now. She's had the craziest looking teeth the last 4 months. I'm so glad it's over.

So I've been really bad about taking pictures or keeping up with the blog for a long while. Pretty much since January, life has been very hard. It's finally not so hard anymore- but only since April. A lot of really heavy and emotional family stuff was going on back home and emotional decisions were made, and remade and when it was finally all decided and finished it left me completely emotionally depleted. Completely. I had nothing left to give. I had no effort left and was just trying to recover from the damage. At the same time, my two best friends- pretty much the only people I hang out with  and my kids hang out with- overnight, literally the same week got really unavailable and busy. One had to spend an insane amount of time at her kids school, way out of town, every other day- so that pretty much cut out any time we could get together. And my other friend put her kid in preschool (there goes my kids playmates) and got really dedicated and busy with her career. It really sucked. And life got really lonely, and really boring really fast and it rocked my depression for awhile. It was really hard to feel happy when I literally had no friends in my life and nowhere to go- ever. And the kids got really cooped up too and literally had no friends to play with as well. It was really hard for a good few months but I've gotten a lot closer to another woman in our ward and she has one child at home, so that has helped a lot- but mostly we've just adjusted and come to terms with having a really tiny nearly nonexistent social life and we're trying to work around it.

We're also just always sick. We're pretty sure our house is moldy or something is going on that's making us sick constantly. Beyond occasionally getting REALLY SICK, we always just feel under the weather. Like every other day it feels like we're "coming on with something" but then we don't, but we never feel well, at least not more than a day. And it just floats around for all of us, making us grumpy and short tempered and really bored from all the TV because SOMEBODY is sick that day. It's been hard, but it's gotten a lot better lately. So I'm grateful for that.

For MONTHS I've had the nagging feeling I need to get all our pictures and videos backed up and I finally do it over a couple days and before it completely uploads the laptop DIES. Like won't turn on or ANYTHING. So we lost a lot of pictures and videos and I'm very sad about it. I mean, it is what it is and I have all of the PICTURES on the blog- so as long as the internet doesn't crash, we have that forever- but our videos are lost- so that is sad. But at least we'll be better about it from now on. It's weird, I love our pictures. I know for a fact that I've looked and relooked at our family pictures more that anyone has ever looked at a set of picture on the planet. I LOVE reminiscing and remembering and it makes me so happy inside. So I remember them, but at the same time I just look at my kids and think- they are what's important. They're more important than a picture and that's what matters. So if I don't get it all back, that's ok. But I hope that it will somehow happen.