February

February had its ups and downs. Grant was out of town for the majority of one week, then went camping with the Scouts that weekend, so that was a REALLY long week for me. He did take that Friday off of work, though, so we could spend time together. We went to the zoo as a family and had a great time! It was a little chilly, but no crowds at all, and we must have come at the perfect time, right when all the animals were waking up for the day, because we saw a lot more action than I ever remember seeing at the zoo! The elephants were eating, the tiger was pacing, the gorilla was playing superman with a blanket around his shoulders. 

 Lydia wouldn't stand against the wall. I think she thought the pictures were scary. :)

 For some reason she was fixated on going to see the snakes, so we spent a lot of time in the bird/reptile building.

 So cute. We have a giraffe figurine that looks a lot like this, so I had to snap a picture.

 Lydia had no problem sitting on the elephant this time. They must turn off the elephant sounds and water spraying during the winter. :)

 After we saw all the animals we monkeyed around at the playground for a while.

 Don't you love Grant's turtle face? Perfect.

 (I'm not sure adults are supposed to be in there, so we did it quick before they kicked us out)

 Lydia and Rhett spent half the month sick with coughs and runny noses. No fun. So we didn't leave home much, and I can tell you one thing: the kids were not the only ones going bonkers. I was so glad when they both got better so we could get out of the house!

 Rhett decided he likes to play while holding his legs straight up in the air....

 ...for a very long time.

 Lydia continues to be obsessed with dress ups. It's kind of nice--the odds of her getting her clothes dirty has significantly decreased, since she only wears them for a few hours a day, when we go run errands. I'm just glad I can talk her into wearing normal clothes in public.

 We've had so little snow this year, it's kind of disappointing. I had all these fun ideas of things to do in the snow with Lydia now that she's older, and we haven't been able to do any of them since the snow that we have gotten usually melts within hours of falling. One day, though, it actually stayed, so we hurried out there while Rhett was napping and made a tiny snowman.

It's too bad that the very next day, some kid came along and kicked it over. Lydia saw the whole thing go down from the front window and broke down in tears. I quickly went to the door and opened it to find the kid's brother about to knock to tell me what his little brother had done. Good kid. So I thanked him, then gave that kid a piece of my mind. Later when I told Grant about what I said, he told me I was a bit harsh, but I couldn't help it. I'm so sick of kids walking by our house and dropping trash in our yard and breaking branches off our newly planted trees (which weren't cheap, by the way!), and just having no consideration for someone's property. That's one of the down sides to living across the street from an elementary school. Lots of kid traffic. At least our neighbor kids are good. 

And it's really too bad her snowman got ruined. She keeps telling me that when it snows again we can make another snowman, but so far, we haven't had anything really stick. We may have to wait until next winter.