Owen joined a basketball team this winter. His first official organized sport. He really seems to enjoy being part of a team but you can definitly tell he's the youngest (there are kids that are 7 on his team!) but he's working hard on catching up being a quick study and learning to bounce the ball AND walk at the same time. It's not that easy!

Here's his team picture. O is the little guy on the bottom row on the left side second over.

I think he looks like such a big kid in this picture.

Really, where did the time go?

And Mike and I celebrated our 13th dating anniversary (we gave up celebrating valentine's day and replace it with celebrating our first date). We spent the evening at Alderbook resort on Hood canal and spent the day shopping in Olympia. It was fun to spend time with him. He even surprised me with a fun gift that you can check out on the craft blog (http://www.holy-craft.blogspot.com). Here's the view from our balcony.

Too bad it was a typical Washington day!

The kiddos worked hard at being crafty and making this tree. Bella made the tree and the apples, Owen cut out the squirrel and the acorns. Isn't it cute?

We went to Aidan's school last night to recogize the kids who made honor roll. If you can believe it 53% of the school made honor roll this past semester. Is anyone else thinking that maybe they need to beef up their curriculum?

To Aidan's credit he is in all advanced placement classes and is doing quite well making the adjustment to middle school. We are so proud of him!

Isabella loves all things crafty just like her mama. She will often just hover around me asking to do something crafty...anything. I happened to go to a huge store closing sale on Friday and had a bag of goodies that were totally tempting her. I kept finding her peeking in the bag and dying to rip open the packages and play with all my new goodies. We finally had time to sit down and put a few things together.

How cute is she? Sweet girl sat down after church and made some beautiful pictures to pass out to the residents at the nursing home that we visited later that afternoon. The people loved them!

We decided to take a family walk on Valentine's day at the trails by Dash Point State park. They have been doing construction on the bridge that we drive over almost daily and the kids wanted to see if we could see what they were working on. It was quite muddy and started sprinkling not long after we started out walk.

Here's the bridge that they are working on. Can't see much? We couldn't either!
Looking up to see what they can see...still nothin'
And this is how our walk ended about 5 mintues later.
Owen was running along when his shoe got stuck in the mud.
And that's a wrap...walks over.

I got to go to both of the little kiddos Valentine's day parties at school. Bella had a fun little party with food and games, and Owen spent time opening up his super cute puppy bag and checking out the fun Valentine's from his friends. Both parties were a lot of fun.

Bella and her best buddy Taylor

Mama made it!

I put together a little Valentine's day outfit for Isabella. Not sure if she could be any cuter or not!

Best buddies...most of the time!

Not quite sure why they look so angry and rough, they were having a great time taking all of the matchbox cars and making designs out of them. This rectangle was only one of many shapes that they made.

One of the kids favorite games right now is to load up in a sleeping bag and push each other down the stairs. Who knew that could be fun?!

Superbowl party!!!
Aidan was so excited that the Colts made it to the Superbowl! We thought it would be fun if he invited a few friends over to watch the game with us. We watched a great game and even though we were disappointed that the Colts lost, we were happy to see our fellow Purdue Alumnus Drew Brees take the Saints to victory!


Who doesn't want a huge pixie stick to eat when they watch the game???

Isabella was the hostess with the mostess serving chips to Aidan's buddies.

Our Five Minutes of Fame

I had nearly forgotten about the Kelty gear at Target. I just happened to google it on-line today to see if I could find out an exact date and found an article that said Kelty was coming to Target as early as January 31. Aidan had a dentist appointment at 4, so I immediatly e-mailed Mike and told him to meet me at Target after work. We met up in the camping aisle and found "our" display. The display was a little weak at our Federal Way store, but the kids were excited to see that all of them had been photographed and made the cut, something we weren't quite sure of. If you happen upon a better Kelty display at Target, would you let us know? Here are some pictures from our first encounter. I can only imagine numerous detours to the camping aisle at Target just to see our pictures on the camping gear.


We think that the shelves look so sparse because our pictures are making the tents FLY off of the shelves!

Owen holding up his favorite picture-him as a little monkey climbing on Mike's back.

Mike seeing it for the first time

And realizing exactly why they asked him to wear a hat.

Some of the facial expressions are not the most flattering, but it's about selling the gear, not selling us. Here Aidan makes fun of my face in the picture.

And Aidan making fun of his face in the same shot. We would often be told to just hang out with and in the gear so the photos were not posed and we continued chatting and talking normally so there are a lot of shots where we are mid-sentence.

Our Target didn't have any sleeping bags in stock, but I am guessing, this is a shot they might have used for that. Aidan likes the fact that he got a close up.

Just a disclaimer, this is not Mike's shirt. He actually hates the shirt. Oh well.

I even got a shot with just me and the two little ones. This shot was taken probably less than an hour after we got started.

Being goofy

So excited!