CHILLY JANUARY

 This January has been a cold and sick month to be honest!!  The cold part, not a problem for us Westerners, the sick part... blah!  I guess it's how families work, one gets a sickness and it rotates around to everyone.  If you're lucky you don't get it!  And, if there is a baby in the house, mommy and daddy don't sleep much!  We've all been passing around, I guess it's been 4 cold/flu germs since Thanksgiving to be honest and Jadd has managed to only get 1/4!  That's even with our Flu shots!  I guess we would have gotten a 5th one if we didn't get our shots, right?? Anyway, enough of that- really enough of that!  By the end of January we had been seeing signs of all of us getting better!

But despite the sicknesses and  sleeplessness, these kids can bring out sweet simple joys!  Braelynn has been full of Tea Parties all month.  She's been carrying her tea party set she got last summer between the TV stand to the Kitchen table, making and delivering her soup, strawberry juice, or cookies for us or her special kitties, Maximas, Cicero, & Juar.  (She loves filling up her tea pot from the bathroom faucet by her self to do this.)

Also, Braelynn loves JUMPING!  She is either jumping from her slide, off the couch, practicing her leaps, etc.  Well, she's been wanting to jump rope since she's been walking.  She chose a jump rope one time with her money and has wanted to practice (frustrated) off and on, but this last month she got her jump rope out again, and got it!  It was so fun seeing her proud face as she worked on this and got it:)

This month has been full of dreams at night with Braelynn.  There were a couple nights she came to talk to us about them because she was scared.  Some mornings she has many entertaining things to say from her dreams as well.  By now, honestly, it's hard to know which ones are true, and which stories she has enjoyed coming up with, but they've been from playing at her cousins houses in Utah (which are most often) to riding on hippos, going up a snowy mountain, and the tragic getting caught by the Snow Monster (from Frozen).  Well, we've fixed her scary dream problem.  Each night when she says her prayers, we pray for good dreams.  She will NOT forget to do this each night.  One night we did forget to say her prayers, and she came out ten mins later and said, "mom, we forgot to say my prayers!" very matter-of-factly.

(Our next problem to fix is her pushing her chair over to the kitchen cupboards, to hunt down cookies and Dark Chocolate Hersheys to eat while I'm showering!!  She always has a chocolate face when I get out of the shower!)

Dane, the poor guy, has been the most sick :(  But he manages to get faster and faster with his crawling.  He is walking along furniture and even threatening to walk!  He lets go of things he pulls himself up from, or stands from a kneeling position.  He takes one step and does a jump after and catches himself with his hands.  He is working on walking and jumping at the same time I guess:)

Dane is a strong little guy!!  His shirts fit him just fine, but the sleeves are always slid up around his forearms.  We can't keep them down!  He loves to bounce from his knees and catch himself with his hands. He also loves to reach up high, and lift things up high above his head.  He is always clapping with excitement as well!

Dane also listens for the dishwasher to open so he can instantly dart over to it and unload all the   utensils! (I forgot how to rotate this pic)

Well, as many of you know, we enjoyed some snow this month!  It snowed in Georgia!  It seemed like such an adventure, because you really have to stock up on groceries before, then the city shuts down for a few days during the storm, and starts back up after it's melted away!!  They just don't do much plowing or salting because it does not happen too often.  So Jadd would study at home these days, and we'd go out in the snow and enjoy all our meal times with Dad!!

One of these snow days was my birthday though!  I loved that for my birthday.  I also enjoyed many family and friend birthday wishes!  THANKS- they all mean so much to me.  What I wanted most was to just spend time with my little family here- we did this and Braelynn made me some popcorn too!  She knows I love this.  She also did a dance for my birthday gift as well- it was so precious:)  We had talked about gifts you don't buy around Christmas time and I think she remembered this for my birthday.

Also, Jadd and I were asked to speak about Blessings of Keeping our Covenants one Sunday this month.  It was just a blessing to study up on this topic and prepare to talk about it.  Especially as we want the blessing of our children being protected!

I also got to teach a kickboxing class with the Young Women in our ward. It was really fun.  I love teaching exercise classes!!  Anway, I've been working on my own kickboxing routines lately, so it was fun to do some with others.