Busy, Busy, Busy

Well, like everyone else, we've been busy, busy, busy. I cannot believe February is basically over. It would be an understatement to say that it went by in a flash. Below are a few shots from this month. In addition to the stuff here in pictures, some of the highlights this month were all our homestudy interviews both in Portland & at our home. Those are done now - woo hoo!!! - and now we're waiting for our completed homestudy to be sent to us for review. I've been up in Portland about once a week to help & spend time with Amanda and the twins who still needs two sets of hands around for feeding times. This week, I got to help Amanda take the babies to an infant photo session - that lasted 5 HOURS LONG!!!!! Oh my goodness....it was fun, but exhausting. Pictures of that will follow soon.....sure to be gorgeous!!!! And last weekend we went to the funeral for Michael's uncle Stan - a wonderful godly man who just recently went home to heaven. Michael really enjoyed seeing family that he hasn't been able to visit with for a long time & getting a chance to reflect on the amazing life of his uncle Stan - the man that baptized him & married us. What a blessing he was to us and so many other people.

Here are some of our favorite pics this month...besides the baby pics I've already posted....

Michael got to enjoy a day at Emma's ballet class. Her class each week is in a studio, but we don't get to watch it. There isn't room for all the parents to sit in the studio and it doesn't have windows, so we never really get to see her dance except at the performances & on the one observation day each year. Emma was super excited to have her daddy come this year! Can you tell she just loves her dance class?

Using the bar to practice her plie (at least I think that's what it's called)

I'm not sure anyone but her daddy makes her smile this big.

All business here......










And Valentine's Day - which we don't really celebrate - but it's hard not to do something "festive" with the kids. Although, we didn't do much other than Michael and the kids surprised me with a huge heart cookie they made together. Ok......everyone together now for a collective....."Awwwwww - how cute." Oh my.



This picture cracks us up. We found Jake SLEEPING like this last week. What the heck???? There are a lot of things I could say about this picture - but I'll let it speak for itself. ;-)


And swimming lessons!!! Yep! We've started them! They are by far the highlight of the week right now for the kids. They both love them, especially Emma. She is a total fish. She's already moved from level 1 to level 2 after proudly doing her 10 bobs by herself. She now wants to take a bath every night to practice holding her breath, opening her eyes under water and floating. She askes EVERY day, "Do we have swimming today?" I'm not exaggerating - she really does ask EVERY day. We've created an animal.





And I made the mistake of pulling out the goggles from the closet and Jake insisted on wearing them for class this week.....despite the fact he got so fogged up he must have been looking through pea soup for half the class.


Jake working on his floating......still.....not giving up the goggles. Michael got them off of him about 1/2 way through class. Jake must have finally decided that seeing what he's doing is a good thing. That's my crazy boy.
Jake is loving it too, of course. The first week he wouldn't put his face in the water, but today he came home proclaiming that he did lots of bobs under water! "I did it, Mom!!!"