Well, we have covered outings, new things, a doctor’s appointment, family nights, and school.
My effort to split up all of those photos from January was successful!!
There are just a few more memories to keep here – for my sake!!
Do you want to guess what is first?
Food, of course!
I am not sad that food is such a big part of life though!
I enjoy it!!
As we should!!
I also enjoy my kitchen helpers!
Wow, I just added all of these food related photos – there are a lot – glad I can be here for you in this regard, ha, ha!!
Tate is still my ever faithful helper in the kitchen.
He just loves that kitchen as much as I do!!
My smartest Mom hack comes from the saying “work yourself out of a job.”
That saying really is the essence of learning how to delegate.
I work hard to train our children to help in all areas of life, and then I can leave them to their jobs.
This helps our home run so smoothly!
I realized that it was time to give Tate another one of my weekly jobs – making chicken stock from leftover crock pot chicken.
We eat a crock pot chicken once a week, so stock for soups and other needs gets made once a week.
Tate took over this job with a HUGE smile on his face!
I have to help him lift the instant pot insert back into the instant pot, but otherwise he ran with this job and does it all on his own.
We always add carrots, onion, garlic, celery, peppercorns, and apple cider vinegar to the water and the leftover chicken parts.
I bought this tool (and a few other needed kitchen items) and it has been a game changer for me!
I got this from Pampered Chef and it is called the Jar Opener.
My hands are less than ideal these days, as autoimmune issues have left them weak and arthritic.
My frustration in not being able to open things is gone, because this tool opens anything I need to open very easily!
This was the day I had only a few antibiotics left.
I had taken them for three weeks.
It wasn’t a week or so after this photo that I was asking for help from my doctor AGAIN.
Good grief.
Thankfully my lungs sounded better than I felt, so we didn’t do any more meds.
Kayla had taken the kiddos the morning I had that appointment, so I ran to the Coop afterward and got some nourishing food to make.
It was so quiet that day!!
Do you see in that last photo how I am watching a cooking show?
My sweet hubby bought and installed that tablet for us sometime in January.
It was in an effort to be able to have worship music playing throughout the day without it having to go through my phone.
I LOVE IT!!
We use it constantly!
We do not use WiFi in our home for health reasons, but our whole house was wired with CAT-5 when we bought it.
There is an internet plug in right behind the coffee machine, so this new tablet worked out perfectly!
Tate and I use it the most!!!
Fridays are still a marathon for me.
A marathon of getting grocery, running errands, doing laundry, and house cleaning.
I like a good marathon, don’t you?!
I think that is the reason I take a photo of the full grocery cart each week.
It is like I am saying “I finished the race! Made it to the checkout!” Ha, ha!
Somewhere in the month of January, I believe, I decided to only get grocery every two weeks.
It takes some seriously skill to get it all in one cart!
That’s not water in my tumbler either – iced coffee is a must for Friday marathons!
Lane.
He is taller than me.
He is smarter than me.
He is a GEM.
He is glad his mama is taking him for professional haircuts now, ha, ha!
He also brings binoculars to Bible time some mornings, because that’s what boys do.
We finally made a great space for him to work on his STEM and robot building!
It was not easy to figure out where we could put some tables for that, but this space works and he loves it!!
We feel like this winter was milder than most, but we did have some beautiful snow here and there.
Believe it or not, the children did not even have the opportunity to sled!
We just never had one of those slow, fluffy, straight down kind of snows that filled the yard and hill with a deep snow.
The boys were my shoveling crew this winter, and they always did such a great job!
Blake brought some cookies home for Tate one evening when he heard what an enthusiastic heart he had about clearing the driveway!
We did have beauty all around us this winter with the snow.
We live in the most beautiful place!!!
And I have plenty of photos to prove that!
Our bird restaurant brought and still brings us constant joy as well!
We had up to twelve red cardinals at a time visit our restaurant – on a daily basis!!
We have some snow inside our home too – in the form of snowflakes on the sliding glass windows – so that those beautiful birds will not run into the glass and hurt themselves.
One Saturday in January, I kept the grands so that David and Kayla could have a date!!
Any day with the grands is a better day than it was without them!!
We have so much fun with them!!
On a different Saturday, David dropped the boys to us and they spent the night.
That was a fun sleep over!
The BEST part was when Kayla sent me a photo of River once they got home…dead asleep and set on the couch that way.
SO CUTE!!!
Aspen Praise turned two in January!
She seems SO big to me now.
I know she will seem even more grown up when the new baby arrives at the end of May!
We started making our own candles and burning them at dinner and sometimes even at breakfast.
There is just something intentional about the whole thing.
I enjoy these candles very much!
It is winter, which means we play games a lot!
Just for the record, our favorites this year are Chinese checkers, Catan, Rummikub, and Racko.
Also just for the record, I never win.
These kiddos are good at being creative with their time.
Eliza received a watercolor book from her pen pal and has been enjoying it in the afternoons!
We love to watercolor!
I also have a very hard time keeping all three of their noses out of a book!
Even when I am drying Eliza’s hair!
One morning after my quiet time I went looking for someone to make this sign for me.
El Shaddai is typically translated as “God Almighty.”
I wanted those specific words and I found a way to have it done on Etsy.
What a sweet daily reminder that we have above our window now!
I realize this post has zero photos of Addie Mae!!
Sorry, sweet girl!!
I do have a photo of the day that Blake moved her dead jeep into the garage to fix it, and also one of her helping me grade school work one day.
Of course I have a few of Addie’s sweet Ruby Jane as well!
Blake and I managed to squeeze in a date night in January.
They are not as easy to come by these days!
We need to purpose them again – preaching to myself here.
I LOVE being alone with Blake and my love language is quality time – so win, win!
Our trio has been such great helpers helping Blake and I set up our church basement once a month for our Women to Women gathering.
I love that they get to serve behind the scenes this way!
You all!
That got crazy long!!!
Can you imagine how fat my scrapbook would already be if I were still keeping my memories that way??
It was good to look back on January.
February has some AMAZING memories though too.
Here’s a spoiler – FLORIDA.
SMILE!!
Stick around – those memories will be coming soon!!
