February iPhone Rewind

Well I managed to not post very much at all in February, so thought this would be a good way to look back at all we did this month.

We took Cooper to one of Chase's basketball games at the beginning of the month.  He loves balls and had been talking about "watch Chase play basketball" so we thought he'd love it.  He was pretty overwhelmed the whole time and hated the buzzer.  So this is how he looked most of the game, but he stayed pretty engaged.  And still talks about watching Chase play basketball every day.

A little post-dinner ice cream 

We met our friend AJ for a play date at the park.  The kiddos found some water and mud to splash in so we decided to let them go for it.  You know it's a good play date when you have to completely change clothes before going home.

Cooper decided to try to tackle this slide at one of our local parks and he rocked it!  He went up and slid down about 20 times this day.

We were sitting in the driveway and I was doing a few things before we left when I heard Cooper saying "Football.  Get it mommy."  He throws things out of his car seat every time we're in the car and asks me to get them so I didn't think much of it.  A few minutes later I turned around and saw he had thrown it and gotten it stuck above his mirror, so I couldn't help but laugh and grab a picture.

Nothing like some Parks and Rec Valentines to text David while he's working.

I got to go to If Gathering live this year.  I've watched the streaming version several times, but this was the first year it took place in Dallas.  So I was excited to get to check it out.  Love these sweet small group friends and our time together that weekend!

My little Valentine

Cooper loves helping with laundry!  He pushed the basket from his room to the laundry room with just a little help getting it through the gate.

Cooper's friend Avonlea came over to play while her mom went to a Valentine's party at sister's school.  They had so much fun together and she ran and gave him a big hug before she could leave.

Cooper got hit with a stomach bug late one Friday night.  Poor baby was in bed crying and when I went to check on him he just kept saying "mess" from where he had gotten sick.  We got him all cleaned up and settled in, but he still talks about his "mess sheets" and mommy cleaning them.  So the next day we tried to take it easy and stay home and that included a little bit of Daniel Tiger watching.

Cooper loves these oven mitts and regularly gets them out and wears them around the house.

We spent an afternoon with my brother and the kids.  Cooper found the basketball outside and needed nothing else to occupy him.

He loves going down the stairs at Bible Study all by himself.

I left Cooper at the gate while I went to the bathroom.  Came back and he'd taken off his shirt and one of his shoes while he yelled for me to come back.  At least my house was still in one piece, because you just never know!

Cooper loves pianos, so when he found this one at AJ's house, he was a happy camper.

Bedtime stories with Daddy.  Cooper is really into all of his Dr Seuss books right now.

Cooper has started climbing up into his car seat on his own sometimes.  And sometimes he takes it a little far and immediately dives over the side and climbs up front.  He loves pretending to drive (and sometimes will whine the whole drive home telling me "Cooper drive")

Our friends Eli and Maddie came over to play.  I didn't get any good pictures, but thought it was fun when they all sat for their picnic snack.

Sometimes after dinner David will read out loud from his Bible.  We've been reading in the book of Mark, so Cooper refers to David's Bible as "Bible Mark" and will try to play with David's Bible.  So I found one of my older Bibles that he can hold and flip through the pages.  When David read to him this night Cooper asked for his "Bible Mark" to hold.  

February Date Night Jar

While we didn't really do anything to celebrate Valentine's Day this year (which is not atypical for us) we did have fun with some ideas from our date night jar!

My MOPS group had a marriage challenge at the beginning of February, where each day our coordinator posted a different challenge or question to answer and then at the end someone won a date night.  One Saturday the challenge was to have a last minute date-- either out or in.  So after bedtime we drew one of our at home date sticks.  When we drew Wii Sports, I knew it went along perfectly with one of the yellow sticks we'd drawn-- bowling.  Since we went bowling in August while we were on vacation, we decided we didn't need to go again.  So we settled in for a night of bowling and other games on the Wii.

My pink remote makes me pretty happy still.

We played through all of the games on the original wii sports.  And it was actually a pretty fair split of who won.  But I did have to grab this picture because I never win at tennis, but I managed to win this round.  Overall, it was a fun night doing something a little different than our normal "sit on the couch and watch something" evening.

Another MOPS challenge was to look through your wedding pictures or watch your wedding video.  We had actually just looked through our wedding album during our Up Date Night, so we decided to watch our wedding video.  And we included Cooper in it because he loves watching home movies.  I knew this was one of our at home date nights in the jar, so I pulled it out and he held the stick while we watched.

It had been a few years since we had watched our wedding video.  So it was really fun reminiscing and remembering all of the things that were said.  And Cooper loved seeing all of our family on the TV.  And it was fun watching our friends Jon and Sami sing "Dancing in the Minefields" and remembering that song, since it's not in our regular playlist.  We honestly ended up having a pretty rough week right after we watched this, so I was grateful for the reminder of all the promise of when we first got married and that our promises were not based on circumstances.  As I played through Dancing in the Minefields later that week, I was struck by these words:

'Cause we bear the light of the Son of Man

So there's nothing left to fear

So I'll walk with you in the shadow lands

'Til the shadows disappear

'Cause He promised not to leave us

and His promises are true

So in the face of all this chaos

Baby I can dance with you

So thankful for this date and the reminder that it gave me in the midst of a rougher season in our life together.

Next up were our 2 planned date nights

I had seen an idea online once for a chapstick flavor guessing game.  Basically one person has to guess the flavor of chapstick through smelling it and through kissing.  It was just a silly and fun and little game one evening after Cooper went to bed.

And nothing says a drive in movie like February, right?  We had only ever been to the drive-in movie in the summer, but it actually ended up being a pretty good night to go.  It was cold, but we just bundled up with coats and blankets in the back of the car.  And since it's darker earlier, we didn't have to stay out as late as we do in the summer for a drive in movie.  We saw the second Lego Movie and thought it was pretty cute.  It was just fun getting away together for an evening (especially since this one came right after Cooper got hit with a stomach bug) and the drive out there gave us some time to listen to podcasts together and talk.

Love dating this guy of mine!

National Pizza Day

National Pizza Day was this past Saturday, February 9 and since we love pizza I knew it needed to be on our list!  I ended up doing a pizza themed week leading up to it, so here were a few of our activities.

Our "tot school" theme for the week before was Penguins and Polar Bears (mainly because I wanted to use the play snow we'd made earlier in January again).  So I had this polar bear box that Cooper fed cut out fish to.  So for this week I printed off some pictures of pizzas and pizza slices for him to feed to the polar bear.  He loved doing this and was great at opening the box and restarting it when he was done.

We also made some homemade biscuit pizzas for lunch one day.  I spread the sauce on the biscuits and then Cooper put on the cheese and the pepperoni.

This is how he felt about me taking away the pizza to put it in the microwave-- he just wanted to eat all of the cheese directly off of it.

He ate in his high chair for a few minutes, but then asked to eat in his tower, so I figured why not!

I also used the felt that I'd used for play tacos to have play pizzas.  I cut out some more strips for cheese and pepperonis and the sauce.  Cooper played with this for about 15 seconds and then was over it.  But I've got it tucked away to try again later.

We also did a pasta sensory bin.  I dyed some of the pasta red and left some plain.  I gave him a cup and a spoon and a parmesan cheese jar and a shovel.  He enjoyed scooping it into an empty bin for a few minutes...

... and then proceeded to take the bin and dump it out on the carpet right next to the tablecloth I'd put out for him to play on.  Because that's how sensory bins at our house really go.

I guess I didn't get a picture of it, but I also gave him some red craft sticks and some red pom poms to put inside the parmesan cheese jar.  He enjoyed doing that one day while I cooked dinner.

And then we ended up not even eating pizza on the actual day of national pizza day.  I was gone for all meals that day, so it just wasn't part of the plan.  So we went out to eat at one of our favorite pizza places-- Old Chicago Pizza-- on Sunday and I completely forgot to take a picture!  Cooper loved it though, he ate 3/4s of his kids pizza and loved dipping it in ranch like I do.  

Overall it was a fun week celebrating pizza!