February 2017

February has been pretty low-key since Ceci is still out with mono. She is in her sixth week of missing school. She is currently doing some detox herbs to pull the virus from her system, but it appears that her adrenals are fatigued, at least that is how she is acting. 

Meanwhile, we're trying to do school projects when she is up to it, and she has listened to the entire Harry Potter audio series and is into the second Percy Jackson series. She has been drawing loads of families and other types of drawings:

We play lots of games. At first it was Chinese Checkers, but I couldn't even come close to beating her.  Seriously, that kid is a whiz at strategy games. We moved onto Pickup Sticks, but she has proven to be as steady a hand as she is at whooping my hiney at Chinese Checkers! Now we've been playing a game with a little more chance to it: Farkle. Awesome game that keeps us busy for hours, although Geoff and I agree that we should have her buy a lottery ticket, because she rolls high far more than we do.

She's had some friends, church leaders and neighbors bring her flowers and gifts. Her Beehive class even held their church meeting in our living room this past Sunday.

She is a good sport and keeps herself busy a good portion of the day without complaining.

One Saturday Bailey came over and she found the strength to dress up and make hilarious youtube videos. There was minimal movement, but it wiped her out for a few days. It was a nice diversion from sitting on the couch day after day, though!

And when Adele is home they find low-energy activities together, like emptying a few of our closets to make forts where they eat and draw and pass notes back and forth.

I was in charge of putting on a Grandparent's Day at Ceci's school a few days before Valentine's Day. It was a huge success. Teachers pulled together great displays of the children's work, and parent's came through in providing a great brunch for over 500 visiting grandparents. I love Waldorf.

I spoke to the youth at two ward conferences this month, and put on a stake leadership training while Geoff helped all of the young women in the stake find family names in the stake Family History Library. ALL young women found names and were so excited! The next week, on Valentine's Day, we had a fancy sit down dinner for all youth in the stake before going to do temple baptisms. Those young women were so excited to take their own cards! Our stake hosted a multi-stake ice-skating activity at the Gallivan Center, too, and we had New Beginnings and our Winter Youth Conference planning meetings. It was a busy month!

The weeks leading up to Valentine's Day we had a lot of Valentine love notes going on between us in Adele's cute, homemade mailboxes:

The mini, pink roses died on our cute, little table-top rose bush the week of Valentine's Day. I tried to extend the life of it's Valentines-ness. 

Geoff won the prize this year for the cutest valentine. He was so excited for us all to look in our mailboxes on the morning of Valentine's Day.

Seriously, I am so low maintenance in this way. I wore it with LOVE all day.

My cute, aunt Vicki passed away after having rheumatoid arthritis for decades, and numerous other illnesses for the past several years. It was great to see so many Brinton aunts, uncles and cousins while celebrating the life of a tremendously cool woman. My mom came up for the funeral and stayed a few days, which was really fun. She joined in the games with Ceci, and we got a little shopping in. Her visits always feel too short!

Geoff and Tennie took a day off from school and work to go skiing, and she has begun to learn to drive a stick shift! Goal set by mom: driver's license by 17th birthday.

We've been trying all sorts of delicious recipes. One of our favorites was this fish bowl. Yum!

I learned about a simple vitamin combination that promises amazing results in health. It is totally practical and common sense, and yet seems too good to be true. Always hopeful that we'll find a solution to our many, many health concerns, the whole family is on this product. February was our first month. Stay tuned and I'll let you know if it is worth writing about.

Tennie and Adele had their intensive weeks. Tennie's two-week intensive was set-design for the high school play coming up. She has had fun with the creative and artistic aspects.

Adele was in an Asian intensive where they prepared and cooked different Asian foods every day and volunteered, tutoring English students at a local, Asian refugee center. Adele LOVED it. She worked with people from all around the world, and you can see her radiate with love and light in the few pictures she took. She's scheming organizing an intensive to Greece to work in a refugee camp later this year.

Eating all of that Asian food reminded Adele that she had a New Year's goal to learn to use chopsticks. We had several nights of Asian food at home, too, and we all got a little more chopstick savvy.

Adele insists we've moved beyond disposable chopsticks and it's time for the real deals.

We got a glimpse of Spring for several days before winter came back to finish up February. Here's to hunkering down a little bit longer in our layers and boots!