the first week back at school

Joseph was so excited to go back to school after the break that he ran way ahead of me on Monday morning.  Can you see him?  

 However, Jacob and I had a much different week . . . . 

We survived.  

mama/Joseph afternoon

On Joseph's last day of Christmas vacation we took a little trip to the Museum of Discovery.  Joseph loves this place and we finally have a membership which will come in handy during the coldest and hottest times of our year.  I love that this kiddo loves to learn and the museum provides him lots of opportunities.

 We headed over to the Rivermarket for a treat after we finished at the museum.  It was a chilly day so I had my Mexican chocolate popsicle in hot vanilla cream.

 Joseph had his double fudge popsicle straight up.

toy storage

We had originally planned on putting custom built-in cabinets in the boys' new room.  But then daddy had the wonderful idea to take the bookcase from the dining room and repurpose it.  We were already planning on moving the bookcase out of that room to make space for the piano we will be getting shortly.  Daddy turned the bookcase on its side and added horizontal shelves and legs.  After painting it, he added bungee cords to two sections for stuffed animal "zoo" storage.  

 It turned out so great and is the perfect storage solution for this room!  The boys (and mama & daddy) are truly thrilled with this new room.  We have one more piece of furniture that we'll be painting and adding in a couple of weeks and then our current list of projects for this room will be finished.

New Year - New . . News

Another Baby Swearingen is expected around the middle of July!  We have passed the 12 week mark and have been to the doctor three times.  Each time we have seen a great heartbeat and the last time we got to see this little one moving around and kicking.  Such a great sight!  I am still nervous given my complications but we're excited and hopeful.  

Part 11 - Happy New Year! and saying Good-bye

Our New Year celebration was pretty laid back.  In fact - we rang in the new year all snuggled in our beds.  We knew all the kiddos would be up early regardless and our guests had a long drive home that day.

Jacob and Scout shared many hugs before Scout left and they missed each other immediately.  

After they left we brought in the bins from the garage and started cleaning up all the Christmas decorations.  That is always a sad job but it feels so good once it's done and the house is clean.  Jacob was fairly traumatized when he woke up from his nap and the tree was gone.  He even sang a song about it at dinner: "No more Christmas tree.  No more Christmas tree. Why?! Why me?!  Why me?!"

Another sad time was when we said good-bye to our gingerbread train station.  Both boys took their turns eulogizing it and eating a piece of candy off of it before its demise.

That pretty much sums up our Christmas Vacation.  We hosted a play date with some friends yesterday morning but I forgot to take any pictures.  Now it's Friday - technically our last day of vacation.  We still have a couple things planned for the weekend but Joseph is excited about returning to school on Monday.  Mama is pretty excited about us all getting back into a routine as well.  Although it was really special having so much family time for a couple of weeks.

Part 10 - more fun

A few days before Christmas Joseph announced that he wanted a cake pop maker.  Suddenly it was the most important thing on his list and the only thing he talked about.  We had already finished shopping for them but I knew that Grandma was still finishing her list.  He was so excited to get this fabulous cake pop/donut hole maker from Grandpa & Grandma.  We made yummy donut holes the next morning for breakfast.

 We are so glad we finished this room before Christmas.  The kids all had such a fun time playing here (as did the adults) and we were able to keep the mess contained . . . and the downstairs fairly quiet at times.

Part 9 - Another Christmas

We got to celebrate Christmas again with another round of gift giving/receiving.  

Yee-haw cowboy. This one has a great imagination and loves to dress up.

 All the kiddos were ready to open gifts!

So many fun gifts. . . . . so blessed by our family.  

Part 8 - Visitors from the (North) East

We were excited to have Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Natalie, Scout and Rigby come to visit us a few days after Christmas.  

Rigby is getting so big!  He is crawling everywhere and pulling up and cruising along everything.  I fully expected him to be walking when he got here and I think he could if he really wanted to do so.

 Jacob and Scout are very close in age (5 months to the day) and this has not always been a happy thing.  In fact, it has been a cause of much angst in the past.  However, they were the best of friends this visit.  They had so much fun playing, sharing, snacking, giggling.  I hope they always love each other this much.

Part 7 - Fun in the snow

After the power came back on (and now that we had a warm place to be afterwards) we headed out to play in the wonderful snow.  It was perfect packing snow for snow balls and a snow man!

 It also made pretty yummy chocolate snow cream.