February

February flew by!
It was a month full of lots of little things and having family in town, which is always the best :)
Here's our top ten activities for February:

1) I'm really trying to work on being a better wife and finding lots of little ways to show Brad how much I appreciate him. Sometimes it's hard for me to get creative and think of things that he might like. Thanks to Pinterest, it's much easier to make things happen. This year I did the 14 Days of Valentine's gifts for Brad. This gave him a little something to take to work with him every day to snack on or stash. I modified a few different I found and picked the ones I knew Brad liked. It was fun to sneak out of bed early and have it set out in the kitchen with the wonderfully cheezy one-liners :)

a small sample of the cheezy-ness

2) Again, I am really enjoying not being in school. I have been able to find more time and use my creativity to decorate our home for the holidays. It's always fun trying to find ways to decorate without spending too much money. I think they are getting to know me personally at my local Hobby Lobby :s

3) My brother Zac, and Brad's sister Mindy both have February birthdays. We LOVE being able to spend time with them. It seems crazy how little we see them with how close we live. We took them to a birthday dinner at Zupa's and enjoyed catching up.

4) This may not actually be a top ten, but in the eternal scheme of things, we can recognize the tender mercies involved :) For a while, our front right tire kept going flat, but not enough for us to think there was a hole in it. One day we woke up and it truly was flat :( No one likes to deal with car problems, especially when you know it will end in draining your bank account. After trying a few different things to try to solve the problem without having to buy a new tire, the answer was inevitable. I would like to publicly thank MY TIRE GUYS because they are the best! They really worked so hard with us to help us figure out the problem. They have the best customer service and went WAY above and beyond to help make things work. Long story short, it was an overall replacement cost of over $800! But as mentioned previously, tender mercies were involved. After being in contact with my Uncle through the whole thing as well, he called me with some great news! He had just found 4 like new tires/wheels that he was going to be able to get for just $400 from a wrecking yard. In the end we only spent $426 start to finish! This was such a blessing to us in so many ways and we will always be grateful for the tender mercies.

she still looks pretty good :)

5) I have also been getting the bug to have a someday nursery/current craft room created. We have a workout room at our place and never seem to use the stuff since we have gym passes through Brad's work. We took our treadmill over to our cousin, Shaylee's house, knowing she would use it. Then my parents gave me the "OK" to sell their home weight set. Yahoo! And we even got a little bit of commission :) I moved our free weights into the storage room and got started repainting it. The room doesn't have very good lighting, so I just wanted to paint it a lighter neutral and had an extra gallon of paint to get it done; it worked out perfectly. Now it is serving as a craft room/office/guest room/future preschool room/future nursery... We can just call it a multi-purpose room :)

top: before, bottom: after

6) The weekend before Valentine's Day, we were invited to a party hosted by my beautiful friend, Ashley. She pulled together a cute, entertaining party that was loads of fun. :) We played some fun games and ate some really yummy food! (I need to get a hold of the rest of the fun pics Ash took)

the spread

cocoa bar

one game: name those lips

7) The beautiful Ashley that we had a party with also took some darling pictures of my cousins' kids. I seriously LOVE her work and would recommend her for anyone; she does all types of shoots and is so fun and easy to work with. She also did our "couple shots" over the summer. You can check out more of her work here and here.

paige, cove, brooklyn, reagan

reagan turned 1!

8) For the last week of February we had some of Brad's family in town. Brad had a cousin getting married, so the family found it was the perfect opportunity to join Brad's sister, Mindy go through the temple for the first time. Rob and Hannah also came in town for the wedding and Mindy's special experience. It was so fun spending time with everyone hanging out, enjoying the fabulous wedding festivities, and visiting with other mutual friends in the area.

after the temple

9) This was also an exciting missionary month: My dear friend, Katie Nilson aka Kates, returned from her mission to Milan, Italy. Another dear friend, Rachel Stapp aka Ray Bird received her mission call to Utica New York. We are so excited for both of them and the new, exciting changes within our group of friends.

true friends

she's a little excited :)

10) The highlight of our month was being cleared through LDS Family Services and have officially been assigned a case worker! We met with her on February 21st. This meeting was to get to know each other and learn a little bit more about the adoption process. We are so excited to get started and anxious to really get the ball rolling.

Check out their website HERE

This month was such a busy month with so many fun memories made. We feel so blessed in so many ways and are grateful for the continued support we receive from so many as we work hard to expand our family.