January

Celebrating Popeye's birthday at our house... As you can see we are getting good use out of that Minion banner.  :)

Most patient dog... As you will soon see he looks very different now.

We had a really bad storm one night and the next morning the boys rescued a turtle from our neighbor's pool.  It looked exactly like the one that was in our driveway a few years ago that I posted about on the blog. Maybe it was!

Best buds.

Someone finally put Mr. Potato Head together all by himself without screaming and throwing him across the room in frustration.  Lol.

 Enjoying dinner with Grandy...

My dad went with J and E and me to a swim meet in Alabama one weekend when Phil was out of town.  Mom stayed at home with D and R, bless her heart!  The guys and I had a fun trip.  :)

Movies and popcorn at a hotel is just the best for these guys.

Bernie got a serious haircut... and shrank about three sizes.  It had to be done... his mats were out of control.  I tried to keep up with them and would usually just end up cutting them out because they were too hard to brush out... and then he ended up looking like a homeless dog with mange.  His hair has grown out a lot since this picture and we'll probably end up keeping him trimmed.  It's just so much easier to manage.  But P.S. the non-shedding thing is SO AWESOME!!!

My dad found a large green caterpillar on a plant in our front yard (which turned out to be milkweed), and after some research we figured out that the caterpillar was a monarch!  The boys were SO excited, so we got out our butterfly home, chopped down a bunch of milkweed, and put him in there.  After a few days he started acting a little funny, and then one morning we woke up and he had made himself a little cocoon!  So, so cool!  Unfortunately, I probably should have brought him inside after that, because we had some cold nights and we think he froze in there.  He never emerged as a butterfly.  :(  We're going to keep our eyes peeled for another one when it starts to warm up a little more.

Enjoying dinner on the porch beside the fire on the night Daddy got home from out of town.

My dad was so kind to bring us up a truckload of wood, so we've been able to have a ton of fires lately.

The big boys got to stay up and watch the Superbowl this year!  They were so excited!

And so happy that Denver won!!

Buddies drinkin' cocoa by the inside fire.  Reid and Davis share a room now...

Evidence of Bernie's grow-out... He is not a snuggler and will only stay up here for a few minutes, but I force him to snuggle a bit every night.

After many months of searching on craigslist for the perfect one, we finally got a piano!

Emmett hard at work on the snap circuits he got for Christmas...

Again... the most patient dog.

Poor D woke up screaming in pain one night after a few days of complaining that his belly hurt, so Phil and I spent 5 hours in the ER with him that night.  After X-rays and ultrasounds and blood work (we were thinking maybe he swallowed something that wouldn't pass, or maybe his appendix burst), the doc said that it was probably just some big poo.  Yuck.  So we went home totally exhausted at 3:30 A.M., bought some prune juice and some "other things" the next day, and he felt much better the next evening.  This was Saturday night, and let me tell you... Saturday night in the ER (even just a pediatric ER) is a scary, scary place.  God bless those doctors and nurses.  Seriously.

Falling asleep on the couch the next morning... Poor baby!

My audience for my workout one morning...

Kept Reid busy one afternoon letting him trim the branches off of the Christmas tree.  He clipped off every single branch and loved every second.  He was out there singing to himself and just clipping and flinging branches.  Lol.

It's a marvelous day for a Jeep ride... (all four boys are in there (six with Phil and Bernie), but it's hard to see D because of Bernie's hair).