Life Lately

Happy Valentine's Day!

This has always been one of my favorite holidays. As a kid, I loved exchanging cards and candy in class, and my parents always made an effort to make it a special day. They would typically get me and my sister each a bouquet of roses, a gift, and candy. As an adult, it's fun for me to re-create that magic with my own kids, and of course, celebrate in a romantic way with Brian, my valentine for the past 16 years!

These final few weeks of winter have had a lot of fun days!

For Groundhog Day, I made groundhog cupcakes for my Kindergarten & First Grade Sunday School class at church. I used this old recipe for Reese's cupcakes from my blog combined with a modified version of this for the groundhog toppers.

For the Superbowl, we went over to Jen and Wade's house for a party, which the kids both LOVED since there were tons of other kids there to play with.

For President's Day next week, I plan to pull out my 1,000-piece USA Presidents puzzle for Cam and I to work on. We got halfway through this puzzle in February 2023 until Cam got mad at me for working on it one night after he went to bed. When he woke up the next morning and saw that I had made a lot of progress without him, he threw the puzzle on the dining room floor. So, I'm hoping when we work on it next week that there's no missing pieces...and also that he's matured a bit. ;-)

I think I've shared on my blog before, but one of my favorite Cam stories was when he opened this puzzle on Christmas when he was 6 years old and we asked him if he knew the first President of the United States. Without missing a beat, "Michael Jordan" was his answer.

We went ice skating with friends last Saturday and skated for three hours! Cam had a blast and I had a lot of fun, too! The weather was beautiful and we played baseball in the yard on Sunday. This prompted me to sign Cam up for spring baseball this year, so I'm excited to see how that goes (Cam seems less excited, but at least he seems willing to try it).

I've read several books so far this year. Nonfiction reads include The 5 AM Club, There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather (a re-read), and Bringing up Bebe (a parenting book I enjoyed). 

I'm almost done reading God of the Woods and it is so, so good!!! Starting off the year with such a good book has me worried that it's gonna be downhill reading from here on out. 

You may remember my January goal of getting our passports and I'm happy to report that they arrived! So glad to have this done and behind us now! The process ended up being easier than I expected, but logistically it was just a headache.

Are you tired of reading my sermon notes yet?! There's about 355 more where that came from, lol. I'm glad to finally be writing these down in a more organized way.

My new job is going very well. I'm still feeling very good about my decision to step back and do less at this chapter in my life. My brain no longer feels like it's on overdrive. It's not as high energy and definitely not as high profile, but for now, the lower pressure and working from home feels like the right choice.

Well, that's the latest! I'll be back next week with more sermon notes. :)