February.

February brought us both glittering snow and promises of spring. The longer I live in New England, the more I look forward to the snow. I cheer with the kids when we wake up to a snow day and any excuse to stay home.

The kids and I spent our snow days trying to figure out how to make soft, fluffy dinner rolls. We didn’t succeed. But we haven’t given up yet either. We’ll just keep eating our way through trial and error (and loaves of banana bread too) until we bite into the perfect roll at last.

We celebrated Darren’s 40th birthday this month. It’s funny, because we both mildly panicked about turning 30. But the idea of 40 doesn’t really bother either one of us. I think after the craziness of last year, we both feel older than we are anyway, so 40 doesn’t sound so bad 🙂

For Darren’s birthday dinner, we dropped the kids off with family and went out to a little Lebanese place that’s one of our favorites. We filled our middle-aged bellies with lamb, chicken, kafta, falafel, rice, hummus, and fattoush…annnnnd were very full…but not very sorry. It was good.

We had Spirit Week at school this month. Let me just park here for a minute 😛 My kids have completely different personalities. I think of them as the sun and the moon…both beautiful but bringing such different lights into the world.

Roman is the moon — born an old man, factual and serious.

Aletheia is the sun — bright, playful, and dreaming.

Every year when Spirit Week rolls around, Aletheia jumps in excited to dress up and be silly. Roman, on the other hand, has no patience for such foolishness. They were supposed to dress up like senior citizens one day…and the pictures tell the story 😆

Speaking of my crazy loon of a daughter, the girl has been begging for a pet lizard for forever. We finally decided to get her one, and now it lives in her zoo of a room along with her many toy snakes, lizards, and cheetahs.

Meet Jack, the much beloved leopard gecko.

I’ve been thinking this month about how easy it is to get a bit lost in the work of taking care of a home and family. I’ve always got a running list pulsing through my mind of what everyone needs and what needs to be done.

I scour clearance racks to keep the kids dressed, pack lunches so they don’t subsist on corn dogs as they’d prefer, and get up early to make sure everyone gets something in their belly before we race out the door.

But it can be easy to forget that I need to put on more than the same hoodie every day or that I ought to eat more than a glazed donut in the car.

So, I’ve been working this month on keeping myself on that running list in my head too.

A couple simple changes have helped a lot, like making myself a hot breakfast after school drop off and actually sitting down to eat. I even scoured a clearance rack for myself and wore something other than ripped jeans and a t-shirt for a day 🙂

Other small changes that have helped this month — deleting Facebook and Instagram off my phone, redeeming our many hours in the car by listening to audio books with the kids (we’re loving The Little House on the Prairie series), and listening to my Bible reading when I’m driving alone.

I’ve also been listening to my pastor’s commentary on the Bible reading plan I’m working through this year. You can check that out here if you’re looking for a way to start reading the Bible or would like help better understanding what you’re reading. This has been really helpful and encouraging to me.

It’s been helpful this month too, to get outside as much as we can when the weather allows. I’ve been working on clearing areas around the house of brush in preparation for planting flowers, bushes, and gardens this spring.

Then we have a big brush fire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows at the end to warm up.

Now that February is coming to a close, I feel all the stir craziness of spring settling in my bones. I’m ready to pack up the winter decor and fill the house with lighter, brighter things. I want to go for long walks in the warm sunshine and sit outside in the fresh air.

Until then, we’ll see what March brings 🖤