This February marked our first foray into Valentine's cards. I wasn't too excited about it at first, but Miriam's school managed to do it without the crap - no candy or trinkets allowed, and homemade cards encouraged. It was great.
The girl who has never cared at all about coloring was suddenly content to color the back of every one.
We tried to make it Catholic without being in your face about it.
My mom made the girls cute matching skirts, but somehow the only picture we got doesn't highlight them.
Why yes, I did coordinate my outfit with theirs. That's how we roll.
Sewing
It took me all month, but I finally got around to finishing the girls' dresses, along with matching headbands!
Someone please tell me about free photo editing software so my meager collage attempts don't turn out so wonky.
I also finally finished making placemats. They were my husband's Valentine gift. Isn't he the luckiest man?
They have definitely improved Miriam's table setting - both her skills and her willingness.
Please marvel over my daughter being eager to set the table and ignore the fact that she is wearing a sleeveless dress in the coldest winter ever. She's going through a stage where she suddenly appears in a completely different outfit than what she put on that morning.
Reading
Our favorite picture books this month were...
The Twelve Dancing Princesses - Cech
Saint Valentine - Torbert
Joan of Arc - Demi
The Weight of a Mass - Nobisso (I really liked this one)
King Midas and the Golden Touch - Craft
Marguerite Makes a Book - Robertson (I really liked this one)
Flicka, Ricka, Dicka and the Strawberries - Lindmann
Dance at Grandpa's - Wilder
Shall I Knit You a Hat? - Klise
The Little Red Hen - Pinkney (not pictured)
I read the top three books above, but the bottom three I just skimmed. The Other Baby Book was a good, easy intro to less conventional baby options. I really liked My Sisters, the Saints.
Goal-Tackling
I finished reading the Book of Revelation, which means I finished reading the entire New Testament! I really enjoyed it and now am praying over what to read next. I'm not going to try to do the Old Testament straight through - I may choose a book like Isaiah or Wisdom and do a slower, in-depth reading with commentary.Another goal for this year is to really establish and stick to a cleaning routine. I realized that my problem is that I always want to do it with Miriam. She is not the problem itself - she likes to help clean.
She actually asked just last night if she could vacuum today.
The problem is I don't ever clean unless she's there and we're both in the mood, and therefore I rarely clean. We usually end up reading books instead. This month I finally faced the fact that if I can't make myself clean even when no one else is around, my efforts to teach my children to do so will ultimately be in vain. So I forced myself to clean every weekday, and it was going well until the routine attempt was torpedoed by sickness. It was a good start, though, and I'm planning to resume once the fever coughs its way out of our house.
And that was our February!