On a roll, that is what I am!!! Of course not only is February a short month, but also pre blogged just a wee bit… let’s see…

• Emanuel’s 12th birthday HERE
• Zander and Gavin turning 14 HERE
• Valentine’s Day HERE
• Chinese New Year Celebrations HERE

So see, much of my work is already done. You can check those links and refresh your memory of our fun! I know I enjoy a nice look back once in a while.

Well let’s see, there was more time in the snow.

More chinchilla pictures.

Many hours spent at our YMCA (not a surprise?).

We even brought 2 of the Novak boys to enjoy the pool (Alex and Aidan) during an overnight visit.

We had dinner with Maevowyn… I mean Aunty Shandai and Uncle Ravyn and Maevowyn. Belated Christmas fun there. Seriously Echo is in love with her baby cousin. As it should be!

Visited the aquarium at Mall of America.

Kept on acolyting.

We learned much.

Crafted some.

And played more.

Of course there was more to the month than all of this, but what a fun look back at some highlights.

Well, you can already see pictures from Halloween HERE, as usually it was a fun time.

Echo’s wedding dress photos are HERE.

October was also Ken’s birthday… his 40th if you can believe it! We kept it low key, just as the birthday boy requested. He is not a big party animal. But he also was given an award for his hard work involved in getting his mental health under control and advocating for the association that helped him. We got to dress up and everything!

It was a fun sort of duo season month with time to jump in leaves (and rake them up, slightly less fun)…

And a bit of snow to toy with as well.

We even had TWO foreign visitors, Jeff flew down from Canada to hang out. Never a bad thing, friends and family flying down when we still can’t return ourselves.

And Karyn!!! A shorter visit than her normal yearly visit but we packed in the fun and hugs and … shopping of course!

We had our yearly pumpkin patch trip with our friend Trish and her two kids. Always fun and thankfully on a day when the weather mostly cooperated.

Ken made pumpkin pie from scratch.

The twins took on acolyting at church.

We worked on all sorts of school stuff from crafts to book work and more.

We had the Novaks over for VR fun.

I continued my obsession with Neko-Chan pictures.

We had a bonfire with the Schwartz family and I got my cat fix.

I worked my buns off at the YMCA, with the family in tow, of course.

Emanuel and Trinity even got their YELLOW belts!!

And I crafted, my sanity is very closely tied to crafting it seems.

Of course more images to enjoy. Fall really was pretty last year!

Whatever that means… Echo turned 7 in August. And summer continued to happen.

The twins did the Splash and Dash at the YMCA. This was the last year they could register and the first I had heard of it. It was just a fun thing and they did enjoy it. I think this year Ken will do a fun run with them. The other three with the rest of the clubY kids who were there were around to cheer them on.

We spent a lot of time at the YMCA in August. Lots of walking in the sunshine to do what we could do there. Zander chose to do schoolwork over club as he really does get bored. They are so quickly aging out of the program really.

Don’t forget karate!

We did try to see the total (well mostly here) solar eclipse. We went so far as to make viewing boxes… but weather conspired against us. So we went from an eclipse viewing to playing in the warm rain! Not a bad trade off!

Of course we worked on getting used to our newest member of the family. She is so fun to photograph (if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you would be well aware of this already!).