WINTER WRAP-UP

For me, March is officially a spring month and therefore I'm declaring winter over. No matter what amounts of precipitation I still see from this day forward, I am done with winter. I mean, come on, we hit the 50's this week, Daylight savings is next Sunday, I woke up to birds chirping this morning, plus there has been an undeniable scent of spring in the air.  Spring is here and no one can tell me different.*

With all of that said, it's only fair to give winter it's due attention with a wrap-up of all it's notable festivities of late.

We started out Valentine's Day weekend meeting up with family at the Gateway for lunch and a trip to Barnes & Noble for some Valentine books from Nana & Pompa.

Oh...I just love this shot.  I dunno....I think she might be irritated that I'm taking her photo, or something.

We enjoyed a chill Valentine's day that included heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast.

Ahhh...my Valentine. Penny thought he was her's

...she was mistaken.

After that we spent spent a few days gearing up for Phil's week-long school trip (vacation) to the UK. Where he spent time in both London and Dublin.

He was able to spend his birthday skiing and and hanging out with family, who came in right before he left for his trip.

Cute brother and sister duo.

Phil and his sister, Jaimie, both have birthdays in Feb, so we had a dual birthday celebration.

While he was gone, we decided to have some adventures of our own. We finished spending time with Phil's family here:

Penny and Ryder getting in some movie time up at Wolf Creek.

Then went and spent one night with my parents up in Tremonton.  Since Ryder and Penelope were such good sports while Phil was gone, after we got back home, we went to the toy store. Now, I'm usually a little...insistant on the toys Ryder gets, but this time instead of thinking how much use we'd get out of it, the quality and whether or not there was any learning value to it, I just let him get exactly want he wanted to get... Meet Mr. Rex:

 Mr. Rex is a dinosaur almost the size of Penny. And Ryder LOVES him. I go back and forth between thinking this is cute and creepy.

We finished up the weekend anxiously awaiting Phil's safe return. We sure did miss him and hope it's a long time before he has to take off on any other school/business ventures (vacations).


*I'd like to apologize now to everyone in northern Utah. It is because of my previous statement we are most likely going to experience heavy snow storms this week. Sorry.....but no matter, right?!