JENN KEY: Valentine's Day

A yummy, yummy, sinful recipe for the Red Velvet Cheese Ball can be found here!

Ben at Wal-Mart sitting on the laundry detergent, leaned against the dog food and buying a Valentine balloon for his sweetheart. This is a special friendship! I love their looks below!

It's hard to believe this pretty girl will be 8 in six days!

We've been having a fun time around here! I could have never imagined how exciting it would be to have not one, not two but three little angels running around, needing milk at the same time, all wanting a different story read, watching three different shows, two different homeworks, a different extracurricular every night, and needing three different Valentines! Well, I don't think they needed three different Valentines but for some strange reason I couldn't do all three Valentines the same. Oh no! They were all different.

Lillee definitely is super patient with all of the boy stuff that goes on around here and I admit that raising boys is very different than parenting her. She is so great with Ben and an awesome helper. Baxter is outside most of the time. He's gathering sticks or up a tree. Lillee gets so frustrated with him because when we share our best part of our day at dinner Baxter always says his favorite part is that everyone is home safely! He really means that though and his heart is so big. Ben, Ben, Ben! I'm not sure what to say about Ben except that he would be the child to have an imaginary playmate. He's a rascal. Always talking, rarely making sense, cracking himself up, cracking up others, just unusual! But so unique. He's pretty easy going unless it's something he's really fixated on. He's enjoying his trains and cars right now and thinks his "CEE CEE" (sissy) hung the moon.

A few favorites of the things above:

Favorite Books at night

Lillee --- Ivy and Bean and she likes to make sure we've done the Jesus Calling devotional

Baxter --- Star Wars-he got a new book a couple of weekends ago and I'm embarrassed to say I could tell you who all of the clone troopers and wookies are!

Ben ---- when he's not busy eating books, he likes to hear about boats and Goodnight Moon. There's a copy of Brown Bear that is almost in shreds. He usually destroys a dinosaur puzzle while we're doing the family devotional!

Favorite Foods

Lillee - She's been trying lots of new things. Does not like brussel sprouts but does like Spaghettios! Tries to get me to buy those ALL THE TIME. Loves pasta and red sauce.

Baxter --- will eat anything and if he doesn't like it, i.e. brussel sprouts or potatoes he puts hot sauce on that stuff. Loves asparagus and rice and meat.

Ben --- Chocolate milk. with goldfish. That's it

Homework

Lillee ---- really working on reading and mastering all multiplication problems. I'd like to see us working on more math word problems but that wouldn't be fun for her.

Baxter ---- sight words, sight words. Almost there and so proud of myself, I mean him! He's doing great. Also trying to write to 100 in 3 mins. Woooooooo

Ben ---- trying to recognize his name is Ben. Sometimes when the librarian rolls him the ball at story time he is supposed to say "Ben." Instead, when he gets the ball he yells, "BALL!"

TV Shows

Lillee --- Good Luck Charlie and Soul Surfer. I think we saw Soul Surfer 5 times this past weekend.

Baxter --- Good Luck Charlie and Soul Surfer. Did I mention he's easy and worships the above child most of the time.

Ben ---- Good Luck Charlie and Soul Surfer. Can you tell he's the 3rd child and she's the dominator! Ben loves him some Jake and the Neverland Pirates and I can always bargain with him and let him watch some Barney!

Extracurricular

Lillee --- Jazz and Ballet on Mondays and Tap on Tuesdays, Church on Wednesdays!

Baxter ---- Kindermusik on Tuesdays

Ben ---Kindermusick on Tuesdays and Mother Goose story time on Wednesdays!

Ben's "ROAR - I'm Wild About You" Valentines were probably the most difficult and time consuming. However, one two-hour episode of The Bachelor helped pass the time easily.