fairly february

Wow, I can't believe that February is over already, and that tomorrow will be the 1st of March!  It's been another busy month, and I've been taking lots of photos.  Here are a few:

The paperwhites that Ben gave Nick for Christmas have been blooming:

On Feb. 5th, we attended the baptism of our friends Steve and Karen's youngest son, Timothy.  I was very honored to be part of the baptism, and to become Timothy's godmother!  This cake was at the church, for the congregation to enjoy after the service:

Karen, Timothy, big brother David, and Steve:

After the service, we headed over to Steve and Karen's, where they hosted a birthday party for both of their boys!  David (also my godson) turned 6 last month, and Timothy turned one on the 4th.

Karen and Timothy, opening presents:

David (with some of his relatives), opening gifts:

Me and my new little godson! :)

The brothers' birthday cake:

Happy birthday, dear Timothy!

The big birthday boy:

Ben's Kindergarten teacher asked me to help out on the 8th, as the class celebrated their 100th day of school:

Each of the kids made a necklace with 100 Cheerios on it.  Whew, that was a hectic time, helping them with that project!  Ben made his necklace all on his own:

On the 12th, the kids helped me make some of our traditional valentine cookies, yum!  (Yes, as you can see in the picture below, we still had one of our Christmas trees up....)

Also that weekend, Ben finished up these adorable penguin valentines for his classmates:

We had a nice Valentine's Day!  George gave me roses:

We gave each of the kids a small box of chocolates and a tiny plant kit (forget-me-nots for Emm and strawberry plants for the boys).  In addition, we gave Emmalie a decorative fuchsia scarf and a flower pen.  We gave Nick some plastic animals that he didn't already have (it's hard to find those!).  And we gave Ben some Legos he'd been wanting.  I also gave George Rock Band (for the Wii) and a microphone.  I don't have a photo of Emm opening her gifts because she did that in the wee hours of the morning when I was still asleep!

That afternoon, I helped out again in Ben's class, for their Valentine's party.  Ben had fun playing Bingo!

Here's Ben with his bag o' valentines after school:

And my three silly valentines:

George and I went out that night, for supper and a movie.

We've had very little snow all winter, but we did finally get some very pretty snow toward the end of the month.  We woke up to this on the 24th:

It was good packing snow, and Ben decided to make a snowman... mostly by himself, but he did have a little help from Nick and me.  This is Bob:

Ben and Bob:

All of that snow was gone two days later!

On the 25th, I attended a day-long women's retreat at church.  The theme was Journaling for Spiritual Awakening, and it was a wonderful day ~ relaxing and inspiring!

Among all the fun things this month, I've still been having a lot of pain.  I am finally scheduled to go in for surgery on March 9th, and am hopeful that I'll be feeling much better after I'm all healed up from that!