february 2022 was full of just … day-to-day life. while going through our exhausting everyday, i remembered a quote that i love:
a normal day! holding it in my hand this one moment, i have come to see it as more than an ordinary rock. it is a gem, a jewel…normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. let me not pass you by in a quest for some rare and perfect tomorrow. let me hold you while i may, for it will not always be so. one day i shall…want more than all the world your return. and then i will know what i now am guessing: that you are, indeed, a common rock, and not a jewel, but that a common rock made of the very mass substance of the earth in all its strength and plenty puts a gem to shame. —mary jean irion

some tidbits from our february normal days…

there was lots of reading this book (our boys are obsessed!) and lots of moses original lego creations (after being so good at following instructions to build specific things, he started making up his own creatures!).

gabriel had a school field trip to a local theatre to watch a fairytale play, and mo and i were able to come along (the boys look bored to tears in this photo we snapped on the way out, but they really did love it!). and gabe’s teacher sent me a photo of him inside the dragon puppet during their learning about lunar new year celebrations.

i got to meet my childhood best friend’s brand new baby boy at a dinner date in slc, and eve had her first set of proper pigtails!

we decided it was time to take down the “christmas wall” in the craft room. but we had to take a photo with it first, of course!

from a saturday afternoon at the local elementary school’s awesome playground:

swimming lessons and a mohawk daddy gave moses one morning:

we went up to my sister saren’s house in ogden (1.5 hours north of provo) one sunday and this is the only photo i got – of our nephew (saren’s son) isaac smashed into the back of the van with our boys 🙂 he lives in orem (right next to provo) so we picked him up and brought him with us up north for sunday dinner! he’s one of our kids’ favourite people. // the boys started playing together really well in the early mornings while the babies and the parents keep sleeping. i love finding them down in the playroom having a good old time as brothers.

we had really simple valentine’s day celebrations this year. i love valentine’s day but was so exhausted with day-to-day life that we didn’t do much beyond our traditional heart-attack (where we write what we love about each other on paper hearts and put them all over the kitchen) … we didn’t even have heart shaped cinnamon rolls in 2022. next year! we did get exciting valentines from grandma and grandpa (see first photo in this post) and moses did get to turn a disposable mask into a valentine’s mask for school. gabriel got to bring valentines for all his classmates, and since mo wasn’t exchanging valentines at school, he found lots of other people to share the love with, like his music and karate teachers, and basically just anyone he interacted with around 14 february. i came home from an errand one day and found him sitting on the front porch with a bag of valentines and when i asked him what he was doing he said he was just waiting for people to walk by so he could give them a valentine, haha! such a sweet boy.

august got his first haircut! this always feels like a big milestone to me. he did so well and i kept back the tears – just can’t believe my babies are growing up so fast!

gabriel had a performance at preschool and it was so dang cute.

and speaking of preschool, in february we started seeing the wild turkeys that hang around gabe’s teacher’s neighbourhood in the winter. we were all blown away when we first saw them and turns out there are sometimes over a hundred walking around in that area! wild!!

our darling eliza brought gabriel some thrifted overalls so they could match (awww) and the babies learned the joy of the basket swing:

from a sunday afternoon adventure in rock canyon:

we spent one weekend at our friends’ house in centerville (north of salt lake). the eyrings lived up the street from us in london and our families bonded through lots of crazy life events over the years. they were our “childcare bubble” during covid lockdowns and we loved to have date nights (sometimes in person and sometimes virtual, depending on the current case counts and restrictions!) together, discussing deep topics and sharing thoughts and perspectives. the eyrings moved to utah just before we did, which we were thrilled about! that weekend in february it was so great to see their house, have the kids play (they’ve all known each other almost since birth!), stay up waaaay too late talking deep, and just enjoy being together. i’m so grateful for great friends. the eyrings are moving to north carolina but we will continue our family gatherings and chatty date nights!

we lost a lens in august’s glasses on a busy day and it was kinda crazy to try to find it and then reorder it (had to bring in his frames to go back to the lab, etc). we had auggie scheduled to begin an intensive physical therapy program a couple of days later and we didn’t want him to do the program without his glasses (which seem to have dramatically impacted his gross motor activity) – so that was stressful. but we got everything worked out and poor august had to live in blurriness for a couple weeks. one morning i let him borrow my glasses for a bit, haha. and then evie of course wanted a turn, haha.

in february august started crawling!!!!! this was a huge milestone that we had been working towards for so long and it was so, so exciting to see him start first to army crawl and then get around on all fours. here’s both babies crawling around at the playground on a warm afternoon:

i continued my thursday early morning hikes with two new friends. a couple thursday mornings in february it was sooooo cold (like 12 degrees) and one thursday morning it was snowing, pretty hard. but we still got out there and especially on the snowy day it was so magical. i felt like i was transported to another world, surrounded in mountains and snowflakes. it was impossible to capture but here are two attempts – one from when we were almost home! i love that i can walk to the mountains from our house and i love those early morning hikes.

some snaps from a sledding (and snow-angel-making) trip with daddy:

our babies, colour coordinating one sunday morning:

we made crafts and art creations until the walls of our art room were completely full. so we took photos, picked a few we wanted to keep forever, and tossed the rest.

i gave moses my phone and had him take photos of whatever he especially wanted to remember from this round of wallpapering the art room. here’s a few of his snaps, and the rubbish sack full and ready to go to the recycling bin – feel so bittersweet!

moses and gabriel got right to work filling up the walls again, and they discovered how fun it is to have moses teach little drawing lessons to gabriel. notice the side-by-side drawings in these photos – one from teacher mo and the other from student gabe. <3<3

i took a saturday morning solo hike in rock canyon one frosty morning (my phone said it was 4 degrees!) and it was so enlivening, and so pretty.

a creation i found one night when i went down to the art room to tidy up … and a creation moses decided to make and put on the front door, totally unprompted, after i told him about what was happening in ukraine.

february normal days – jewels indeed.