Valentine's and more

The kids told us they were searching for buried treasure. Caleb was telling Brynn, "When you find treasure, you don't just find a little, you find a lot!" He said to me later, "If we find treasure, we could buy an airplane huh?" *Sigh.

 The night before Valentine's Day I left this note for the kids to find in the morning:

The next morning I heard the kids downstairs. I went down and Caleb excitedly showed me his note:

 How sweet that he copied my note (notice the "and" symbol I used, and his copy of it between Mommy and Daddy). He also took the word "valentine" and added in the sol, la, ti, do like he does in his music class with a song about Valentines.
Brynn also had a Valentine note ready for me. She told me it says, "I hope you have fun on your date tonight when you leave me here." Brynn always scribbles on paper like this, except she will do it until there is no room left. She concentrates when she does it. Derrick says it reminds him of "A Beautiful Mind."

 For our date that night Derrick and I went on a bike ride, to Panda Express for dinner then out for a movie. We loved doing the bike ride and want to do that again sometime.

 The kids love daddy time. They can't get enough of it.

The big pink pony here has earrings. Brynn is so creative!

 Talia loves her brother:

She also loves seeing animals. Here's where she was watching a kitty.

Stories:

• Brynn said to me a few nights ago, "I'm cool and you're cool Mommy. You're cool right now because you're being nice to me."
• There was a pancake dinner fundraiser at Caleb's school. They served the syrup in little condiment cups. Brynn started to drink hers and I had to tell her to stop. At bedtime, Brynn asked me sweetly, "Mommy, why didn't you let me drink the syrup?" I explained there was too much sugar in it.
• Before the pancake dinner Caleb told me it was going to take place in the Café Rio. I knew it was going to be in the cafeteria so knew what he meant. So funny.
• When we finally got our ceiling fixed Brynn was happy to no longer see the insulation. When she tried to pray about this it didn't quite come out that way though. Brynn prayed, "We're thankful that we have no more inspiration."
• Another thing Brynn said in one of her prayers was, "Please help my hair that it won't be crazy today." 
• The kids recently started saying "butt" instead of the usual "bum". I've told them I want them to say "bum" instead because it's a nicer word. One night Brynn used the word "bum". She looked at me and said, "Bum is a good word." She then looked up at the ceiling and thoughtfully said, "What's another good word that's a bad word? Hmmm." She sat there thinking about it for 10 seconds or so until I moved us to a different subject.

The past month

Kent gave the kids kinetic sand for Christmas. Brynn played with nothing else for about 2 days. They still like it.

 When I saw Talia find a paper clip on the floor I had to take a picture of her and send Derrick The Office quote, "Oh, it's ok. I have tons."

 Caleb's involved with a Jazz Reading contest at school. The top five kids (who read the most minutes per week) in each class get to pick a prize. Caleb was the top reading person and picked a water bottle he could bring to school.

 When I took the above picture, Brynn said, "I want to be in a picture." So she got next to Caleb and said, "Make a funny face."

 Talia, like all babies who crawl, loves to get into the trash. This is the funniest thing I caught her with:

Caleb always runs to the truck after kindergarten. I happened to have the camera with me and I thought I'd take a picture to remember how excited he gets to run to mom. Kindergartners are adorable in their enthusiasm.

There's a new equipment at our park. The kids liked it even though Brynn fell off it 3 times, getting a good scratch on her chin. They have a zip swing too that is a big hit with the kids.

On Sunday morning all three kids were playing together! It was the cutest thing. I had to start filming. I love the part when Caleb tells Brynn to be careful of Talia's fingers because the toy could pinch her. He's always looking out for her, and I love that this video shows that.

I had Brynn explain her show and tell bag to me:

Talia loves our Beta fish

Stories:

• For fun, Derrick and Caleb like to look at planes for sale. Caleb gets really into it and the rest of the night he can't think about anything else. In general, he comes up with thoughtful questions about how things work. With the plane he asked, "How does it take off?" Derrick answered his question literally. He said, "How will it not run into anything?" He thought that if you bought a plane it stayed at your house. He was worried about taking off from the street. He also asked about if the plane is sold, what would happen if someone else saw the pictures online and bought it. We had to explain they take the pictures down when someone buys it.
• We went out to eat at Chili's as a family. We were giving Talia pieces of french fries and I noticed the piece in her mouth was a little too big and I told Derrick to pull it out. When he tried to pull it out Talia got a death grip with her teeth. 
• Brynn wasn't eating her dinner but she snuck a piece of candy under the table. Derrick later found the wrapper and asked her, "Who ate this?" Brynn looked him right in the eye and said, "I didn't eat it." Unlike Caleb, she has no conscience when it comes to lying to save her own skin. This often ends up being a very frustrating thing for Caleb.
• We had some flooding between floors. When we opened up the roof, we had the workers add insulation to prevent the problem of freezing pipes. When Caleb came home from school and saw pink insulation, he said, "It's pink. I hate pink." Good thing we won't be seeing it.