End of February big and little things

February 23rd we took Nolan to the temple for his very first time; our first child to attend when they were still eleven!

Maddie stayed home and watched the little ones.  We left pretty early so we took the kids to breakfast at Denny's afterwards.  It was a great morning!

On the ride home it was apparent that it was also an exhausting one!:

I spend a little bit of time every morning at the gym.  Here I was documenting for a friend that I could finally get my hair into a ponytail!:

We said goodbye to sister Larsen - we will miss her!  We are glad that Sister Geigle gets to stay!:

Maddie was one of the two youth in the stake chosen to moderate a face to face event with the stake presidency, their wives and the stake patriarch.  She did a fantastic job:

Pace showed some interest, because Abe gave him some of his old shoes that actually had shoe strings, so I took some time one Sunday afternoon when church was cancelled because of the weather, to teach him how to tie his shoes:

We were both pretty delighted when he figured it out!:

The best snowfall of the year happened at the end of February.  The kids were delighted and we ended up with at least a week of snow days.  There were snow caves all over the yard:

Nolan and Abram built them, but I only got a picture of Pace enjoying one of them.  The kids also spent a lot of time at the park by our house sledding.

February 26th we left to take Maddie over to Idaho to finish out the school year there.  She will be living with her grandparents for the next three months and I think Pace and Anni, reflected how we all felt about that pretty well just before we left:

Actually I don't know what they were crying about, but everything was ready to go and we were just waiting for Shawn to get back from running some last-minute errands so that we could go.  I sent him this picture with a text "PLEASE hurry!!!"  He did, haha

We stayed the whole week, getting last minute supplies for Maddie and staying through her first few days of school.  She is DELIGHTED with the change in schools and fit seamlessly right back into her old friend group, choir, classes, etc.  It was good to have the confirmation, once again, that this was the right move for her, because with missing her so much I needed it!:

While there, Isabelle and Ainsley created another cake:

There was a snow storm and the boys created more forts all over the backyard:

The girls continued to vie for Anni's attention:

We spent time with family:

l-r: Hazel, Eli, Pace and younger Eli:

Shawn and I took Maddie to lunch after buying her a lot of stuff to get set up on her own:

I took a fair share of pictures and videos of Maddie to look at and watch all the moments that I was missing her:

Jim treated all of the kids, and adults that could go, to the latest spider man movie:

Anni isn't a good movie-goer (as we have learned from experience) so she and I made a visit to the farm, instead:

I am always trying to give her more experiences because I notice that she relates to books and has more of an interest in them, the more experiences she has!

Serious faces, but she loved seeing the livestock!:

The last night all of the cousins had a sleepover.  Most of the kids ended up over at Andersons, but we got Eli, Pace and Abram.  They watched a movie in bed on Shawn's tablet:

The kids are always exhausted on the way home after a visit: