BUILDING BL(ayl)OCKS: February 2021

I've tried to be a little more festive this year for holidays. M loves decorations and getting into the holiday cheer, and I've wanted to do it on the cheap while still looking nice. For date night M and I made the first decoration, a heart garland, which I mentioned in the last post. I loved it all month long! The second craft I did was with the Young Women, we made Valentine gnomes. I didn't realize how popular gnomes were, but they are all the rage right now. We used two socks, lots of hot glue, rice and stuffing, ribbon, and anything else you wanted. I was so impressed with the girls, they had a great time and we enjoyed the evening doing an event in person and with a few girls on zoom too.

Meet Hearty, the Gnome of the Blaylock Home

We have a hard time social distancing...but we had a great time having a great time!

We got to see Grandpa and Grandma a few times during the month. Grandpa watched Jay for us one evening when we had YM/YW in different places and doing activities that weren't too Jay friendly. Grandpa reported Jay was very good, and even brought his pajamas to Grandpa at 7:15 when it was time for bed. We also had Grandpa and Grandma over for dinner one evening, and it was the first day Jay walked! How awesome! I was just playing with him and trying to help him stand and then he just took like 10 steps! It is the neatest thing to see your child learn something new! From then on, I tried to get Jay to walk whenever possible, which I don't think he particularly loved. Grandpa came over another evening too and we played Agricola and had Hawaiian Haystacks.

So awesome, February 6th, we have a walker!

Jay loves everything about Grandpa, he's got the coolest toys...i.e. watch, coat, glasses, anything Grandpa has, Jay wants too.

Valentine's Day weekend was so great! We made a new Orange Chicken recipe together. I love cooking with M, it makes everything more fun! We then did a couple Madlibs about how we first met and had a great time laughing about those. On Monday, we hit up King Soopers for the 75% off candy and decorations to finish the celebrations.

Such great deals, and decor for next year!

Many evenings this month I have spent doing pre-work for my coaching certification workshop, it's due March 3rd. Busy season for M has actually helped me focus and get it done. Whenever he had to work after dinner, I did some pre-work. I completed over 120 pages of workbooks, mostly focused on self-reflection. It was pretty intense, and in all my reflection I realized that the people I love bring me the greatest joy. M, Jay, and all of our family members, they are who I get most energized by and who I want to spend my time with. It was a happy day to finish all the work and submit it. Doing this pre-work should help lighten the load a bit when the program starts.

Busy season realities hit us throughout the month. M works most evenings, coming home to eat dinner with Jay and me, and then logs back into work until 9 or 10 at night. Then, on most Saturdays he has worked 6+ hours. It gives Jay and I a lot of time to play together, which is a huge blessing. And, we're both always very excited when M comes home or finishes his work day. I am grateful M is willing to work so hard and support our family! He's doing amazing at handling the pressure and Jay and I are so grateful for him. He's mostly enjoying work and learning a lot. He has a great team and they've been very supportive of him not working on Sundays.

I spend most of the day on the ground and he crawls all over me.

Is it Momma or is it Jay? He thought this game was so funny!

KPMG sent a snack box to help the accountants survive the season! M was excited!

One weekend M knew he'd be working most of Saturday, so I decided to go visit the Merrill's. I loaded Jay up in the car and headed out. We had a great day playing and visiting. They were pretty excited when they say Jay walk, I think the twins and Tia were the most excited. We went to the neighborhood park for about 15 minutes until the twins had to use the potty, so we ran home to be sure we didn't have any accidents. That evening, we watched the little neighbor kids. After we wrapped up dinner, it was starting to rain/snow. My anxiety had started to grow, but it got worse as I saw the water drops pile on the road and the rain turning to snow. After consulting with M, we decided it would be best if Jay and I just stayed the night. The Merrill's outfitted me with some PJ's, a pillow, and even a toothbrush. We had a fun evening watching Magic Camp and it helped me keep myself from missing M too much. We hadn't spent a night apart in over a year...the longest we've ever gone in our marriage being together! It was a blessing in disguise though, as he got to sleep in on Sunday morning after a very long day of work on Saturday, and I was in a much better mental, emotional, and physical state when I arrived safely home on Sunday morning.

Dogpile on Aunt Katey!

Loving the swing

Kade and Jay - sharing some space, pretty soon they'll be too big for this

Kade is always trying to make sure Jay has what he needs.

Tinker Toy Sunday morning fun!

Another fun YM/YW activity we did over Zoom this month was learning to make salsa. I've never made salsa before, so it was really fun. We had a less active member teach the youth, and we followed along. The salsa turned out so yummy! I think we'll be making salsa a lot more, I have even thought about planting a salsa garden, we'll see though.

I volunteered to play one of our date nights, and it was awesome! We built marshmallow towers and towers of cookies. I got a new cookie recipe from Jack and Lindsay, so we had to try it out. It was simple, made a lot of cookies, and was delicious! While the cookies were cooking, we designed and built our marshmallow toothpick fortress. Once you start sticking too many toothpicks into one little mallow, it starts to get flimsy. We did the best we could to build supports, and I think it turned out awesome. We had such a fun time doing it and enjoyed talking and laughing throughout the evening. I love living with my best friend and having the extra time on a Friday night during busy season with him. I also decided that the trick to a good marshmallow tower is to build it like you want, lay it down over night, stand it up, and then take the pictures. Your structure gets a lot sturdier the longer you wait! We didn't do this, but might do it next time!

Of course, Jay updates. Other than walking, he babbles all the time, says Dadda to everything and is started to be decently good at church. We've started sitting in the back and letting him roam free, it's helped so much and makes church better for everyone...not just us! He also finished all his formula, so we washed the bottles and packed them away! Woohoo! I also got the deal of my life on wooden blocks at Goodwill. They are hard wood and definitely homemade. They have such a cool wagon box to go in and Jay loves them!