Full February

February was pretty full, considering it's the shortest month of the year.


A conference for work

We arrived back from our California trip at the beginning of the month, and 4 days later Nathan left for a conference -- back in California.

It was a good conference for Nathan, and he really enjoyed himself.  He also got to spend more time with his family, which is always a perk.

New Beginnings

At the beginning of each year, our church has a thing called New Beginnings for the Young Women. It's a celebration of Personal Progress (a program that helps young women progress personally into mature women), and we also welcome the new girls who will be turning 12 in the coming year.

Our theme was "ships," and the girls did a fabulous job with the food and decorations!

Here are a about half of my Young Women.  Not all of them could make it due to other commitments, but I was so blessed to have these girls come.

And of course Hannah wanted a few pictures with just us (she had to come with me as Nathan was out of town).

Mother-Daughter Date

While Nathan was at his conference, Hannah and I went on a Mother-Daughter date.  She wanted to go to her favorite place to eat: Chick-fil-A.

Riverwalk

Another thing that Hannah and I did while Nathan was out of town was we went for a walk on the Black Warrior River walk.

I love this pathway because it's adjacent to the river, and there is never a dull moment on these walks. We've been doing a few of these walks recently as the weather has been gorgeous.



Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is fun with a little kid.  We gave her a Hello Kitty shirt for Valentine's Day, and she made us some cards.  I love when she comes home from school though.  It's fun to watch her dump out her bag and check out her loot.

Gymnastics meet

Nathan has a student who is a gymnast on the team at the University here, so we went to go watch her compete.  I was so impressed with these girls!  They are incredibly strong, and very brave!

Hannah enjoyed the meet, as did we.

Florence

With Nathan being gone for so many days in February, I noticed it definitely took a toll on me.  I'm amazed at how much I depend on him.  I struggle when he's out of town.  Hannah was an absolute angel, but emotionally, being a single parent is just rough.  Actually, just being alone is rough.

Nathan could tell that I had a hard time when he was gone, so towards the end of the month he took me out to dinner at a really nice restaurant that was 2.5 hours away!  Yes -- two and a half hours. Honestly, I LOVED it.  Quality time is my love language, and I enjoyed spending the entire day with him -- no interruptions.  Plus, the restaurant was fabulous.

It's a restaurant called The 360 Grill (it's a smaller version of the space needle meets Alabama).  It is supposed to rotate, but it couldn't that night due to some malfunctions of the machine that makes it rotate.

Despite the lack of rotation, it was still wonderful.  We got to watch the sunset, and eat some pretty amazing food.

Miscellaneous

Hannah can now do these word flash cards all by herself.  It seems like yesterday we bought them for her.

We had the missionaries over for dinner in January, and one of them mentioned that they never had 7 layer dip (WHAT!?!).  Nathan informed the missionaries that my 7-layer dip is amazing, so we promised to serve it for dinner the next time they came over, and we delivered on that promise. Result: very full and satisfied missionaries.

I went to the management's office to pick up a package or something and had to wait because they were with a customer.  While we waited, Hannah enjoyed hanging out in the gym portion of the office.