Andy was at it again with an epic scavenger hunt for Valentine's Day. This year he even made a homemade decoder magnifying glass so that we could decode all of the clues.

Last month Ellie was telling me how Valentine's Day is her favorite holiday because she loves it when "dads do scavenger hunts for their kids." I realized that she thought that was a Valentine's Day tradition for everyone. When I told her that that's only a tradition for our family, she was shocked. Mind. Blown. When I looked back at my blog, I realized that Andy has been doing our yearly Valentine's scavenger hunt since Ellie's first Valentine's Day. It's all she's ever known. It was so cute that she thought that was just part of Valentine's Day. I'm just glad we cleared up that little misunderstanding before she went to school and asked all her friends what they got on their scavenger hunts!

 

I didn't get any pictures on Super Bowl Sunday, but this is Andy and the kids at a "Dads and Football" activity at school the Friday morning before the Super Bowl. 

What a Super Bowl we had! As die hard Eagles fans (or married to one), we had such a fun time watching the Eagles have an amazing season. However, our Super Bowl dreams were dashed when Carson Wentz, our quarterback, went down with a season-ending injury. It was so disappointing. Andy was sure they wouldn't win any playoff games without Wentz. But then they won and won again! Next up was the Superbowl.

We went to Andy's parents' house for the big game. The Friday before, Andy's mom and Ellie had decorated everything with green decorations. I made soft pretzels and cheese sauce, salsa, and chili cheese dip. We had KFC for dinner. Yum!

The first half of the game was a lot of fun, but we weren't too optimistic because Tom Brady loves to march down the field and crush all of our hopes and dreams (see Super Bowl XXXIX). Sure enough, the Patriots started beating the Eagles for the first time all game. I honestly could barely watch the game at this point. It was too tense. It's so stressful when you actually care about the outcome! Finally, the Eagles pulled off an amazing victory. Everyone went nuts!

We watched the Eagles get the trophy and the owner's speech. At one point he said, "This is dedicated to all of the Eagles fans out there." Ellie got all excited and said, "That's us!"

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but we get three weeks off for Christmas break every year. It's absolutely glorious! Whether we go out of town for Christmas or have all my family here, we are always super busy during the week of Christmas. We go, go, go, and it's great because I know we'll have plenty of downtime come the new year.

 On New Year's Day, we spent the day watching football and eating at Andy's parents' house. Grandma and Ellie like coloring together.

One day during break the girls made this colossal fort in their room using all the blankets in the house. It was amazingly sturdy and lasted several days until they got tired of it. They mostly used it as a relaxing place to hang out...

but they also had a couple of sibling sleep overs in it.

All the girls in our family got cute clothes for Christmas. Hannah wore one of her new dresses to church.

Off of school? That's a good time for double orthodontist appointments.

Christmas always seems to give me the spring cleaning bug. I spent a lot of time over break going through our house purging and organizing, and it feels amazing. It's such a great way to start a year! I've pretty much gone through the entire house now and the garage. Our pantry wasn't too bad, but I decided to up my game and get new food storage containers and make some labels.

Ah, so much better! 2018, we're ready for you

Andy gets Martin Luther King Jr. Day off of work so we took the opportunity to go Coronado Island. Honestly, I'm pretty terrible at planning trips for our family. All five of us enjoy being home so much that I don't make the effort to think of fun trips. However, there are a few day trips that have been on mind, and Coronado was at the top of that list.

Sunday was New Years Eve. The Gallos and my parents were supposed to come to church with us, but Michael was still sick in bed, and Rachel ended up taking Lauren to urgent care. When they were at our house on Friday, Lauren took a little tumble out of a chair outside and landed on her wrist. She screamed for a long time, but ended up seeming fine. Then the next couple of days she would scream again if she used her wrist in a certain way, so Rachel took her in. Sure enough it was broken!

Sunday after church we met my parents and Rachel and her kids at the beach during a super low tide. We fed the birds and then walked down to the tidepools.

We saw tons of these black Sea Hares. They were cool but pretty gross. Joey said he counted 108 of them.

When we got home we hung out and had tacos for dinner.

We were all pretty wiped out from our big week.

These two were cracking up over some inside jokes. They were so cute together.

Since we were all tired, we pulled up the Times Square ball drop on YouTube from a previous year and then watched the fireworks from Sydney, Australia's New Years. That was enough for us. We said our goodbyes to the Gallos and then headed home. The next day I drove the Gallos to the airport and our Krause Christmas was officially over. It was a jam-packed, wonderful week and a half!

The next two days were spent at our house, mostly just hanging out. On Friday, the Gallos came over, and we walked down to Mr. Taco for lunch.

It was a beautiful, sunny day for a walk.

Timmy and Jill went down to San Diego the night before with some friends so they met us at Mr. Taco a little later.

When we got back to our house, we played outside....

hung out inside...

and played games.

Timmy and Jill were headed back up to LA the next morning so we said goodbye to them that night. 

The next day the Gallos and my parents came over sans Michael. He came down with the flu the night before which was such a bummer!

We tried to take a grandparent/grandkid picture with everyone looking and smiling...not bad, thanks to Andy's crazy antics behind the camera.

My dad ended the night singing "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." He has a puppet that actually swallows all of the animals in the song. It's really cute and always a big hit with the kids!

Ellie turned six on the 28th. We told her not to, but she did anyway. What's with kids getting older?!

Benjamin and Christina flew home that day, so the kids and I headed over first thing to be able to spend the morning with them before they left. Their flight ended up being delayed so had time to go to the beach with everyone (minus Timmy and Jill). Benjamin, Christina and I watched these guys jump in the waves.

The Gallo kids really loved the waves. They both came home soaking wet!

Six.

After the beach, Benjamin and Christina left for the airport and my kids and I went home for nap time. The Gallos came over later in the afternoon so I got to snuggle with my favorite snuggler.

Then we all went to The Habit for Ellie's birthday dinner.

Still six!

We ended the night with $1 ice cream cones.

Happy birthday, Ellie!