We all seem to be moving so quickly lately. Lucy's speeding through toddlerhood, Benjamin is rushing through addition and subtraction and right onto multiplication and division, Mike is spending his time increasing speed on his brand new triathlon bike and I've been cruising around the pool and on my bike for my own triathlon training. Days and weeks go by without us even noticing that they're gone. Today is the first day of March and it is hard to believe spring is just around the corner. Usually I'd be all "Woah! Slow down, I need to breathe." But lately, I have been embracing this full steam ahead progress. We're moving toward great things. It feels good. A couple of weeks ago we visited the Minnesota Zoo with Grandma Chris on the President's Day holiday. The zoo was overrun with school children, but neither Benjamin nor Lucy noticed. They had a great time. We are so lucky to have such a great zoo here, we all really enjoy it.

Multiple times a day Lucy insists on sitting at the kitchen table in her booster chair. We've stored the high chair for a possible spring garage sale and she's exclusively sitting at the table with us now. She loves to "color" in coloring books. I use quotes around the word because to her coloring means holding too many crayons for her tiny hands, dropping most of the crayons on the floor, scribbling for 30 seconds on one page and whining until someone gets her down from the table. The whole process takes maybe 3 minutes. We repeat it probably 2-3 times in the morning and 4-5 times in the evening. She enjoys it so much that we continue to oblige her. It is pretty cute. She is in full-on toddler mode right now though. I forget how demanding they can be at this age. Lots of yelling and whining and this face:

The kids and I had a blast making these fun Valentine's for their friends at school and daycare!

It has been a busy few weeks around here. Over the last few days of January and the first couple of February I took a trip to Houston with my friend Lora. I was her travel buddy, wheelchair pusher, freeloader and hotel room sharer over 6 days while she needed to visit the MD Anderson Cancer Center for a second opinion on her cancer treatment. The trip did not turn out to be terribly fruitful for her medical journey, but we did take some time to relax and explore the Houston area. The weather there was so beautiful, between about 62 to 70 degrees during our visit. We took one whole day to visit Hermann Park and the Houston Zoo when it was particularly beautiful.