January and some February

Keenan earned his first belt promotion!  He's in the Little Dragon program and their rank is pretty much tied to attendance.  He was excited just the same.

 Dad and Van

 We bought our own wii in January, it's a BIG BIG hit with all the kids.  I managed to make them stop playing just long enough to snap a picture.

 The awful part about living so far out from the school plus daylight savings?  Waiting for the school bus in the dark!

 Trying to get Van to smile for the camera, I got a series of somewhat goofy faces instead.

 "Who me??"

 "look!"

 Sometimes they do get along...

 Van found my lipstick..

 Keenan and Cade

 "Ta-da, I'm sledding!"

 Not a great picture but Keenan and I had a "mom/son" dinner before going over to his sparring class.  It's always such a treat to sit through sparring without having to chase Van around.

 Helping to celebrate Avery's birthday.

 Making valentines day cookies.

 I'm still not sure why everytime that the legos get brought out all 600+ pieces NEED to be dumped out... UGH!

 Awww, sometimes they do love each other!

In January I got a job at a nursing college here in Billings as a "Resource Nurse", which basically just means I help out in the the labs at during clinicals.  To be truthful I thought it was going to be boring since I was mostly going to be helping out with the Fundamentals class (very basic stuff) and I didn't like my own fundamentals class when I was in school.  Turns out, I had a lot of fun!  It really forced me to review a lot of the basics since I needed to be able to teach it EXACTLY according to the book.  It also drove me crazy when the students would ask me questions and I just couldn't remember the answer, I mean hey I've been out of nursing for a few years, so I'd have to look it up!  This is something I could definitely seeing myself doing after a few years, I need to first get back on the floor and get my skills back up to par.

During this time Van went to a drop off daycare in Billings which he loved!  I admit I was a little surprised but he took to it right away!  We called it the "play place".  My work schedule was pretty tought, Mondays and Tuesdays... but it did make my Mondays a little crazy.  In the morning I would take Keenan to the bus then drive to the west end of Billings, drop off Van then go to work.  After work and picking up Van it was a long drive out to Worden to get Keenan from school then back into Billings for Tae-kwondo and then finally home again.  I tell ya, I have a LOT more appreciation for what my parents did for us growing up.  We live about 20 miles from the school and about 20 miles from Billings (plus a few depending on where you're going).  My parents spend a lot of time in the car taking us to and from all our events that I really can't complain about Keenan's 2 day a week taekwondo... I'm sure it'll only get busier as he gets older.

Mid January meant that Eric had to go back to Tunisia to finish up his tour which ended in March.

Our days were filled with playing with cousins, school, taekwondo and running...  Same old, same old.  My sister and I were training for a half marathon in March and we were both plagued with back/hip issues which made training a bit hard.