Happy Leap Day

(Or as my mom says, "Hoppy Leap Day")

As you have probably noticed by now, February has an extra day in it this year. My first reaction to this has been, "That's just great. My least favorite month of the year -- let's make it longer. Please." But now that I'm a mom and supposed to be the happy face around here, this time around I decided to try and focus on something positive about this odd calendar fact. So today we've been celebrating Leap Day.

This morning I loaded up the kids in the car and told them we were going somewhere that was a surprise. They spent the whole trip guessing where it might be... and were thrilled when I pulled into the Drescher's driveway. Ava also was not aware of our plan (I had arranged with Karin that we would come over and play with Ava downstairs in the hopes that Karin and Branson could retreat upstairs for some naps) so we all had fun surprising her as well.

This was Ava's (and Colsen's) first Leap Day of her life, and it was only the second one for both Strider and Rayna, so it really is pretty special! After playing a leaping game called "Jump the Creek," we started to talk about how unique the day was. We talked about how old they are now, and how old they will be the next time they get a Leap Day, 4 years from now. Then we traced everyone's bodies on big paper and colored them so they could see how big they are now. On the back, Strider and I recorded little interviews we did with each person, saying what they like now, and what kinds of things they guess they might like in 4 years. And, in the very slight chance that we remember and are actually able to find these papers on the next Leap Day, it will be fun to see how much they've changed by then!

Here they are with their current portraits.


Now, let me just say that the Drescher's have a very different type of "kid friendly" house. Somehow they have 3 kids, just like us, but their house manages to stay organized, neat, undamaged, and even clean. I'm baffled by this. In our house, anything that is stored lower than 4 feet high is almost always on the floor, ripped, broken, spilled, damaged, colored on, or eaten. But the Dreschers have found a way to keep things inside the lower cabinets, keep things in an orderly manner in the pantry, etc. And THIS really blew my mind:

WHO, for crying out loud, keeps all their liquor on the floor -- especially with 3 kids in the house?? Let's just say the Drescher kids have very different temperments than the Frank kids. Or the Drescher parents are just way, way better parents than we are. OR, their kids are so drunk they're too tired to get into anything else.

Anyway, Colsen had a heyday at their house, and I had headacheday running around cleaning up after him. He ripped out all the tissues from the Kleenex box, took apart some floral arrangements, decided to taste several baby wipes, tried to rearrange their pantry (but stopped at the "take everything out first" stage), tried to write with markers on their white carpet, spread out 2 decks of cards all over the room, and tried to destroy a few with his mouth, and got into the artificial trees and spread the straw stuff all over the room. And then, of course, there was this:

Colsen also had fun meeting his new little cousin (a.k.a. partner in crime) for the first time:

All in all, we had a lot of hoppin' fun!