I can’t believe February has come and gone already!

February was full of ups and downs, honestly. I spent all last week recovering from some nasty bug that ultimately resulted in severe ear infections in both ears, through which I had to work photographing our first round of Chicago boudoir mini sessions! I am SO grateful to have such understanding and patient clients. Bexley was also cursed with the double ear infections but she remained spunky and happy through it all, not me! Luckily Brandon avoided it all this time…

When we weren’t sick, we had fun playing in the snow (well, Bex did at least) but it caused a MAJOR issue when snow caused the Valentine’s Day Party at school to get postponed before a four day weekend. Bex was ITCHING to get back to school Wednesday to finally celebrate with her friends. For both days (the real Valentine’s and her school’s party) we tried a new thing with her hair, braids at night to get wavy hair the next day! She looked in the mirror and immediately said “woah! I have hair like Aunt Rachel!” – which was funny.

February brought lots of play dates with friends, including her cousin Wynnie getting to watch Bex do gymnastics. School had two field trips this month too, one to Monical’s and the other to the FFA petting zoo, both of which I got to tag along to!

We had busy lives celebrating Christmas with the Loda Fire Department that Brandon’s on, visiting with family, and I continued working out at the gym! Brandon and I headed to Chicago for a weekend while I hosted boudoir mini sessions, which was awesome, despite being sick, since Saturday night I was able to find the energy to go out to dinner at Shaw’s (SO good) and we spent a few hours at Howl at the Moon after – a favorite of ours.

Of course, if you know me (or’ve seen my Insta stories recently) you know my FAVORITE part of February was the day that Brandon (on our way home from Chicago) brought up that our friend Angie who volunteers for the Ford County Homeless Pets program had a cat that ticked all of his boxes… furry, striped, good with kids, laid back, litter box trained, and sweet. Trust me, it’s been a LONG time of begging him for a cat until we found one that he agreed on. Of course I was sold seeing the first picture of him, and we brought him home that day! He’s since warmed up to join our household, and is absolutely perfect. He’s gentle, let’s Bex carry him around everywhere, plays, snuggles, and will carry on a conversation as if we know what he’s saying. This poor kitty was found almost frozen to death in a snowbank, so he was originally dubbed “Frosty” – but after a couple days debate, we landed on naming him “Hagrid”, because he’s hairy! 😂If you’d like to see the video of us surprising Bexley with him, head over to my personal Instagram page!