The Big Snow

So, just like most of America we got a big snow this past week.  Luckily we didn't get a lot of ice and didn't lose power.  We had two days of school canceled on either end of an already long (4 day) weekend.  So we ended up with a 6 day weekend - Thursday through Tuesday.  The kids had lots of fun playing in the snow over the weekend.  Some days they were out in the snow from nearly sun up to sun down.  Here are some pictures.  The snow drifted up in places in the yard.

Lots of snow on the street.  We saw several big trucks get struck in the snow just backing out of their driveways.  We didn't go anywhere for several days.

Just behind their house is a wild space with a great sledding hill.  The kids had fun sledding there.

Woohoo!

Walking back up took a little while.

 

Scott helped John do some sledding and they did a few runs together

I made the kids come in for dinner each night.

They were so excited to have snow!

There were a few little sad moments.  John took a snow ball to the face (the snow ball thrower insists it was an accident).  John had to relax inside for a while.

Emma had a little cold rash on her cheeks after one long day out in the cold.

We have a little slope at the back of our yard that was just big enough for lots of gentle sledding.

Snow ball fights

Snow caves

Matthew got a couple sticks and used them to pull himself around the yard on a sled on his belly.

Snow persons were built

Here is Grant's snowman

Snow angels were attempted

A tiny snowman

More sledding

More snowmen

Emma said this one was a "snow mermaid"

New snow caves/tunnels.  I dug this one with John and Emma.

It was big enough for kids to climb in but not me

Some little Valentine's Day goodies

It was a fun weekend - kind of snowed in

And here are a few non-snow pics

Anna working on her violin skills

and working on piano skills.  We've all been working on music skills lately.

Several of the kids worked on cardboard cars

Batman matchers

Lots of bread being baked.  We made our favorite multigrain bread several times.  And Anna baked these little buns one day.  This next week everyone starts going too full day school two days a week.  So more new adventures to come.

Talent Show

 During quarantine I started collecting a folder of videos on my computer of "talents" of the kids.  Some of these are a bit old - some are newer.  But here is a first version of a virtual talent show.

Here is Matthew reciting To My Valentine by Ogden Nash.  He memorized it and recited it for us.  This is two years old now and Matthew has moved on to reciting Robert Burns with a great Scottish accent.  We'll try to get that in a future post.

This is the one and only violin performance Anna has been able to do.  It was in the school foyer on the last day before Christmas break - they also played Christmas songs, but I only took a short clip of a video.  She was learning violin last year but the instruction was cut short when coronavirus hit.  Now she is trying to learn a little on her own at home.  Anna is on the far left in this video.

This is a Lego Rube Goldberg type machine Grant worked on.  He built it from a kit, but his persistence even when things didn't work out was cute.  He's a good builder and my experience working in engineering is things never work the first time.  Tweak it and try again...and don't get discouraged. 

John learned this song last year in first grade for Thanksgiving.  So this video is more than a year old.  I liked his animated dancing.

I have been sort of teaching the kids piano.  I don't play well but took lessons a couple years as a kid so I can read music and know the basics.    Here is a song Emma has been working on.

Bonus!!

Did I mention I play the piano badly?  I recently read an article about a letter Kurt Vonnegut wrote to a class of high school students.  The story goes that class wrote to a bunch of famous authors and he was the only one that wrote back.  His advice was to "practice any art" not even to become good at it but to experience "becoming" and make your soul grow.  I found it very inspiring. 

Anyway, I tried to have John record me playing a song - I wasn't specific about telling him where to point the camera, and this is what we ended up with.  I didn't want to re-record because I didn't play any wrong notes so didn't want to tempt fate by going for another take.  This is from the Simplified Hymns book. 

New Year

and January

We had a nice New Year's Eve family party.  We played some different board games, had fondue for dinner and Italian sodas.  Later we had a little dance party and let off some little poppers and the kids stayed up late.

More board games

Dance partying

It was a a fun evening!

Here are some pictures form the rest of January.  John has been working on riding his new bike.  We were trying without training wheels for a while and decided to go back to training wheels for a bit.  It's been a little hard for him to find his balance on a big bike.

Lots of indoor play time.  Here the kids built a train track together.

Matthew playing an old game of Scott's that he recently reacquired.

Emma twinning with a stuffed bunny

One activity we have done a lot during our quarantine time is making perler bead designs.  If you aren't familiar perler beads are those little cylindrical shaped plastic beads with a hole down the middle.  You can arrange them on little grids to make designs and then iron them so they permanently hold that shape.  The kids have had a lot of fun making different designs.  Anna got a Harry Potter set of them for Christmas and John got a Legend of Zelda one.  We've made so many we've run out of beads and I've had to buy more.  Walmart and Amazon sell them.  Here is John making some emoji ones.

Emma working on a surprised emoji.  This is good for fine motor skills too.

Anna made some to resemble her character on a Stardew Valley, a video game the kids like these days.  She also made Matthew and Grant's Stardew Valley characters.

Grant made a chicken from the game.  They took a picture of the different character from the game and then tried to design it with their beads.  It turned out pretty good.

Scott and I both got New York Times crossword puzzle page a day calendars and have been trying to keep up.  Mondays are easy and the Saturday/Sunday puzzle (which is one puzzle since they share a weekend page) is the hardest.  I was happy I only had to cheat once on this Friday puzzle, the first of the year.  Matthew did help me come up with the answer to one of them.

Early on in January we got rid of the tree.  It lasted so long!  I think it still had a few weeks in it yet.  It wasn't shedding needles like crazy at the end so that made clean up nice and easy.

And the kids headed back to school.  Here I am at the bus stop with Emma.

A few weeks into January John started going in person on a hybrid schedule.  He goes two days a week and is home for the other three.  We packed up all the appropriate school papers and supplies ahead of time.  His teacher sent a video so we would know which items to send to school and which to keep at home.  It is confusing so I appreciated that.

Now Emma has a bus buddy.  Since they are in the same family they get to sit together on the bus.  In the COVID world of school kids have assigned bus seats and aren't allowed to sit with people outside their family bubble.  Emma says her name is on the seat she sits in.  Grant is starting and will ride the bus with them in a few weeks.  I'm interested to see if they want all three of them to cram onto one seat, or if they have them sit on two different seats.  We'll see.

And this is them on their working at home days.

I moved our little keyboard to the homework area so I can practice the piano while they work.  There is a headphone jack so I can play silently while they do homework.  I am trying to improve my piano skills.  The other kids have taken more interest in the piano since I have been playing more.  I've been trying to teach some of them the basics.  If they are interested maybe we can find a more experienced piano teacher.

Anna didn't get glasses.  I did.  Scott and I went to they eye doctor recently for check ups.  My distant vision is still great - the eye doc said "it can't get any better" and I cling to those kinds of comments as I get older.  :).  I have noticed in the past year its hard for me to read very small writing where I used to have no trouble reading fine print on things.  So the eye doctor recommended I get some reading glasses.  Here is Anna trying on my new reading glasses.  Scott also got some new glasses.

More rainy days walks

John and Emma made some puppets entirely on their own, and put on a puppet show.

Some shoulder rides

Our living room fireplace has a see-through, 2 sided fireplace.  You can turn it on from either side.  The living room is on one side and a large office room is on the other.  We call that room "mom's office" since Scott has his own office elsewhere in the house.  In that room there are a bunch of crafts supplies and our treadmill.  It always looks very messy in there so I didn't like the fireplace just looking in on that messy space from our cleanish living room.  So we bought a fireplace cover.  We had some other things sitting there covering the fireplace in the back but they would melt if the fireplace was turned on, so we really needed something meant to be near a fireplace. 

Here is a view from the front before we got the cover - see how you can see right through to the other room in all its messy glory.  I really want that craft room to be able to be used by kids and it will be messy as a result.  I just want to be able to close the door to that room and be in my clean living room and not have to look at the mess.

So here is the view from the front with the cover in place.

Aaaahhh, better

Here is the cover from the back room.  It just stands there on a storage bench we got.

I like it - don't have to see the mess all the time now.

Anna and Emma are sharing a room in this house (they didn't share in Utah) and it started off a bit bumpy. Anna, who is 12, has been trying really hard to be an accommodating roommate.  Accommodating others hasn't always been Anna's strong suit, so this is a great step forward for her.  Emma, who is 6, is doing her best to act like a 6 year old much of the time and is not adequately appreciating the many olive branches offered to her by big sister.  But for the most part things are going well.   Here they are matching one evening.

Ready for bed

Anna had the idea to put up this board with clips on it so Emma can enjoy her many arts projects.

Scottt built a lot of Ikea furniture this winter.  I helped some but it was mostly Scott.

More rainy walks

Making Valentine boxes.  John had a dog and Emma a unicorn.

We got a little kit to make these from Walmart.  More winter adventures to come.