Here are some pictures of our winter. These may not be in order.
We said goodbye to our large Christmas tree!
Anna worked on these paint by number pictures she got for Christmas
And crocheted these creatures
a squid
and a goldfish
This is her latest creation - another squid with eyes this time. Very creative!
She's trying to figure out how to make a giant squid.
We made pinewood derby cars for a church activity
Pinewood derby day!
Our cars did ok - middle of the pack
Emma has been playing basketball - her team chose the Suns as their name since they are yellow
She's learning a lot of new skills!
She's had a lot of assists all season (she's a good passer) and even made a basket in our last game - this is the breakaway that she scored on. Way to go Emma!!
We are getting rid of our guest bed - we don't have a guest room in this house nor do we need one and the larger bed was just taking up too much space. Grant is on a large queen sized bed here and we bought a loft bed that fits over it. We decided it was time to trade this weird combo in for some regular bunk beds.
Here are their new bunk beds - unbunked. It looks like a big mess in this picture - need to have the bed made better - but its a lot easier to tuck them both in now.
We still haven't taken the mattress to the dump because the kids are having so much fun jumping on it every day. Winter indoor active time.
John and Emma made up a little play where John was pretending to be a puppy.
Emma's teacher recommended using playing cards to practice math facts.
Here we are practicing the 7 multiplication facts with John
John makes a Lego creation
Family trip to the dentist
The kids helped Anna make a movie for school down at the river
I think Anna was happy-ish with her movie in the end
Grant is old enough to pass the sacrament in church now. Here is Scott helping him get ready.
Ready for church!
Matthew has moved up to being able to bless the sacrament now and Grant can pass it.
They are growing up so fast!
Here we are trying on suit sizes for Matthew. He is tall and skinny now - trying to figure out what his suit size would be. I eventually figured out the size, bought a suit for him and we had it tailored. Now I need to get a picture of him in the suit!
Emma is crafting up a storm these days. Here is a pig and pig feeder she made recently
Emma is crazy for birds these days. A self proclaimed "bird nerd." She was very excited just to find this feather on the ground one day. Can you spot the feather?
Anna all dressed up for a special choir concert one evening. She is really enjoying choir!
This was a painting Anna did for her art class - they were supposed to use a color then a darker version of the same color - I'm sure that has an art name but I don't know what it is. I liked her picture.
Mac and cheese night. We rarely make boxed mac and cheese anymore so this was a special treat for the younger kids and a meal merely tolerated by the older kids.
Decorating Valentine cupcakes
We've had several sunny days - here are the elementary kids on a walk with me one day.
Gotta enjoy the sun when it comes
Grant's police station Lego creation complete with a water cooler and "flaming hot coffee maker."
I think this was a Lego treehouse Emma made
Waiting for church to start - John was in a mood and feeling annoyed by the organ music on this day
Reptile night at the school - John and Emma got to pet and hold many reptiles.
John was very excited and shouting "I'M HOLDING A SNAKE!!" during this picture.
John was more bold with all the critters than Emma.
They had a lot of fun!
Emma made some Super Bowl decorations (the football she is holding)
She made a bird Valentine box and John made a shark box from a kit.
Another bird for her Valentine's at school - have we mentioned she loves birds
John sorting through his school Valentine's
Last year the kids weren't allowed to bring any edible treats or candy to pass out and previous years nothing at all - so now we are back to a candy fest for Valentine's Day.
We had Milky Way fondue for a family Valentine treat!
We had a lot of fun ice skating one afternoon
Everyone is improving
John has been learning a lot about the human body at school - and reporting to us about it regularly
Emma made some good progress on her speed math tests
Emma and John have been doing swim lessons in the cold weather. John just progressed from level 4 to level 5. Level 4 they spent a lot of time swimming laps in the big pool. Level 5 works on learning all the main swimming strokes - freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly. Way to go John!!
Emma has the most tangly hair - and swim lessons contributes to the tangle. She wants to keep her hair long but I finally convinced her to let me trim it a little to help with the tangles.
Emma went to a friends birthday party at SkyZone (a trampoline place). We took most of the kids to jump while the party was going on.
Everyone had fun
Literally as we were leaving the place Emma twisted her ankle stepping onto a trampoline. Her ankle was pretty sore for 5 days or so. Now she is feeling better.
We've been enjoying playing board games - like Nertz
Grant taught us how to play his minecraft game
I spent an afternoon cleaning up our very messy garage - I found an old bag of mine that had just been stashed in the garage and cleaning it out I found a very large rock. Some child probably gave this to me at a park and told me to take care of it and I put it in my bag and forgot about it. It was a big one.
Matthew and Emma helped decorate a King Cake for Mardi Gras. This was our best King Cake ever! This year I made it like cinnamon rolls but after putting the filling and rolling it into a log I just put it in a bundt pan and baked for about 35 minutes at 350. It tasted really good - cinnamon rolls for the win!
We got a big snow this past week! I'm not sure how much snow we got - maybe between 8 and 12 inches. School was canceled for 3 days (it was the week of President's Day so we only went to school on Tuesday that week). The kids have been having a blast playing in the big snow!
I've been working on some classes - currently finishing up a Linear Algebra review. I took this class in college so its more of a brush up for me than learning it all for the first time.
And during the big snow I had a surprise emergency appendectomy. Wednesday (the first snow day) I started to have a lot of abdominal pain, Thursday and Friday it seemed to improve but by Friday morning, since the pain was better but still not gone, Scott encouraged me to brave the snow and see a doctor. He had the day off and drove me in - the roads were still quite icy. I had a noon appointment and the urgent care doctor sent me to the ER to get a CT scan to see if it was appendicitis. By 5pm or so we were still at the ER and found out it WAS appendicitis so I was admitted right away for surgery. Scott drove home to get the kids some dinner and then made it back by 8:30 just in time for me to go into surgery. Everything went nice and easy and I was able to leave the hospital, one appendix lighter and in a lot of new pain, the next morning. So I'm glad Scott encouraged me to go get checked out by the professionals and now I'm just recovering at home. We just have a little more winter to make it through!!
