Friday, January 24, 2020

Getting through the cold days like.....


 Building snow forts and snowmen     &   visiting the animal rescue storytime
 I took Cora to learn to ski for her second time this year and Aaron came along

We skiied for 7 hours with just a few breaks!  
She had great endurance, and by the end of the day she was turning beautiful, big turns.  
Proud moment was when she turned to a boy who was learning too and said "bend your knees like this!"

Not gonna lie, between potty training Ollie over the last month, teaching Cora to ski, likely rupturing a disk in my back, and then falling on the stairs outside on black ice, my back has seen better days.
I'm icing and medicating for sure.  I'm hopeful that now that Cora able to ski solo on the magic carpet and Ollie is doing really well going potty on his own much of the time, I hope to heal up in the next weeks.

 Ollie bear is cute as ever playing around and making his "secret hideout"

"Mom!  Wanna see my secret hideout?"
"Put my pillow here for me!"

"I'm catching a fish"
He likes to "catch fish" with the hook on his crane

 It's a nice day when you can walk out your backdoor for a quick hike on the beaver pond
before the daylight fades.


The boys had their combined band concerts last night! 
5th grade Band
Aaron is on the far left playing bells.
He also played the large drum on the right in one song and the snare drum in two songs.

 Timmy in the 6th grade band on Trombone.
He's seated just in front of the large bass drum, gazing out from behind his stand.
Their band favorite was clumsy clown when they all played funny noises in the song with their instruments.  :)

The kids with their piano teacher, Kevin
The combination of learning the piano and band instruments at the same time has really been great for the kids music learning this year!
They are doing so well

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Dealing with the cold

It was 18° today, so we hit up the ponds.  I found some adult skates this year, and Cora now fits into Aaron's old skates.  So we went out.  The ice was really rough, but it was still pretty fun.  That is after the 30 minutes it took to get Cora and Ollie dressed....



Cora got pretty tired of skating, so she walked with KT.  We found a new Beaver dam, with this cool chewed tree.


Then on the way back, we stopped by at our neighbors and got some fun little 3-wheeler rides.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Reflections


It was an exciting day today when the Stapleton children disembarked from their bus and showed me their winning certificates and metals from the Reflections contest.

Timmy won 2nd place for 6th grade in submitting his original music composition 
"Calming Reflection"
Aaron won 2nd place for 5th grade for his original Drawing of a friend seeing good qualities in his classmates
Cora won 1st place for Kindergarten for her Dance entitled "Roar."  She qualifies for state and got a $10 gift card to Amazon!

Spelling Bee and other New Year fun

Today was the 6th grade Spelling Bee!   

Timmy was the only child in his class to be selected to participate, because he got a perfect score on the spelling test, so he felt very privileged to have qualified as one of 20 kids in his grade.  He did a great job speaking clearly, spelling carefully and deliberately.  He said after that he was really nervous, but he looked calm and collected.  

He made it to Round 4 and got out on a word with a silent letter.  I don't know about him, but I was relieved for him to not have to do it anymore, and we went to have a shake at 9 am to celebrate!
So proud of him!

Check out Studio C Inner City Spelling Bee for some laughs

Chocolate Mint Macaron?  Yes please!

The lovely Miss Jaxon came over to bake cookies with us on Monday
What delicious fun!

Interesting side note: She's a great-auntie to Shane McAnally, 
who is rockin the music world with his songwriting these days
and on the new show "Songland"

I guess I can finally claim that I am a New Englander after I had my first run-in with black ice this week.   See these steps that look slightly damp and harmless?
I placed my foot at the edge of the top step, took a HUGE "Home Alone" type slip and fall, landing my back directly on all three stairs, and bruising up my hands.  Ugh.  It's so invisible people.

Cora on the Big Rock at Big Rock Trail


The Humanitarian Day at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The amazing Relief Society Meeting Committee

Scores of school bags were sewn, and many many bags of crayons, markers, erasers, and other school supplies sorted.  There were also stations making quilt tops and plarn to crochet sleeping mats.
All for the benefit of the refugees in Bangladesh.

The kids favorite breakfast.....German pancakes.

Cora got to attend an awesome after Christmas birthday tea party with some of her favorite friends!


We got to celebrate on New Years Day by having sushi with our dear friends, the Luangraths



Homemade sushi rolls!  Mmmmm!

New Years Eve was celebrated at the Makris home

Our fabulous hostess

Such a nice way to bring in the New Year
4-7 pm - and all the kids (and many of us parents!) in bed nice and early!


This was Cora's first big ski day lesson.  I did a few short lessons with her 2 years ago, but now it's time to really learn!  We spent ALL day at Mcintyre in Manchester, and she made a lot of progress!

With frequent breaks....

And lots of walking and effort to go back to the magic carpet over and over....

She's turning into a great little ski bunny

She especially liked frequent breaks at the lodge for snacks

Some updates on Oliver:
Ollie's big update is that he is dry day and night!
The only thing left to work on is telling mom and dad when he has a #2
Way to go Ollie!!  Such a big boy!

This is playing at Kids World last week
He loves the play houses and making me (pretend) 
chicken nuggets, french fries and shakes to order out his window.

He loves playing with all his siblings

However, he did have his first instance of biting. 
Hopefully, the last!

He loves to go to Nursery at church.  
Sometimes during the week, he'll just say "I want my nursery"
I also heard him singing little primary songs while he was playing quietly after church one day
Sure are going to miss his teacher, Beth Pitcher, when she moves later this year :(

He loves star wars!  

Us watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker