One Last Time

We took our third trip to the Aviary with another set of friends a few weeks ago. We have loved each trip, each group of friends, and each experience.

The kids were really excited about feeding the Sun Conures again, but I was hesitant, they were both so shy last time. Well, "third time's the charm!" Both Ethan and Avery did such a great job feeding the birds.

Ethan looked like a pro with his hand on his hip like, "yeah, I do this all the time."

Avery not only held the food this time, but actually let the bird land on her arm. She was so excited and felt so proud of herself.

We had such a great time with friends and have made a habit of going on an outing with them each week since.

We've made the most of Winter Wednesdays and are marking our calendar now for next year! Thanks for the fun!

Rainbow Fun

For St. Patrick's Day the kids and I did lots of Rainbow Fun Activities. We graphed skittles by color, glued a rainbow of paper strips, and found gold at the end of the rainbow with a treasure hunt.


Avery and I made a deliciously fun rainbow cake. We mixed up a white cake mix then made 6 colorful bowls of batter. Avery couldn't wait to mix the purple one, her favorite color!

We poured each rainbow color into a Ziploc bag and lined them up in order.

Finally we snipped the end of the bags and swirled the batter around so that every bite would have all the colors of the rainbow. (Thanks Emily L. for the tip!)

The cake turned out pretty fancy! It was moist, sweet, delicious and rainbow fun! Avery is quite a baker!


The kids have been singing the Cat In The Hat Rainbow song all week...they know the rainbow colors!

In The Dark

Thanks to a tip from Aunt Hailey the kids and I went to a glow in the dark puppet show. The Special Ed department at the high school does an annual puppet show sing along. It was fabulous. The kids loved the puppets and sang along to most of the songs...Under the Sea, If You're Happy and You Know It, and You've Got a Friend In Me.

After the show the kids got to meet the puppets and puppeteers. They were so cute with the kids.





I'm pretty sure we'll be going again next year!

Old Friends

When we moved to our new home lots of our friends moved away too. Luckily, one of our favorite family friends didn't move very far away and we get to see them every so often.

The kids love to play together and it's like we haven't been apart for long. This time we had an Easter Egg Hunt. The kids had such a good time hunting eggs and finding treasures.

Everyone was happy with their basket full and a full day of playing with long time friends.


The highlight for Avery was getting to hold Baby Annalie. She couldn't get enough of her and asked to hold her every 5 minutes.

Thanks for the great fun Mindy, Matty, Felicity and Annalie! Can't wait until we get together again!!

Building

We decided to make some shelves in our basement for our ever growing food storage. Bob made a plan from a few sets of shelves his brother made and we went to work.

Everyone had a job. Ethan helped hold the wood steady while daddy cut.



He also helped measure a few boards and mark them.









Avery helped clean up the scraps and load them in to the summer campfire box.

She also helped carry all the pieces into the house and down the stairs.





While mom and dad fit, lifted, and screwed the pieces together Ethan and Avery hammered and nailed to their hearts content on the scraps.

Finally, Daddy drove in the last screw and we were done. Now that we have a nice set of large storage shelves I feel like I'd better get going on filling them.

Old School Craft

I found a couple of Shrinky Dink kits at the craft store a couple of weeks ago and thought the kids would love to craft it old school style. I was right.

Avery's kit was princesses. Perfect right. She chose to color the Ariel one. Ethan's kit had lots of different pictures you could trace on, but he decided we should create our own: lots of tools with his name on it.


After coloring and cutting we were ready to bake. The kids were a little confused about cooking, but trusted me.



We anxiously watched as our little creations cooked, curled, and shrank.



Finally we made a bracelet for Avery and a zipper pull for Ethan. They both love their creations. Ethan shows his to almost everyone we meet!

The Big One

A couple of weeks ago we had a big snow storm. The wind blew so hard the snow drifted to over 8 inches in places...perfect for a family sledding outing.

We love playing in the snow. The kids get such a kick out of sledding down the hill at the park by our house. Both take as many trips alone as they can.







When daddy comes he makes it extra special. They ride piggy back and of course get in a little snow ball fight after a good run.