Snow Day!

I was stoked when Ben said he was taking MLK Day and wanted to go to the snow.  

We made it. Lasted 45 minutes (after taking 20 to get dressed).

X&E LOVED it! V&A only liked it for about 5 min. 

Thanks to the Mitchells for inviting to come by for lunch after--with that as part 2 to our day, X & E were easy to get back into the car despite the fun they were having.

Maybe next year?

A New talent

This is Sis. Angimarau (Sp?). She is a missionary for the LDS Church serving from Christmas Island.  We LOVE the sister missionaries in this house!  One of the times that Sis. A was here she talked about weaving palm tree leaves.  Back home, they really do still build their homes with palm trees & leaves.  The girls have to take a course on leaf weaving and the better they do, the more likely they are to get married.  Listening to Sis. A talk about her home seriously opened my "American" eyes!  My favorite was when she found Xander's Star Wars book lying around and picked it up and started reading it.  She asked all about it--she had seriously NEVER heard of Star Wars--out of curiosity our conversation then drifted to pop culture questions--she does know Harry Potter!  :)

Anyways, she ended up teaching me how to weave our palm leaves so that we can make enough to roof a playhouse for our kids!  I've got 10 leaves so far...pretty cool!

January Play Time

Making tents

Being "Mary"

At the park

 

 

Eliza found this at the park--what a crazy cool pinecone huh?!

In between all the runny noses, we managed to have some fun too!

FIRST full PONYTAIL!

We are getting so grown up around here!

THE Yard AKA The Jungle

We bought our house partly because it had a LARGE yard (in California terms).  It was not well taken care of though. As I've mentioned in previous posts, it is full of fruit trees.  We've been slowly trying to cut things back and get things more safe for the kids so that they can explore. To date, Ben has cut down about 10 trees and we had a tree guy come take out 2 palm trees (only 6 more to go!) so I thought it was about time that I take some semi "before" pictures.  So, here they are! So much sweat & work to go!

Eliza is 5!!

Traditional Birthday Donut!

Daddy helped decorate the birthday cake

Eliza wanted a Pinkalicious party-one of the games: pin the cherry on the cupcake

Blowing out the candle

Sunday dinner gathering for Eliza's birthday

Grandma & Papa came

Nana & Grumpy came too

Eliza's birthday is also on Epiphany-a day when people celebrate the arrival of the Kings to the baby Jesus.  We happened to visit a Mexican bakery the day before and snagged a Kings cake.  Inside the kings cake is a toy or trinket and who ever gets it in their piece, becomes the King/Queen--little Eliza was so happy when she found the toy!

I seriously cannot believe that Eliza is 5.  We turned her kindergarten papers in this past week to top it all off.  Eliza reminds us of a country song by Garth Brooks, "She's sun & rain, She's fire & ice, a little crazy but it's nice!"  Eliza is so full of life and wants to badly to help every one, and to be a big girl (sometimes the Mom). She started reading about 3 months ago and LOVES being able to get through small books.  She still loves food and coloring and using scissors.  She loves dressing herself and cooking and learning.  Really, there isn't much she doesn't like doing--well, maybe the dishwasher.  :)  Eliza loves to be the leader and in charge.  She LOVES music and so for her birthday she started piano lessons and is so excited to learn to play real songs. 

We so love Eliza-both her fire & her ice and hope that being 5 will help us be able to work better together!

Norman Rockwell Exhibit

During Christmas break my parents invited us to go with them to the Crocker Art Museum and check out the Norman Rockwell exhibit.  My Mom is an artist and her favorite artist is Norman Rockwell so she was extremely excited to share this with the kids.  The kids got tired pretty quickly but they were well-behaved and respectful.  Thankfully, the Websters took Violet & Abigail so that we could actually take a few minutes (more like seconds really) to enjoy the beautiful artwork.

Who wouldn't want to PotTy TrAiN?

Totally unprovoked, while Violet was doing her duty, Abigail came in:

 

If I got this kind of love each time I did a job!  MAN!  These two are going to be such good friends.