Winter Happenings

Well, it hasn't been too winterish around here, but we have still been doing a lot more indoor things.


The girls each made a paper plate snowman since we haven't had any real snow.



Having a little fun with breakfast - use raisins and cheese to decorate toast faces.



Chess is about to enjoy a chocolate muffin she helped me make.  Love her baby blue eyes.


This green onion experiment is all over Pinterest.  Save the white parts after cutting and place in water to put on the window sill.  The onions start regrowing themselves!  It works!  But I only got one growth out of them.  If you cut and use them again, they don't have enough nutrients in the bulb to regrow continuously.


Lera insists on picking out her own clothes.  Almost every day is tacky day at our house.  Stripes on stripes anyone?


Jared took Chess to the Home Depot kids workshop for the first time.  They built and painted this little house that is a bank.  It's really cute and she loves to put money in it!



Enjoying some popcorn for family movie night.  I love that both girls can now sit and watch a movie with us now.


Chess helped me make peanut butter blossom cookies.  She worked really hard unwrapping all the hershey kisses and helped put them on, too.  She also rolled the dough in sugar - these are a great cookie to make with kids.


Girls being silly.


Girls being cute.

A story: We have a calendar on our fridge, and each month has a seasonal or holiday-typed picture.  January has an icy/snowy tree scene.  I told Chess it was almost time to change the calendar to February.  She looked at the calendar, then at me and said, "But it hasn't snowed yet!"  She thought January was supposed to be snowy, and it's no wonder with the crazy snow and ice we had last year.  I'm okay with it, though!

Sweatshirt Dresses

From this:


To this:


I got some Hanes sweatshirts from the thrift store in new condition, and repurposed them into dresses for the girls.  I made my own pattern using clothes the girls fit into currently.  Chess is bigger, so she didn't get as full a skirt as Lera, which she didn't like.  But both girls enjoy wearing their comfy sweatshirt dresses!

Catch Air

We have been to Monkey Joe's before, but this place is much better for small kids.  Our girls had so much fun and were busy for almost three hours.  At Monkey Joe's, they were tired after 1.5 hours because the climbing is so intense for little legs.  At Catch Air they had more things for kids to play with, not just climb.  They had a couple of big inflatables, too, but a much bigger variety, which we loved.  This is not an advertisement for this place, but we had a lot of fun!










I snuck a jump in the balls, too!




Chess LOVED the dance party.  I didn't know we had such a dancer on our hands!




Our lunch at Zaxby's after our fun time at Catch Air.

Chess writes her name!

I have been working with Chess this school year on some writing skills.  Whenever I have helped her write her name, I have written it with a capital C and the rest lower-case letters.  I heard that if you teach children to write in all caps, they have a hard time changing it when they start school.

Well, Chess happens to have a very difficult name to write, with all curvy letters.  She has loved practicing her C's, but when it came to the other letters, she'd just get frustrated and say she couldn't do it.  She's still young, so of course I didn't push it.

Last week Chess had her first day in the Sunbeam class at church.  Now that she is three and it is a new year, she goes into the big primary room with all the older kids.  Then, she goes to her class with her teacher and the other three-year-olds.

Well, she did great in primary and had a great time.  When she came out and showed me the picture she colored, I saw her name on it.  It was in kid-handwriting and in all caps.  I asked if her teacher helped her write her name.  She said no, she did it by herself!

This child really needs time away from me to learn and grow.  I'm not saying she doesn't learn from me, she does.  But she does not really branch out and challenge herself while I am right there beside her.  She doesn't like me to watch her do something new and amazing (to me, of course).  That's hard for me, but it's fun to know that she can accomplish these things on her own and be proud of herself.

As far as writing in all caps, I guess we will continue practicing her lower-case letters, and as she masters them, she can write them in her name.  Hopefully that will work!

W.W.

Shooting Range Date

After 6.5 years of marriage, we finally accomplished one of our goals: we got a gun.  We bought a .22 rifle and went out to shoot for the first time over Christmas break.  Thanks, Andrea, for babysitting!









I wish we would have taken pictures with our targets, but I forgot.  Next time!

Grandma and Grandpa

We are so glad Jared's parents came into town this holiday season.  We were able to spend some time with the after Christmas and on New Year's Eve.  The last time we saw them was when Lera was a baby, two years ago.  Of course, the girls loved them right away and didn't waste any time being shy or timid around Grandma and Grandpa.


This is after opening their Christmas presents from Grandma and Grandpa.


They love their new dress-up clothes.


Enjoying some root beer freezes with their cousin, Lincoln.


Lera, getting some kisses from Grandma while sitting on the table.

On New Year's Eve, we went over to Jared's brother Trevor's house.  We had a great time talking and eating.  We even had a few early fireworks since we knew we would be leaving to get the kids in bed.


Chess and Lera are getting some cuddle time in with Grandma.


Chess loved the sparklers.


Lera did not love the sparklers.  She is making her scared face (puts her hands over her mouth).


Jared lit a lot of sparklers at one time.  Notice Lera's scared face again in the bottom left corner.

Neither one of the girls liked the bigger fireworks.  It's weird because they enjoyed them on the 4th of July.  I think they just didn't expect to see them so close-up.

We had so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of Jared's family we got to see.  We will try not to make it another two years before we see them again!