Snow Days

 Caroline really loved the snow and being outside.  She has since learned to say 'ousi.'  We sent her down our little hill with Henry.

 She is having a blast!

 Henry would always turn his head to one side hoping it would get him to turn his sled just a bit.

I love the snow.  I love snow days.  This year Parker actually had two days that were off due to the cold weather.  It didn't get higher than about 5 degrees the whole day.  I really love the days that Willie gets to stay home too.  It doesn't happen often.

High Five.

Lincoln is now FIVE!  We celebrated in the best way we could four our dude.  He absolutely loves Mario Kart.  His every waking moment is spent talking about the game and how he can win or how he didn't do as good as he hoped or mimicking what the characters do when they win or loose.  Lincoln doesn't like big crowds.  At first he didn't want to have a party.  We convinced him to do it.  So we invited the joyschool group.  Nice and small and everyone knew each other.  I will have to say many ideas came from pinterest.  One thing that I like was making lego cars to race.  We did this with Parker's birthday when he turned five, so we had all the pieces to make it work this time.   

The food was awesome, but of course when it's awesome not all kids think it is.  We had jello that looked like clouds from the game.  There were bananas to be like the bananas that you can leave for others to slip on.  We had straws with mustaches.  I couldn't find the cheese balls for the flames on one of the races but instead we had cheese puffs.  I made little pizzas because who doesn't like pizza.  We made little peanut butter sandwiches in star shapes in case someone didn't want pizza.  The best was the cake.  Very little decoration required and it was liked by all.

We tried to play a game where we popped each others balloons but it didn't work out so well but that was suppose to be our 'battle' game.  In the end we let the kids actually play Mario Kart for about 10 minutes.  

As their parting gift they all recieved trophy's and had their picture taken on the winners podium.  Henry didn't want to get in on this action.

Sunday night we had our only family in town come over; Willie's cousin Jamelle and her family.  We were glad to spend time with family.

Lincoln's actual birthday was on a school day.  So we sang to him again with his pancake and let him open the rest of his presents.  Overall I would have to say this kid was spoiled.  We had a lot of fun though.

We are so grateful to have Lincoln in our family.  He can be a pain sometimes but it's all those times where you look at him and he makes a silly face or he knows you would really like a hug and he comes over with a big smile.  Lincoln brings happiness to our home.  He gets along with everyone and he loves to be a leader when given the chance.  He and Henry are the best of friends right now.  Lincoln thanks for all your silliness, your prayers for others, your love for your family.  We love you.

January 2014

Instead of staying up until midnight we celebrated at noon.  The kids were excited to make their shakers in the morning.  By the time noon rolled around we all were a bit unprepared for the celebration.  I tried to make it fun throwing balloons around and shaking the noise makers, but most of the kids looked at me like I was high on something.

 Before our friend Todd the Elf left us he made snowflakes for us.  We decided to keep them hanging up until winter was over.  I love snow!

 We tried our best to keep any snow that we received.  The front of our home doesn't get a whole lot of sunshine so this helps us to keep that snow.  Henry went sledding on his own one day.

 Sometimes we do silly things when we have to stay inside.

 Another storm.  I was testing out settings on our camera to find out which would work best.  I love the snow falling in the pictures.

 For Joyschool we tried to get ready for the olympics.  We played 'minute-to-win-it' games.  I love the spaghetti in playdough and then using cheerios for a fine fingered activity.  I love their concentration on this game.  I had them do it a couple of times to see if they could beat their last score of how many cheerios they got in one minute.

 We also raced cups across the table.  We made our own olympic rings and took pictures of our olympians by the American Flag.

 Bowling was our last olympic event.

 Henry is three and he still does what he did when he was a newborn, sucking his thumb and playing with his hair.

 Caroline loves to wear hats.

Lincoln celebrated his 5th birthday with his joyschool buddies.  The theme was Mario Kart.  Oh my how that kid LOVES mario kart.