Fun Stuff!

Audrey has loved her 1st year of dance- she loves sharing it with her favorite doll, too!

Elaina continues to enjoy ballet and jazz!

Watch out for these guys.... just advanced up to the next belt levels!

Our happy "Bubble Gum Girl"  

Our whole family ran the Superhero 5K as a finale to the 2nd grade Superhero unit and to benefit abused kids.

April

Elaina and I went to Columbus for an overnight and visit to the American Girl store.  We stayed in a hotel with a friend and her mom and enjoyed dinner out, lots of time in the pool and made some great memories!

Sill loves to decorate eggs but doesn't want to eat them in the shell this year!

Cold day with the Easter Bunny!

Easter egg hunt with the cousins

Love this walk to the bus stop!

March

I still have one who likes to get herself and her stuffed animals decked out for St. Patrick's Day!

We had shamrock pretzels for dinner

and rainbow cupcakes for dessert this St. Patty's Day! 

We get pretty stir crazy in March so I decided to make a big deal of this once in a century day:
Pie Day:  3.14.15
Celebrated with Pizza pie and Oreo pie

Snow Fun!!

We have had another cold winter this year and recently it's been snowy enough and not too frigid to get out and play.  Grammy and Grandpa had us over last weekend for even more snow fun!!

Warming up by the fire with some hot chocolate

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Colored snow/snowmen is so much fun!!

Audrey and I had the perfect snowman building snow one afternoon after she got home from school!

Of course he chose yellow  :-)

The kids went on a colored ice hunt- hard to believe that a month from now we will be doing egg hunts!!

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Valentine Boxes

I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day.  It's nice, but always way overdone in my opinion.  I never remember making Valentine boxes as a kid- either we didn't do it in NY or it never made a big impression, I don't know.  Anyway, it's quite the tradition around here.  I am always glad when the kids make their box or bag at school, which is sometimes the case.  This year all 3, even our 4th grader, had to make a box at home.  They were all excited and into doing it, thankfully, and now that they are older they can pretty much do it themselves.  I had to take pictures because I thought each kid did a great job and suited them perfectly.

Leopard print duck, tape- need I say more about this one?!

She liked someone else's idea so went with the duck tape but is always thinking of others and knows her dad loves cheese even more than she does, so it is to give to him on Valentine's Day once she is done with it at school.

Big brown box, other large pieces of cardboard, sliver duck tape, masking tape, and 2 detailed maps of the layers of the ocean, complete with a giant squid floating at the bottom.  Happy Valentine's Day!

Birthday time again!!

We had a great weekend celebrating Elaina's 8th and Owen's 10th birthdays.  What a blessing they both are to our family!!!

Firsts

Owen had some big firsts during his birthday month this year!

Robotics Final Competition- their team came in 27th place out of 65 teams.  Great finish for a brand new, young team!!

Owen was dubbed "Ring Man," appropriately for this contraption he built to make the robot move and place a ring- and it worked consistently for all 3 rounds!

They had to research and present a project for this competition as well.  Their team's choice was a very informative presentation on composting.

We also enjoyed going to his first band concert.  It was amazing to listen to how much these first year musicians accomplished in just 15 weeks!