Pinewood Derby

Last night we had our pack's pinewood derby. Our pack is made up of two combined wards. There were 17 boys competing last night. The top 2 boys from each den goes on to the district competition. Last year, Brian's car came in first for his den. That meant that he wanted the exact same car design this year, only in silver. Each car raced 4 times on each track. You can see Brian's car closest to the adult on one of the outside lanes. His car had fire bird on it this year. The track is totally electronically done. It is started by the computer and is timed on the end by the computer as well to the nearest thousandths of a second.
As usual, the kiddos got to sit in front to watch the races. They all had a lot of fun watching the cars race by. Most of the families in our ward sat by each other while watching the races. Brian won every race but 2. He came in 2nd in one race and then 3rd in another. As far as we could tell, he was 3rd overall in the whole pack, but they didn't announce official standings. They only announced the winner and runner-up for each den.

Brian won for the Bear den. He kept telling me that he was going to win again this year, since he won last year too. I kept telling him that he may not win again this year, but obviously I was wrong and he was right. He got a cool certificate and flashlight as the prize. He is excited that he gets to go to the district competition this year.

Here he is checking out his flashlight and candy prize when all was said and done.

Good job Brian!!! Way to build an awesome car!!! And good luck at districts!!!

Friday afternoon

Friday we enjoyed another lovely day here!! The high was just about 50 and the sun was shining. As soon as everyone was home from school, we headed outside to play. We have had lots of rain and the back yard was really muddy, but the children all had a wonderful time on the driveway drawing all sorts of things. Weston got everyone started by promising awards for the best picture, etc! :) Soon, all 5 were busy coloring up the driveway! Thank goodness we had a lot of chalk!

Even Evan loved coloring. He would mark away on the driveway, telling me what each line of his drawing was. He drew lots of choo choo trains and spiders. And then he went to "help" the others with their pictures. Luckily for me, most of the others were not too upset when their masterpieces got extra coloring. I have such good, easy going children. I am thankful for that! :)

Weston taught Amber how to draw a house. So she went around drawing houses and sunshines all over the place. Weston also showed her how to make a tree too. Then Amber and I had about 5 million rounds of tic-tac-toe.

Aaron drew the biggest house, or rather, castle on the driveway. Weston told him that he got a prize for the biggest piece of art. It is not like there was any kind of tangible prize, just praise and the spoken award. That seemed just fine to everyone.

These posted out of order. This was supposed to be the last one. By the time all was said and done, the entire driveway was full of artwork. I traced the children's body outlines and Weston traced some of his siblings shadows. We stayed out till it got dark. I didn't even care that I had nothing prepared for dinner. It was worth it for the amount of fun that we had enjoyed on the warm, wonderful afternoon. The kids then went in and got the playroom cleaned up spotless while I ordered a pizza for dinner!! :) It was a fun, fun day for all of us!

As you can see here, they drew all the way back in the driveway too. By the end of the afternoon, there were drawings all the way back behind the goal as well.

Days like these make me excited for the Spring time (which really won't be here till April, but I can still dream, right?!) when the days will be warm and the trees will get their leaves again. Like I said before, all in all, it was a perfect kind of day!

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's day this week, Evan, Amber and I made some yummy sugar cookies. They love to help me dump in all of the ingredients and mix. I baked them up, and then when they were cool enough, they helped me to frost and sprinkle them. (and well, they ate some too!)
Evan was quite independent while making his cookies. He did a fairly good job on his own, and could even put on the sprinkles! If I wanted more than just a dab of frosting in the middle of the cookies, I had to help, but he had quite a fun time on his own. So fun, in fact, that he didn't even want to look up for me to take his picture. He kept his eyes focused on the cookie and would say, "cheese," without even looking up. :)

Amber's cookies were dripping with frosting, as you can see in this picture! There was quite a lot of finger licking as she made and ate hers. Since both little ones had a runny nose, and since I really wasn't that crazy about the rest of the family catching that same cold, after frosting about 5 or 6 cookies each, I took them up and frosted the rest for everyone else to eat later on after dinner.

It was quite the fun morning. We also made heart Valentines for everyone in the family. I thought that Amber would enjoy that more than Evan, to tell the truth, but Evan actually stayed with the activity longer than Amber did. He drew all sorts of great things on his hearts, telling me what each thing was, and who it was for. It was very sweet! Since Amber is learning to read (mostly the names of her family members at this point and simple words like stop, go, yes, no, etc) she wanted to write each person's name on the valentines. She did a great job on it too!

For dinner that night, I made home made heart pizzas! I even cut the pepperonis in the shape of hearts. The cut pepperonis were totally lost of the boys, but Amber at least noticed!! Barth had eaten one whole piece of his pizza before Amber told me how much she liked the heart pepperonis. At that point, he, and the other boys, noticed!! :) So silly! Barth got me the little white bear that is hidden in this picture, and the enormous balloon for Valentines day, as well as a new metronome for the piano since Evan decided a few months back to see if mine was aerodynamic. (Which we all know wasn't!) All in all, it was a wonderful day!!!

So funny :)

I went in to check on the kiddos last night before going to bed and found Amber like this!! :) It made me laugh! It looks like she took one of her brothers' hats!!!

Playing Moon Dough

For Christmas Aaron got some moon dough. It is similar to play dough, but not quite the same. Evan and Amber have had a blast playing with it for the last few weeks. If I let them, they would paint and do moon dough all day, every day. :) The other day we were at Target, and they had a set of moon dough that had these animal molds with it on clearance for not very much, so we got that too. Amber has really enjoyed doing the animal molds.
Evan likes for me to make a ball out of the moon dough so that he can cut it into little bits. He tells me that it is pizza and then comes over and offers me some "lunch" of pizza moon dough.

In order to do the animal molds, Amber first has to stuff the moon dough into the little purple container that she is holding. Then it attaches to the blue thing that you see there with the handle.

Little walking feet go at the bottom, and as Amber cranks the mold down, it winds the feet up. Once the mold gets to the bottom, it pops open and the little animal guy pops out and walks! The kids think that it is great fun!!!

It provides for hours of fun!!! Especially now when it is not quite warm enough (or dry enough) to play outside in the mornings. :)

Warm winter days

We have been enjoying unseasonably warm weather here. That means that we have had lots of days this last week to play outside after school. We have loved the warm 50 and 60 degree days!! The other days when we were playing outside, the kids decided to go on the hunt for wild onions.

Since there are no leaves on the trees, so therefore no active poison ivy, it meant that "the jungle" was safe to explore in

Amber and Evan just wanted to "plant trees" by sticking sticks in the ground!

Weston and Brian scouted all around the yard for the biggest grouping of onions. Then they would take them over to a tree stump to separate them out and see who got the biggest ones.

All in all, I have been loving the weather. It reminds me of Texas. The kids keep wishing for snow, but I don't really think we are going to get much this year. Just lots of rain. :)

The ground hog saw his shadow yesterday, but in all honesty, if we have 6 more weeks of this kind of winter weather, I wouldn't mind it at all!!!

Daily happenings

We don't have anything too terribly exciting going on around here. Aaron has decided though that he wants to make his lunch everyday just like Weston and Brian. And, of course, I love having my kids be more independent!! :) Here is Aaron making his lunch in the morning before school. He has to stand on a step stool so that he can reach things on the counter, but he doesn't mind one bit!
For Mommy school lately we have been doing a lot of painting. Sorry that the pictures turned out blurry, I took them with my phone because I couldn't find my camera (which was in plain sight on the fireplace mantle!) at the time!! Evan loved to paint pictures. Mommy school just isn't complete these days with out painting!!

Amber has had just as much fun as Evan! She enjoys painting her name and mixing the colors to see what they make! Amber is starting to read things. She is aware of all the signs everywhere and always asks what each says. We started her word box and she loves reading the words back to me!! I can't believe she is getting so big!!

Ice

Last weekend we had freezing rain. That meant that everything was covered in ice on Saturday. The children wished that it was snow, but were excited to go out and go "ice skating" on the deck that afternoon. That was the only place that I would let them go. The sloping driveway was much too dangerous.
It may look like the back wall of our house was wet, but believe me, it was solid ice! Check out the grill cover!!
Luckily for us, it wasn't too terribly much ice, and it warmed up quickly, so the ice really only lasted Saturday.
It sure was pretty to look at though. :)

These guys were wishing that it would have happened on a school day so they could have a day off. We haven't had a single day off of school yet this year. Not only that, but it is supposed to get up to 60 on Tuesday!!! We have never had such a warm winter since we have lived here. It gets cold for a day or two, and then warms up again. We have had tons of rain, but very little snow!!

The spout on the roof just looked awesome!! :)

Happy to be outside picking icicles!

It looks like the deck it wet, but man was it slippery! I think that Evan fell like 5 times on it!

The boys were dying to head down the stairs on the deck to go and get these icicles on the recycle container. It was way too slick though, so I went down and got each of the kiddos one icicle.

We have had a fairly odd winter this year, but I don't mind!! I have enjoyed the warmer weather. It reminds me of Texas winters. :) And if we don't have any snow days this school year, there is a very good possibility that we could be out of school before the middle of May! And honestly, that would just be fabulous!!!

Sleep

The other night when I was checking on the children before I headed to bed, I thought that they all looked so peaceful that I just had to snap each one of their pictures with my phone.

Things are fairly calm and actually quite boring or hum drum around here. We have no extra curricular activities right now other than scouts on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The weather has been fairly warm for here, though we did have ice this past weekend. This weekend I will be signing Amber up for preschool for next year. Even though her birthday is before the deadline here, I will wait to send her to Kindergarten. I know she will enjoy preschool. :) Weston just got a piece to practice for Solo and Ensemble in March. I will accompany him. Brian is a reading machine. So far, in this month alone, he has gotten 35 accelerated reader points. Aaron is excited for the 100th day of school this coming Wednesday!! His reading has exploded and enjoys reading chapter books on his own in the evening at bed time like his bigger brothers. Evan is talking up a storm. He speaks in full sentences. The other day he came up, on his own, to say, "Mommy, I wub you!" That always melts my heart!! He is growing up so fast! They all are really!!