January Videos

 

Spelling Tests and Snow

The kids both came home with 100% on their spelling tests this week! They usually get 100% or just miss 1 or 2 occasionally. Jeremy and I are hoping they got my "spelling genes." I just hope they get his math genes as the math gets harder!! 

In terms of handwriting, Nathan writes more like Jeremy and Elizabeth writes more like me. 

We should have lots of time to practice our spelling this morning as we are on ANOTHER 2 hour delay. Let's hope this snowstorm breaks our ALL TIME SNOW record. We only needed .8 more of an inch to break the record. Then, we can say we lived through the most snow ever here in Tri Cities. We can already say that about Spokane. We (barely) lived through the snowiest ever winter there. 

Cascade Mountains

Jeremy and I went to Seattle last week and I took some pretty pictures of the drive. 

We went the Snoqualmie Falls way and made a quick stop by the falls. It was 45 degrees so I thought it would feel warm compared to the 10 degrees it was at home. Yet it somehow still felt really cold? 

Bangs

Elizabeth has been begging me for bangs for a while. They will take a bit more maintenance, but hopefully her hair is straight enough they will lie flat and not be too much to work with. Here she is with her new bangs. 

Outdoor Sportsman's Show

The kids and Jeremy went to the Sportsman's Show this weekend. 

Elizabeth enjoyed the animals. 

They had a few orphan animals there for the kids to look at. They were kept at quite a distance!

Tiger cub

Grown up tiger

Baby Cougar

They tried to catch fish in the fishing pond. Apparently, no fish were biting. They were full from all the extra treats they were getting all weekend. 

Elizabeth got a nibble so she was excited about that. 

Elizabeth's favorite part was the table of rocks. 

She found lots of pretty things to look at. 

Nathan practiced shooting a bow and arrow. 

Nathan decided to wear all his camo clothes for such an occasion. 

He also did some target shooting. 

He tried to catch a fish again but was unsuccessful. One of the people there was cleaning out the pond and accidentally grabbed one so she gave it to Nathan. So he did have fish for dinner! 

Pinewood Derby

Nathan's cub scout pack had their Pinewood Derby on Saturday. 

Here are the cars from the 3rd grade boys in his Bear Den. Nathan wanted to do a "Thin Blue Line" car. His is the black car with the blue stripe. 

Nathan eating his wrap and watching the races. 

Nathan's name up on the board for the races. 

After his race with his car. He didn't win and was sad. This was his and Jeremy's first year of making the car. They will make a faster car next year!

Chatting with the other boys. 

There were a few breakdowns of the track so Jeremy had to fix things. 

Snow Day #7

Today was Snow Day #7!

The roads were still complete ice skating rinks this morning so no one went to school. It is too bad I don't own any ice skates as I could have easily skated up and down the roads the last few days!

However, the sun came out today. It was blue sky all day and 40+ degrees! The main roads are now all totally fine. The residential streets are still terrible and will ice over again tonight. Our driveway is just a sheet of ice since it's on the north side of the house and even though it was warm, no sun hit it so it didn't improve. The people across the street now all have perfect driveways since the sun hits over there!

The kids did some more playing outside and said it was so warm they could take their coats off!

Here's hoping to only a 2 hour delay tomorrow.

Although we're supposed to get a new round of snow coming in this weekend. Yay!

Snow Day #6

We now have a fun new adventure. It's called freezing rain. No school today because the roads were seriously ice skating rinks. I wish our kids had ice skates. They could have been skating up and down the road. I saw a video of some kids in Moses Lake doing so! 

They thought it was fun to slide down the driveway on just their bottoms. 

The vehicle parked outside was just covered in ice. 

We are now in school until June 16th. 

Elizabeth's rocks

Elizabeth's obsessions is rocks. She picks them up everywhere and has many different collections. She has some in a box. She has some that she chipped out of a rock (Christmas present). 

Elizabeth got a rock tumbler for Christmas. Elizabeth and Jeremy started off with these jagged rocks that came with the tumbler. They also added a few more of Elizabeth's favorites. Then, the put them in the tumbler. They switched grits a few times. The last one was called "polish." 

Here are the finished products. They are very smooth and shiny. They are much smaller! Now, Elizabeth has more pretty rocks to add to her collection.

Here she is posing with all of her favorites. 

Antiques

Today, Elizabeth asked me what an antique was.

I told her I thought it was a special item that was probably 100 years old.

She said, "Wow, Gram's house is just FULL of antiques! Everything there is really old. Did you grow up in an antique house?"

Dryer Lint

Continuing in my series of ridiculous things the kids fight over....

Lately, the fight has been over who gets to empty the dryer lint trap.

When they hear the dryer buzz, there is a race to the dryer to see who gets there first. It is usually Nathan, so then Elizabeth cries and cries and says she wants to be the one to get to do the lint.

As usual, I had to make the rule that Nathan gets to retrieve the lint on odd days, and Elizabeth gets to retrieve the lint on even days.

At least they are attempting to do laundry, I guess.

It's not as bad as the fights over the dried up playdoh or the carpet fuzz.

Basketball

One of our neighbors is on the Richland basketball team so we went to watch her play last night! Her team was playing their rival Hanford. Sadly, she didn't play in the game until the last 4 minutes. However, she had a great 4 minutes. She hit a 3 point shot!

Nathan enjoyed watching the game. Elizabeth liked it, but her attention span wasn't quite as long. We had brought her coloring supplies so she colored with her friend Charlotte.

Here she is dribbling the basketball down court. 

We stuck around to watch the boys game too. 

The teams running out before the game. Hanford had  a LOT of cheerleaders. 

Nathan was interested in watching all the ongoing events. He liked the band, the cheerleaders, and the Hanford gear they were selling. He wanted a Hanford scarf and Elizabeth wanted the pom poms. Elizabeth kept running into several of her 1st grade friends. It seemed all the little girls had coloring books and crayons. I guess she wasn't the only one with parents who brought entertainment!

The game tip off! Richland had a very tall player who was 7'3." Of course, he did the tip off. Just for reference, the Hanford guy jumping is 6'1" and looked very short! 

Nathan was amazed at how tall that guy was. Most all of the guys out there were over 6 feet, but that guy made them all look so tiny! 

It was very cold walking in and out of the game. It was 1 degree! Jeremy was lucky enough to find a somewhat close parking spot. 

Practicing Magic

Here are a few pictures I took awhile ago of Elizabeth practicing her magic tricks. 

This is pulling a rabbit out of a hat. 

Some kind of "disappearing under the cup" trick. 

Snow Day #5

Today is Snow Day #5! Hopefully, today will be the last full day of no school. It's finally stopped snowing this morning and is supposed to get REALLY cold. 

The kids have been busy digging tunnels. Here is Nathan peeking out of one of his. 

Scrambling through his tunnel. 

Elizabeth built a snow cave to block the wind. She pretends she's a little arctic fox that curls up. 

With help from the 12 year old next door, they were able to build her a tunnel. 

Sledding down the huge snow berms. 

An overview of our snow.