Discovering the world around him

Joseph is suddenly crawling everywhere and in to everything. He loves splashing in toilets...

dragging toilet paper as far as he can

climbing stairs.

He also loves dumping the dogs water bowl... eating dogfood...eating paper...
He is cute little booger, but he is keeping us very, very busy.

Pinewood Derby

Saturday the girls raced their cars in the Pinewood Derby for Girl Scouts.
Daddy worked very hard over the past couple weeks helping them build their cars. Addy chose to do a cheese car, and we found two little mice to ride along in it.

Savannah wanted a cat car, loved the Cheshire cat idea, but it was hard to figure out how to carve a cat out of a block of wood, so she settled for this car with the Cheshire cat picture on it.

Because I signed the girls up through Savannah's troop instead of paying separately Addy ended up being clumped with the first graders. The second graders raced the hour before. She seemed okay with it because she still saw her friends prior to the race, but as you continue to read on you will find out why having two sisters race eachother is not the best idea.

They get to do 4 races, there are about 30 cars competing. After the four races they average all the times together and come up with the best time overall. Four cars race at a time. In the first race the girls ended up being together, We quickly split them up when Savannah got first place and Addy second place.

Addy's car ended up being first place in 4 of her races.

Savannah's car ended up being first place in all 4 of her races.

In the end Addy's car placed third!

Here are all the girls that competed. Click on the picture above and take a close look at Savannah's face. It wasn't until this picture was taken that Savannah realized Addy had gotten a trophy because She took third place. They only gave out trophys to the first,second and third place, but everyone received a ribbon.

Poor Savannah... her car was so fast. In the third race her car flipped over she had to do a do over. It was at that time that the guys turned her car around and raced it backwards for race 3 and 4. This slowed down her overall time, otherwise I think she may have taken second place. Any time any car had any problems going down the track they flipped it around to race backwards something about not enough weight being in front.

Addy was so excited about her trophy. She was so good to Savannah and quickly pointed out to Savannah that Savannah already had two trophys at home and Addy only had one so now they both had two trophys. She really smoothed things over for Savannah. It could have been so much worse.

We are friends with the Dad that kept score, and so he wrote this out for Allen. Savannah ended up being in 4th place. Can you believe it. I think Allen was very happy the cars did so well.

Overall it was a very fun experience.

getting rid of cabin fever

Finally a couple of days outdoors. We sure needed it. There are no pics of Joseph because he just wasn't happy in any of the pics. These were taken a few days ago and Joseph was in the UCC that day being treated for Croup. He is much better today. Hooray!

Funny little boy

Here is a replay of this mornings conversation.

Location: parking lot

"Thomas hurry up and sit down in your seat so I can buckle you in... We need to get home, Mommy needs to go potty"

"Just pee in the snow... just pee in the snow Mommy!"

"No Mommies don't go in the snow Thomas."

"Oh! Only Thomas pee in the snow?"

"Yes, but I would rather you go in the potty too!"


Below is the reason this conversation today occurred


Last Saturday Allen took the kids to go sledding at a nearby park. Apparently Thomas (recently potty trained) had to go "pee" really bad. So, Daddy's solution was to just go in the snow. I learned of this later that day from Thomas who had proudly exclaimed to me "Guess what I peed in the snow today Mommy! I just pulled down my snow pants and went..."

Well, as you can see he now thinks this is an option any old time.

Funny little boy...

My little Ice Skater

At the beginning of January Savannah started taking Ice Skating Lessons. She is having a blast. It is one 30min class each Sunday, and she counts down the days in between until her next lesson. I am so proud of her because she is trying so hard. She falls down lots but picks her self right back up. She has not shed one tear. This is one time each week that we can count on seeing huge smiles on Savannah's face.

She has a good friend in her class that has taken lessons before and is pretty good, but she hasn't let this frustrate her at all. Savannah just keeps on trying harder.

Allen and I couldn't be more proud of her.

In February Addy is going to start taking Art classes. In May Thomas is going to start playing Soccer! I think Savannah would like to continue with another round of ice skating lessons, but we'll have to see. The kids all usually start Swim lessons back up in March too.

Goofing around with the boys

Thomas asked if we could take some pics together, so here are a couple of the ones we took together. He had so much fun doing this.

More laughing from Thomas...

Joseph laughing too.

The New playroom

In case you missed the previous post. Allen has been working on building new shelves for the playroom. Here they are unpainted. Here is the chalkboard from my childhood getting a new coat of paint.

Here are the shelves getting painted in the garage. The girls helped Allen paint them. They had to have 4 space heaters running to keep the garage warm enough to work out there.

Here the shelves are in the playroom, loaded with toys. As you can see the kids have already been drawing away on the chalkboard. Allen also put magnetic primer on it so magnets work too.

Here is the other side of the room.

Saturday Afternoon

While I took the kids to the park to play...

Allen was at home making this for toys to Stay....

Can you believe he whipped this up in a Saturday.

Anyone want to come help paint before we put this in the playroom??????

Mom, Dad are you reading this?

I like to Eat

Floor Cleaner

Who needs this...
when you have this...

and now this...

Joseph who is now very mobile...figured out that if he sat patiently on the floor near Thomas he might just get some of that powdered donut that looked so good.