February - here and almost gone!!

Sorry it's been so long between posts. I honestly don't have much to say these days, as we continue to truck along with this year. As my title says, it seems like February just started and here we are, halfway through. 

 

Here is the only one picture I have of them lately. Their newest thing is to pretend like they are having a slumber party. This night, they took early showers then read for almost an hour in Grace's room. Brian and I were totally fine with that. Reading is huge in our house now. They're also getting to the point that they would rather read by themselves than be read to. At night, we are reading chapter books. Our current one is a Laura Ingalls Wilder book (we're going to visit her homestead in South Dakota on vacation this summer, so though we would introduce the kids to her world). We've also read a Lemony Snickets chapter book and Mr. Popper's Penguins, among others. They seem to enjoy this more than picture books, in fact, we don't even read picture books anymore. They read their chapter books (or comic-book style books) to themselves, too, no picture books anymore. Grace is really into these Magic Fairy books, they all love Junie B. and the boys are into Ninjago (this drives me nuts) and super hero chapter books.

 

Not much else has changed in our day-to-day life. We are still in our routine of school, piano, church things, dance and scouts. Grace is doing great selling Girl Scout cookies, she's already made her goal in just 3 days. We will be selling them through March 13th, so if you want some, let us know! The boys had a couple of fun outings with Boy Scouts in February. They went to their first hockey game earlier this month, which they loved (however, Brian doesn't think hockey is the best game to teach kids good sportsmanship). This last weekend, they went to the observatory at Holmes Lake. Even though it was cloudy, they got to learn a little about the stars. They had fun. Since they've been out a lot lately, Grace and I have had quality girl time. We've done some shopping, gone out to dinner and watched movies the boys wouldn't care for (Tinkerbell!). It's nice to spend a little girl time every once in a while! The kids have been pretty healthy this January and February, thankfully enough. We've had our share of really sick winters, so it's nice to be healthy for once! Xander has a touch of a cold right now, and I have a sinus infection, but otherwise, everyone else is well! So glad for that. We're not putting our money towards dr. visits and medicine! That's about all for now! Thanks for looking in on us!

Pinewood Derby

The boys participated in their first ever Pinewood Derby with Cub Scouts last weekend. They worked on their cars for several weeks prior to the event, it's all very scientific. There are aisles set up at Hobby Town for all the things you need to make these cars awesome. Happy to say the boys did a lot of the work themselves.

 

 Painting the cars. That was a bit of a chore. Hard to spray paint outside when it is 15 degrees!

 The finished products. I cut out stencils for them with my die-cut machine I use for scrapbooking. They painted and Brian helped them assemble wheels and weigh (it has to weigh less than 5 oz)

 The day of the race. This was held in the multi-purpose room of their school. Nice and close!

 One heat. Each kid raced their car 4 times, one in each lane. In this picture, Will is in lane 2 and Xander in lane 3. This was one of the later heats. Xander's car fell off the track in his first heat, but he still did pretty good in his later heats. Will's car won all his heats....more on that later.

 Will's car, coming up on the finish line!

 The final scoreboard! That's right folks, Will got 1st place and Xander 3rd! I am so proud of the boys! They did a great job on their cars. You can see Will's average time, 3.7367 and Xander's 3.8307 and that's with only 3 times averaged because of falling off the first time. They only raced against boys in their den, 1st graders, or Tiger Cubs. The other dens like Webelos and Wolf Cub raced against each other separately. But, Will's car got to go to the finals. He did pretty well there, he won 1 heat, but didn't place in the top 4 of overall finishers. Some of those older boys had fast cars!

 

However, winning his den means he gets to race his car again at the district Pinewood Derby race in March, so he is excited about that!

 Xander getting his trophy!

 

Will getting his trophy.

 

 All of the entries in the Tiger Cub den. Some pretty fancy ones!

 

The boys and their trophies! They were pretty excited!

 

Other than this exciting Pinewood Derby day, not much else has been happening around here. It's been so cold that we're just sticking indoors, and tapping our toes impatiently, waiting for spring to arrive! The kids have been enjoying playing lots of video games, and I'm happy to report they've behaved well enough to earn them (that isn't always the case, you know!!). The kids' piano teacher had a baby last week, so we are on a 2 month hiatus from piano lessons. Unluckily for the kids, they have a parent or two who know a few things about piano. So.....I am the piano "teacher" now until we go back after Spring Break. We're just having short, informal lessons on Thursday when we would normally have lessons and I'm just giving them new stuff to practice for the next week. So, we're still chugging along. They are scheduled to play in a festival in April, so we'll start preparing for that soon.

 

Well, that is about all our news for now! Hope everyone is staying warm and dry during these cold days and nights. We sure enjoyed our snow day last week, wouldn't mind one more before the winter is over! Take care!!