Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Arrow of Light

Jace recently earned his "Arrow of Light Award". It is the highest award in Cub Scouts. Here he is receiving the award, and an arrow that actually glows in the dark from a mountain man. It is an impressive ceremony for the boys.
The man who does this ceremony is a big time scouter. He lives in Rigby, but not in our ward. he makes these arrows for the boys. They glow in the dark, and have the boys name on them, as well as leather pieces with the symbols of Bobcat, Bear, Wolf, & Webelos on them. He just does this ceremony because he wants to. Pretty neat.

This is me giving him the actual arrow of light award to go on his uniform. Then he pinned the arrow of light pin on me. It has been neat being his Bear & Webelos leader. Now he is off to the Boy Scout program. Kind of bittersweet for me. He is really excited. Now Spencer is counting down the months until he can join the Cub Scouts in November.

Sledding


Well, our only outside activities lately have been sledding & shoveling snow, shoveling, snow, and well, using our snow blower. The amount of snow is incredible. Yesterday I got stuck in the snow trying to take the kids to piano lessons. We got unstuck and restuck several times until out of desperation, I figured out how to use the snow blower, and cleared our entire driveway. My kids were troupers, they pushed the van, helped me put snow chains in front of the tires, and shoveled out the driveway and around the van. Two HOURS later, I was finally unstuck. Too late for piano, but I made it to my doctor appointment. Whew! Anyway, here are a few more pictures of our sledding day with our friends, the Calls.

Right when we arrived at the hill, we got out of the van, and Mallory sat down on the red sled, and took off like a shot down the hill. I was so surprised, she was FLYING! She started out sitting up, but halfway down the hill, she laid down on the sled. I said: "she is probably terrified!" She came smiling up the hill like this, but she didn't want to go down any more after that. She is always our cheerful little girl!
Spencer snowboarding - fearless!

Courtney just kept climbing up, and sledding down the hill, over and over!

Andrew thinks the snow is great!

Zach thinks it is not so great. He refused to go down the hill even once! Completely refused. He spent most of the time sitting in the van, trying to stay warm.

Aliysa and her friend, Makayla


Andrew rode with Bob several times. After each ride, he wouldn't say anything about it, or show any emotion. No crying, laughing, or responding to questions about it. But when we would ask him if he wanted to go again, he'd waddle over to Bob, and climb on the tube. So we're assuming he enjoyed it. Usually his response to anything is "FUN!" So we were surprised that he didn't say that sledding was "FUN!"


Bob and his good friend, Jeff Call

Jace was pretty amazing on our little snowboard. He would just fly down the hill, and he usually kept his balance until the very end of the hill!

Well, unless we freeze to death, we'll be back to post more soon!
















Monday, January 21, 2008

Misc. notes from our week

Our happenings this week:
Friday we went sledding in Rexburg. Aliysa, Jace & Spencer went off a big jump at the bottom of the hill. I watched and prayed that they wouldn't break anything. Today we plan on going sledding again since Bob is off school.

Bob finished another week of school. He is doing well in his classes. He dropped a writing class since his typing speed is a whopping 10 words per minute. He decided to work on typing before he takes that class, since it requires about 40 pages of typewritten material to be turned in. He added another class, so he is now taking 19 credit hours. All of his classes are on campus this semester, instead of online, so we have had to get used to having him gone all day. It is a big adjustment since we are used to having him home all day. On Thursdays he has a night class from 7-10, so he is gone from 7:30 am to 10:00 pm. He has a few breaks inbetween classes, where he is able to study & do his homework. That makes it nice, so he usually has all his homework done before he gets home each day.
Andrew is talking so much now, it is fun. Our favorite Andrew comment for the week is: "I hurt my little hands". He came up to me, holding up his hands and saying "Oh, I houwt my liwtle hands, oh". I had to kiss them better, and then he was happy. That evening he got his pouty voice again and said "oh, the moose houwt my liwtle hands". On Sundays when we ask him if he went to nursery, he says "yes, FUN!"

On Saturday, we decided get rid of some of our cabin fever (it has been about 14 below zero at night) and do some gymnastics. Here are some pictures:



Zach on the "balance beam"


Andrew on his balance beam.






Mallory on the tumbling mat


Spencer


Jace's amazing tricks



Courtney balancing.















Saturday, January 19, 2008

Toddler science experiments



This is how we found Andrew and Zach one day last month. Notice the bottle of bubble bath on the counter. One of my students at CMCS gave it to me for Christmas. Andrew and Zach found out that it did indeed make great bubbles. Especially when you use over half the bottle in one sink of water.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Our visitors 1/16/08









Today we had two exciting visitors peek into our school room. A male & female moose. They came right up to the window & checked us out. Quite an experience.









Zachary was pretty scared, and I must admit I was ready to grab the kids & run upstairs if the male moose decided charge at the window. He watched us pretty closely, but then they slowly meandered away.