Winter Scenes

Aaron has been working on a plane this week and we went out to run the engine today. While he was working on that the kids played on the squishy snow and melty ice. And I got to take a bunch of pretty pictures. Just the winter break we needed!

Right as we got ther we saw a rather large and awfully noisy flock of geese that flew right over our heads, heading south. So cool to watch and to hear.

Zeke helped get things started before he moved on to playing in the snow.

Watching intently.

At one point Nora slipped and landed on the ice on her belly, like a cute little slip-sliding penguin. Unfortunately, her cute belly isn't as insulated as a penguin's, so it was a little traumatic. After that, I put her down in the van to recover. This picture reminds me of the days when Zeke was this size and we went flying every week in the summer. Aww, a cute little girl that loves planes!

More Dressing Up

Going to church on cold January days just seems a little better when you have fancy red clothes to wear. Such good looking kiddos :)

Sight Words, Sight Words Everywhere!

I had plans to spend a lot of time helping Zeke with sight words over Christmas break. But then we all got sick. So we have been attacking sight words ever since. We read books, play Go Fish with flashcards, read scriptures (there are a lot of 'the's, 'and's, 'of's ... etc. in there!), do sight word homework pages, and look for sight words pretty much everywhere. Last week we did some fun other activities. Aaron and Zeke had a drag race (cars could move forward if Zeke could read the words on the flashcard) and we made sight words out of colored pencils and pretzels.  

Zeke loved the pretzel part because he got to eat any word that he spelled :)

We made sure Nora got a pretzel word to eat too. 

Here is my big kid heading to kindergarten about halfway through the year. He sure has grown up a lot in the past 5 months and he is learning fast and doing well. I'm so proud of him for learning to read!

Nora is learning too. She knows her shapes, her colors, numbers 1-10, and all of her alphabet. I'm not sure when she learned all those letters, but one day I heard her naming them all and Aaron and Grandma assured me it wasn't the first time. Little smarty pants!

Winter and Snow

Lots of crazy snow last weekend. Friday morning I expected the drive in Parley's canyon to be slow and snowy but I didn't expect all of the snow in Salt Lake. If I had known how bad it was on the east benches of the valley I probably would have taken the day off! It took an hour to get from the freeway to the University, and then when I left to come home at lunchtime I had to go the long way around the mountain and through Provo. Quite an adventure, but I traveled safely and it felt so good to be home. 

Here's the aftermath in Salt Lake- snowbanks and icicles and cold. 

Yay for beautiful blue skies in Midway. I'm so grateful to escape the fog and smog and mist every night leaving Salt Lake. 

The kids love the snow for as long as they can stand the cold. This winter they have loved shoveling with their-size shovels!