Rain or shine

These kids are serious about their afternoon screen time...  They have to spend at least 15 minutes outside with the dog before they play games on their kindle.  Even on a rainy day, they were out there with an umbrella! 

desert, mountains, and ocean

This wasn't a very cute project, but they got good cutting practice trying to follow the lines.

 The graham cracker mountains were a pinterest idea, which didn't turn out quite as well as I hoped.  It was supposed to show how the plates push together to form mountains.  It was yummy to eat our mountains though, with graham crackers dipped in milk over coolwhip.

Caine's Arcade

You may have heard of Caine's Arcade - which started with one boy's creation of cardboard arcade games and turned into a movement.  Schools across America (and maybe globally) are now participating in this movement to foster imagination and creativity.  The 4th graders at Jared's school all made their own arcade game, and Jared made this basketball game.  He did everything on his own in putting it together.  

"In-tents" camping birthday party

We enjoyed a fun camping trip in Morro Bay with friends.  Owen's friend Becca wanted a camping birthday party, so they invited friends to an "in-tents" camping party.  It was a lot of fun.  They reserved a nice big group site, away from the other sites.  We were all able to put up our tents and have plenty of room for the kids to play.  The kids enjoyed running around in nature, even after it got dark.  I brought some glow sticks that the kids used, which was helpful for keeping track of the little ones.  We had hotdogs for dinner and smores and brownies for dessert.  Nathan and 2 of his friends cooked breakfast in the morning, to fulfill a scouting requirement.  They did a good job on the sausage and french toast.  

I guess what I forgot to take a picture of for our "in-tents" party was the tents!  There were quite a few of them.  

Check out these camping bunkbeds (they're not ours, but we may have to get some)!

runnin' along

Jog-a-thon time again!  I'm not sure how far each lap is, but it is probably about 1/8 of a mile.  The kids ran for 30 minutes.  Owen may have done about 2 miles total.  Most of the kids stop every time around for water!  It seemed like Owen had a lot of fun out there.  Weston ran a couple of laps.  It was cute to see Owen and Weston holding hands for one of those laps.  Savannah and I did one lap, but she wasn't interested in doing any more.  We ended up being out there for an hour, because the K and 1st graders ran together.  Then the 4-6th grade ran later.  (I guess next year, we'll be out there for 1.5 hours with one kid in each group...)

Nathan and Jared ran most of the time, with much less water stops, although not a fast pace.  Jared ran 23 and Nathan did 26 laps.  If it is about 1/8 mile, then Nathan did about 3 1/4 miles and Jared did a little less than 3.  I suspect the laps may have been a little more than 1/8th, but not more than 1/7th. Regardless, they were tired and sweaty by the time they got done.  

  

Savannah's wall art

It's dangerous to take a shower sometimes... she said it was "for Baba".  Grandmas, here you go!  Luckily it was not a sharpie and I had a Magic Eraser.

sharing a little bit of love...

We made valentine pizzas - you can't see it very well, but the pepperoni is heart-shaped.  

We also did these cute bees and bears.  

Jared decided to make valentines for his class, but waited until the night before to make them.  I told him to find something on-line that he could do and make them.  He decided to make little paper boxes, and we had a bunch of suckers that we were going to put in each one.  However... he carefully folded all the boxes, complete with lids, and then realized the suckers didn't fit.  We searched around the house for something else that would fit in there, but we couldn't come up with anything.  I had already been to the store that evening, and it was 10:30pm and I didn't want to go out again.  So I decided to whip up some snickerdoodle cookies.  I guess it would have been faster to go out again and buy candy at the store, but the cookies were cheap and fit well in the little box.  I think it was about 11:30 by the time we got all done.  

Nathan went the easy route and printed off tags that said "Happy Valentine's Day" and a sucker taped to it. Owen's class made their valentines during class time, so we didn't have to worry about those.

Valentine's Day was pretty low key.  We went to church, which was a special regional conference, broadcast from Salt Lake City to most of the west coast.  Before that began, there was 30 minutes for the local congregations to have the choir sing and a talk by the stake presidency.  Nathan and I sang in the choir for that.  Elder Renlund, one of the new apostles, was the main speaker for the broadcast.  

Alex made chili and lemonade for dinner, and I made M&M cookies for dessert.  Savannah let me curl her hair a little bit, although it wasn't holding the curl very well for some reason.  Her hair is getting pretty long!  She looked cute in her red dress.

Jim's February visit!

Jim came to visit for a few days in February.  He mostly got to go to YMCA basketball games and pinewood derby.  Some of them went to the beach once, and Alex, Jim, and I got to go out for lunch while Owen was at a birthday party.  We had some other plans originally, but our suburban had trouble that weekend and was out of commission.  So we had to leave Nathan home babysitting kids while we went to Owen and Jared's games and party.  Lunch without kids was kind-of nice!

Jim got to play quite a bit of games and read books to Owen and Weston.  They're not great about personal space...Owen is especially fond of uncle Jim, but Weston was pretty clingy too.  Owen was nearly in tears when it was time for Jim to go home. 

These are the only pictures I took from the weekend! 

cub scout fun

The theme for this year's pinewood derby was wild animals.  Jared chose to do a mustang, as you can see in his design below, right?  :)  There were some pretty cool looking cars that won for design.  And unfortunately his car wasn't very fast - pretty much on par with cars from our family... so no awards for speed either.  He had fun though.  

We also had the annual blue and gold dinner in February.  Jared and the Bears did a skit about penguins who decide to break out of the zoo and go surfing.  They sang part of the Beach Boys "Surfin' USA."  Jared got a couple of awards - "Fellowship and Duty to God" and "Grin and Bear it".

He's grinning!  

  

frogs, caterpillars, and butterflies

We didn't see a lot of butterflies on our hike, but it was a beautiful day for a picnic lunch outing.  

drum, strum, and shake

We had fun with music!  Weston really got into the drums.  Savannah was more interested in eating Oreos, but she liked dancing around.  She did the drums for about as long as Weston did the guitar... love how he says, "I'm done doing this" (after about 10 seconds of playing).