February

The kids returned to in person learning on January 25th. On the second day the kids were back in school we got snow. It was snowing when they woke up so they got ready for school real quick and went outside to play. It barely stuck, but up on the balcony there was enough to make a few icy snowballs.

During school it started snowing again and stuck a little more than earlier in the morning, and since this is a once every couple of years kind of occurrence, the teachers let the kids go outside and play in the snow a little. 

The kids are happy to be back to regular church activities this year. At least mostly. Rachel still only has a couple of young women activities each month instead of every week, but something is better than nothing. Ryan and Annie both have primary activities a couple of times a month. The girls always meet outside a little earlier than they normally would so they can have sunlight because it's safer for COVID times to meet outside and I think their leaders are more cautious. The boys meet at the church at their regular time. So every other Tuesday we have Annie drop off at 4pm, pick up at 5pm, Ryan drop off at 6 pm, Ryan pickup/Rachel drop off at 7pm, and Rachel pickup at 8pm. Luckily we share driving with Todd and Savannah, so it's not so bad.

Last month Ryan's primary activity group made mouse trap cars. Ryan's was the only one that got finished and it worked impressively well. It's a little blurry here, but basically the mousetrap had a dowel attached to it and a string on the end of the dowel wrapped around an axle, so as the mousetrap snapped closed it pulled the string, making it unwind from around the axle, turning the axle and therefore the wheels, making the car move.

Because Annie's class was quarantined the last week before Christmas break they missed their winter wonderland party that they had planned. Once they got back to in person school at the end of January, they finally got to make their own winter wonderland scenes.

Speaking of quarantine, Ryan's class had someone test positive for COVID, so I got a phone call while I was at Peyton and Kenzie's house helping with school saying I needed to come get Ryan because his class was now in quarantine. Thankfully Grandma Knight was available to run over and pick him up while I finished helping the girls. He's been home for a week and a half and gets to go back to in person school this Wednesday.

Rachel has been getting into digital art lately. She bought herself a stylus and researched different drawing apps on the iPad and spends a lot of time creating now. Here are some of her recent pieces. Notice the shading.

I ordered more stackable water containers to increase our water storage. Before I got around to filling them up Megan and Ryan had a lot of fun stacking them like huge legos. 

After having them in our entry way cluttering things for over a week I finally got around to filling them and put them out in the garage, which then snowballed to me cleaning the garage, so now we have more water storage and a cleaner garage. Win-win.

Megan had a lot of wispy hair growing in, so much so that it looked a lot like bangs. I pointed this out and she started begging for bangs, so I gave in after a couple of days. She loves her bangs (despite her "grumpy" face below).

The big water containers came in two huge boxes. Annie decided they'd make a great fort and set to work decorating and constructing. When she had finished it she put a clear cup over a flashlight to make it into a lantern and took a book inside to read for a while. Quite cozy.

We discovered that because of COVID there are many church history sites that are doing live tours via zoom. Because last week we were studying the restoration of the priesthood I set up a time yesterday to join one of the live tours. We invited everyone over to watch with us.

It was nice, but the kids got squirrely after a while. Cool to see what the Hale family home and the Smith's first home would have looked like, though. It would be cool to be able to actually go there someday and walk in the woods and see the Susquehanah River and all.

After the tour we played Drawful2 with all the cousins. They all had a fun time. That game is definitely a new family favorite, though when it's just my kids they always fight over who has to have the phone. We have 3 tablets (2 kindles and an iPad) and those are bigger, and therefore easier to draw on. But they seem to manage well enough. Especially because the name of the game already assumes pretty awful drawings. :) 

Today was Valentine's Day and the kids were happy to receive a few candies and a new cup and mini stuffy. And some stuff from Grandma, too. Shannon even got the kids each a stuffed animal and chocolate. Megan had apparently requested a panda a few weeks ago, and Shannon was all too wiling to comply. She's such a great neighbor and loves our kids so much, and they love her right back.