Family Time

Danielle's age group at church is having an Amazing Race - Family Style challenge. We were given a calendar at the beginning of the month with 24 different ideas on it for spending time together as a family. To participate, you have to do 15 activities and document each one with a photo. All 15 photos have to be emailed to the church by 2/1. Then all the entrants get their name entered in a drawing for indoor waterpark tickets. Our church is huge, so I don't know how much of a chance Danielle really has, but it was fun. A lot of these things we do anyway, so we just had to remember to take a picture at some point. Here are the 15 photos we submitted.

Do a family art project.
We've done this before and thought it would be fun to do again. It was! More on this tomorrow.

Exercise as a family.

Pick a chore day.

Do a 5-10 minute family devotional.

Eat dinner as a family.
We do this every single night but I can never remember to take a picture! This was Ron's birthday dinner.

Choose a family verse and post it in your house.
Danielle really wanted this verse, so we picked it and hung it in our downstairs bath. 

Play a board game.

Make a meal together.
Ever hear the saying "too many cooks in the kitchen"?! Enough said.

Watch a movie together.
We do this almost every Friday night, plus we went to the theater this month, but I never got a picture. I did get a picture of the popcorn on the cob we made for movie night, though!

Do an outside activity

Read a chapter of the Bible together.
I have to admit we picked a very short chapter in Psalms.

Indoor snowball fight w/paper.
This one made me cringe because the thought of wads of paper all over the place makes me anxious! My house is messy enough without creating a mess on purpose! Danielle decided we could use rolled socks, which was perfect.

Ice cream sundae day.
We didn't have the supplies on hand (nor do we like whipped cream), so we enjoyed bowls of cookie dough ice cream instead.

Themed day
We decided to have a speak Spanish night (while at the Mexican restaurant), although we could have picked pj day since at least 1/2-3/4 of us don't change out of our pjs on Sundays during the winter!

Make a family wish list of 15 activities to do this year
We were stretching it a bit on #s 7 & 8.

Sledding

We got a couple inches of snow Friday afternoon. The kids wanted to go sledding, but we didn't have a chance until today. The sledding hill was not in the best condition, but the kids had fun anyway. Sadly all the snow will probably be gone by morning. We haven't had a snow day in well over a year. We could use a nice, big snowfall on a Sunday evening!

This and That

Danielle brought home her winning handwriting paper this week. It was important to her to point out that what appears to be an uncleanly erased "g" after the word "handwriting" in the second sample is actually just lettering that's showing through from the front. I am impressed. Some of the words look nearly perfect. She did a much better job than I could have. I still have trouble with my cursive "r"!

The tablets the kids received for Christmas have been big hits. Danielle had to have some xrays taken a couple weeks ago and spent her time in the waiting room video chatting with Tyler.




I think this is probably the only time of year when it is an advantage to be an albino squirrel!

Last week we had dinner with a guy who used to be a teen in our youth group when Ron was a youth pastor. He was a freshman in high school when we last saw him.  He is now a youth pastor at his own church, is married, and has three young children. We hooked up through Facebook and have kept up with each other somewhat over the past couple years but finally met face to face last week. It was so neat to visit with his family and to see how God has blessed his life. We met at a restaurant and ended up being seated in their meeting room by ourselves. It was perfect. The restaurant had a magician that entertained our kids, but our friend's kids were young enough to be a little wary. One of his tricks involved finding your card and then sticking it to the ceiling. We had noticed cards on the ceiling when we entered the restaurant, so the kids were eager to see the trick. The magician did a good job, and now if we ever go back, the kids can find their card.

Danielle played a great basketball game today. Her team played the only undefeated team in the league and finally lost in double overtime. It was an exciting game - both teams knew they were playing for 1st place. (Which  means a trophy, which is pretty cool when you're 9!) Maybe we'll beat them in the post season tournament.

This and That

Danielle has become friends with a little girl in her class who lives with her grandma. She wants to have the girl over to play, so we were discussing her at dinner tonight. I've met this girl but Ron hasn't, so Danielle was trying to fill him in a little. Ron asked why the girl (and all her siblings) live with Grandma. Danielle said, "Well, her parents got divorced and her dad decided he didn't like her anymore and her mom left. They visit her on holidays." I'm sure Danielle was just repeating what this girl has told her. How heartbreaking for an 8/9 year old to be abandoned by the two people who should love you the most! How wonderful Grandma was there to step in and fill the gap as best she can. As Ron looked across the table at his little blonde daddy's girl, he couldn't help but tear up. What kind of "father" allows his 8 year old daughter to think he dislikes her? He should be her hero, her cheerleader, and her security. People - even children - carry so much "baggage". I am amazed at some of the stories I hear at the jr. high. The stories make me wonder how some kids can be so shockingly "normal" when they have so much going on at home, and sometimes it puts the behavior of those kids who are not quite "normal" in perspective. My goal at work for this school year was to be more mindful of the situations some of these kids are going through, and to be the smile they may need in the middle of their day. This was a good reminder for me.


I have been consumed with finding a place to vacation this summer. It was 7 degrees this morning. With the wind chill, the temperature was -13. There's not even any snow to enjoy (assuming it would warm up a little.) Once Christmas is over, I'm ready for summer - no school, sleeping in, playing outside, riding bikes with friends, and making happy summer memories. With 4 months of school left, I have awhile to wait. So, looking ahead to summer vacation makes it a little easier. We gave the kids the option of going to Disney next month or taking a beach vacation this summer. Thankfully they opted for a beach vacation. We've decided to do something a little different, though. We are going to combine the woods, mountains, and wildlife we love in a Smoky Mountains vacation with the ocean we love in a beach vacation and have decided to go to Maine. We found a beautiful house nestled in the woods along the shore in a cove. We are going to enjoy the national park, go whale watching, visit the beach, and explore tidepools. It's a little daunting to plan a visit to somewhere you've never been, but I trust everything will work out. I don't remember ever having a family vacation that we didn't all enjoy. I am really looking forward to it.



Last week one of my FB friends commented on someone's picture. Since you can see basically everything anyone else likes or comments on, even if you're not the other person's "friend", her comment on this picture showed up on my news feed. It was a picture of 2 kids with an ear of corn - popcorn. I had no idea you could buy popcorn that would pop while on the cob! How cool. I stopped to get some at the local market that carries them, but they were sold out. (Probably half the town could see this picture, and they all had the same idea!) I was told it would be at least 2 weeks before they had more, so I turned to the internet. I found some online and ordered a box. It was not that much more than you would pay for decent popcorn, free shipping, no tax, and it arrived at my doorstep. (I love Amazon prime!) We made an ear tonight. I was hoping more of the corn would actually stay on the ear, but it was still pretty cool. Ron and Danielle, our popcorn lovers, didn't have time to add butter or salt before basketball practice tonight, but they said it was excellent popcorn. They are looking forward to movie night on Friday so they can enjoy a couple more ears of popcorn on the cob.

Basketball

Danielle's team is doing pretty well this year...for 3rd & 4th graders. She's having a lot of fun. She scored a couple times today, but she prefers to play defense. Her team is 5-1 and they have 4 games left.

A Winning Day

Today we had the privilege of attending another handwriting award assembly. That's two years in a row for Danielle.

Like before, we weren't allowed to tell her. Her teacher called mid-December to let us know she was a finalist. It was difficult to keep it quiet this long! 1st and 2nd graders got to print, while 3rd and 4th graders had to write in cursive. So last year she printed, and this year she wrote in cursive. Tyler was especially impressed that she wrote in cursive and won.

We are so proud of her. Danielle is such a good kid, and she puts so much effort into everything she does. It's wonderful when she can be publicly rewarded for those efforts.



Seeing your parents sitting on the bleachers is a good thing!

Danielle was a runner-up for the 3rd grade girls.

The 3rd grade winners.
The girl right beside Danielle was in the Declamation Contest with her last year.
The other girl was on her All-Star team this summer.

So proud of our winner!

Diving In

Tyler has been interested in learning to scuba dive since his first snorkeling experience a couple years ago. Conversations with Grandma & Grandpa R perpetuated that interest, but I thought you had to be 12 in order to be certified. I found out a couple weeks ago that I was wrong! 10-14 year olds can obtain a junior open water scuba certification. Once certified, they have to dive with a guardian (grandparents or uncles are acceptable!) and they are only allowed to dive to 40'. Once they are 15 they are considered adults (ha!) and can complete additional paperwork to have those restrictions lifted. Becoming certified is expensive and time consuming. The place we checked out offers an Intro to Scuba class for people to try out before they make the commitment, so we decided to try that out first.

When I called to reserve Tyler's spot, the lady told me the classes are usually pretty empty this time of year, and mostly they are attended by adults. Oddly enough, there was one other 5th grader there, and she happened to be another student in Tyler's class at school! I know there aren't a lot of scuba places around, but what are the odds that another kid would be interested in learning scuba in the middle of January and would choose to go on the exact same night?! (Side story - Tyler found out at school and told me on the way home. He said "She doesn't like me. She makes that obvious." When we got to the facility, I was talking to the girl's mom and told her what Tyler said. She laughed and said, "Well, she already has a boyfriend and feels funny because Tyler 'likes' her." It took me a minute to process what she meant and then I laughed. Hopefully I didn't insult her! I said, "He doesn't like her like that!!" And he doesn't. And really, what mother of a 10 year old talks about her daughter already having a boyfriend and makes it sound like that is status quo??!! Goodness. Anyhow...)

He had to sit through 50 minutes of classwork first.




The divemaster helped everyone put on their bcd. Notice the bored sister in the background!!

Almost ready to go down!

Testing their weights. He needed more.

Sitting on the 6' ledge, ready to take the plunge to the 12' depth. They were taking time to be sure their ears adjusted properly.



All good! It was a great experience!

Tyler thoroughly enjoyed the class and wants to continue. I think he is still nervous about what an open dive will actually be like, but hopefully that nervousness will encourage him to take the responsibility of learning seriously. It is rather expensive, so he will have to wait a little while before starting, but now we have something to work toward and look forward to!

For the Birds

While all the other "yard" birds seem to look more drab in the winter, the cardinals always seem to look brilliant, especially against the white snow. Maybe this is why my grandma liked them so much. (The cardinal pictures were taken through a window.)

She's not as stunning as the Mr., but even Mrs. Cardinal stands out.

This is a horrible picture, but here are two short eared owls that were jostling each other. I hope I get another chance to try for a better picture of these owls before they head back north. Something where you can actually make out the facial features would be nice! :)