100 Day

Nora's class had a fun celebration in honor of the 100th day of school. Each of them were supposed to make a little poster with 100 of something on it, and Nora made this one - 100 ants at the picnic.

They also could dress up like they were 100 years old. I wasn't quite sure how to do that, but this was our best attempt. I think she looked pretty cute!

Cookie Day

Christmas-time seemed super busy this year, and we didn't have a chance to fit in our cookie day tradition. January this year was pretty stormy and gloomy, and we figured most people could use a little cheering up, so we just did cookie day a little later over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

My excited little helpers

Rolling out the dough

Cutting out the shapes

After the cookies were baked, the kids got a few of their own cookies, frosting and candy to decorate with.

 Mike and I decorated the cookies for the neighbors. We made snowman faces, hearts and snowflakes.

Putting together the plates and getting ready to deliver them. The kids were very good delivery helpers, also. The girls had to take turns waiting in the car, though, because they both wore their sandals and their feet would get cold!! I didn't occur to me to check before we left that they were wearing warm shoes in the middle of a snowy winter, but I guess I should have! Hehe.

Crystal Kit

The girls were very excited about trying out the crystal kit they got for Christmas from Beth and Reece. Our first experiments were making "starter crystals" which you can use as a base to grow larger crystals on, and making plaster shapes, and getting them covered in crystals.

Evie with the starter crystals

The first shape we made was the dolphin

Finished shapes!

For some reason the crystals that formed on the dolphin were a lot bigger than the ones on the other shapes. Maybe there was a temperature difference between the two batches or the crystal forming mixture? Science is sure fascinating!

Book Club - The Alchemist

The book discussed at the January book club meeting was "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. It is a book about a boy who starts off as a sheep herder in Spain, but later goes on a quest to discover his own personal legend, and learns much from the people he meets and experiences he has along the way. Different parts of the book took place in Spain, Morocco and Egypt, so there was an Egyptian themed menu.

Beth brought a lovely tea set and served mint tea

Mmmm, baklava!

Poor little Griffin giving us his best "puppy dog eyes" when we were eating

New Year's Day and Bowling Night

We had a pretty relaxing new years day, playing games and doing a puzzle

We didn't realize what we were getting into when we started this puzzle - it was really hard, but so cute when it was all put together!

A few days later we went to the Cheesecake Factory and bowling

Playing memory while waiting for the food

We went bowling at Fat Cats. Sam wore the smallest size of bowling shoes they had there - so cute! The kids had a lot of fun learning how to bowl

 

Evie would do a funny little dance after each time she rolled the ball - hehe!