Birthday girl 9 Years old

We had such a good time celebrating this sweet spunky and sassy little lady. She requested crepes for dinner filled with cream and Nutella and powdered sugar on top, her favorite!

We have also had a tradition of getting pink frosting donuts for Brielle‘s birthday at least for the first couple of years of her life when there is a Dunkin’ Donuts nearby. This year We were able to run over to Jason‘s donuts hoping to grab enough to make her a donut stack and were able to snag the last three pink ones. That place sells out their donuts quick! She wasn’t too happy about the green pistachio ones, but at least they looked fun and tasted good too!

Ben and the boys really spoiled Brielle with the gifts she got this year and the amount of stuffed animals is suffocating to me but she loves them so much!

Wednesday is our ice-skating day and so is it’s always fun to be there with friends and have the whole skating rink to ourselves because nobody else comes for an hour and a half of skating....  but we are there and so are our friend. We are so lucky to have good friends that live close by — I’m so thankful-Brielle and Gwen have each other and are best friends!

 

March/April

Home school during the day and helping Brielle with math

Ben’s birthday party with our neighbors (Chad has the same bday too)

Carl had a group date where they played games at the church and they were trying to come to our house for the rest of the evening but He was the only one that made it through with a carload of girls. I thought it was pretty funny. The other car was stopped at the gate, given a ticket and told not to try to do that again. There are still restrictions on who is allowed on post with or without a visitor pass. Such a pain!

I took the kids to the children’s museum for a visit and they had a fantastic time playing with the water table veterinarian set up, arts and crafts, and Brecon and Connor built a little wooden house. It was a fun little outing for us all!

Easter egg hunt and making the empty tomb resurrection rolls is always a hit. You can tell by the look of Connor’s face how much he enjoys the cinnamon sugar and marshmallowy goodness!

 

March madness

 Ice carving.  Sledding. Wrestling tournament. Painting and haircuts

For spring break the ice park offers a youth ice carving championship competition. It is open to anyone ages 13 to 18 and it is free. I was able to convince Cael and Brecon and this would be a fun opportunity for them to do something that normally costs quite a lot to do. And since we were doing something fun we invited a few of our friends and it turned into a big fun party for the kids. The carving and instruction started on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday pretty much from 10 till five and they fed them lunch every day. It was great! Cael ended up taking seventh overall for his muscleman and Brecon took 15 out of the 16 entries for his snail. Everyone went home with $15, unless you were in the top 5 and the price money was a bit more, money that was donated for the youth and everyone got a free sweatshirt. It was a super spring break “camp” with power tools and friends!

HAYSTACK HILL- there is a fun sledding hill about 20 minutes out of town and the hill is a lot of fun. We drive the kids up let them off and they sled for about a mile can take them about five minutes to get to the bottom of the hill and then we drive down and pick them up. On this particular day it was sunny but the wind sure made it feel a lot colder. Some sleds work better than others, and so we are always glad when we go with friends who have sleds that we can borrow and make it down the hill. These three big boys sure are silly when they get together and so it was so fun to watch them try to sled down the hill on one sled. 

One weekend we helped at a wrestling tournament where Cael  competed in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, freestyle, and Folk style wrestling. I hadn’t grown up watching wrestling and so I decided to help volunteer for this particular tournament. Since Brecon and Connor refused to wrestle I said that they would also help keep score. They were OK for the first hour or two but by hours for five and six they were done. It was fun to watch Cal who has significantly improved from last year of wrestling. 

I helped with the activity day girls and we had a indoor snowball fight and did some painting on picture frames and canvases. The girls are a lot of fun and so giggly and cute with each other. They are at an age where they still listen to adults and love the silly ideas that I suggest.

this picture was taken Friday night When Connor was still in a pleasant mood.

I had to take this picture at the end of the second day of all day wrestling and keeping score. I think we were all relieved to go home but Connor was especially upset that it had taken so long.

Trying to find age-appropriate art projects for Cannon and I came across this finger paint set at Michael’s. Cannon did one or two pictures and then he was done. I guess fingerpainting is not his favorite.

One morning Cannon took a bath and his hair was wet and poking down into his eyes and he didn’t like it. He told me we need to cut my hair with scissors and I agreed, but I said I would do that later. I got a little distracted upstairs and the next thing I hear from a little voice down in the kitchen is I did it. I call down you did what? I cut my hair with scissors. So I go downstairs to see a big clump of blonde straight hair sitting on the kitchen floor and Cannon has cut a big section in front. With his other long hair on top you couldn’t really tell and so I left his short patch for a few weeks. Needless to say this has not happened where the kids have decided to become their own barber but this was a fun thing for Cannon.

February FUN

Cael, Brecon, and I  Tested positive COVID February 3. Family lockdown - even Ben- for the rest of the month. The one who was most upset was Brielle “I just want to see my friends” church activity days - and coloring with best friend Gwen CANCELED 😢

Making yummy cookies with daddy and getting some special valentines frosting and sugar cookie mix from my friend Aubrey. This was after they found out that we were on a family lockdown, so it was a nice surprise to have somebody bring a treat over for us.

The black mark. No one admits who did it... eh hem...Cannon... got ahold of the graphite powder for pine wood derby cars and sprayed it on the cream carpet. A brother who was trying to be helpful used a wet washcloth and smeared black powder with no chance of it getting cleaned up. Panic. Dry vacuum only spreads it more. More Panic.... But then a hero comes along. After some quick searches on Google, we got our soap and a little elbow grease, lots of soap and water- and lots of scrubbing to get most of the black powder out. The carpet just looks like a normal boys dingy color, we will probably have to pay for a replacement carpet when we move out. But at least it isn’t so obvious!!

Ben has been going through his box of childhood photos and found a few gems. At age 10 he drew a picture of himself of what he was going to be when he grew up as a typewriter fixer with a nice bushy mustache. 

The northern lights were more vibrant than we had ever seen from our neighborhood and so the family went for a walk out into the forest to see them. I always wear my big pink parka because it keeps me warm from the bitter cold. As we were tromping back I was following Ben and as he walked by a branch was pulled back and whipped me right across my nose and cheek. It was so cold so it hurt five times as much as it normally would’ve and so I was quite upset the rest of the walk home. Ben’s eyelashes and face were pretty icy and I always get a frosty hat and neck warmer