Ten on Ten: February

Missed last month, but back at it this month. A picture an hour, for ten hours on the tenth of the month. Here goes… I always love doing this in February, such cute valentiney things all around.

One waits for the bus, while I get ready to run the other to safety patrol. Very tricky timing!

All the girls were prettied up at preschool, for the valentine’s party

Preschool buddies

Special lunch created by Holly Boyd

Cringle, the puppy. He’s pretty cute, when he’s not eating the shirt off your back.

Eskimo kisses, and yes we may have asked them to do it. What’s a little nose-rubbing between friends? They are such cute little buddies:)

Valentine décor

Addi must be longing for warm weather. Later she put her bathing suit on to complete this game.

Early valentine surprise from my sweet husband

Fun surprise date night

See more ten on ten fun here

Skating

Two weekends in a row, our family went skating. It’s not that we really love skating that much, it just sort of worked out that way. On a Friday night, Addison was going to have a special night with Nana while we took the big girls ice skating. Unfortunately, Nana got sick, so Addison stayed with us and we decided to go roller skating instead. Addison can handle roller skating much more easily than ice skating. However, we were not real impressed at the Friday night crowd at Auburn skate…. should have thought that one through a little better. So, we convinced the girls to go to the mall (it took a lot of convincing), telling them we would go skating the next day. Instead of the mall, we surprised them and took them to the new Alvin and the Chipmunk movie, Chipwrecked. Everyone was happy, and the next day we did make it to the roller skating rink. Skating event #1.

       
                                              
Addison is the cutest little roller skater ever. She took one lesson a long time ago when I would take the girls on Saturday mornings. They told her to put her arms out and take little steps, and that is what she does. Unless she is holding one of our hands.
                                              
The following weekend, Nana was better and we went with our original plan – ice skating. It was family skate night with a light show, sounds cool but it was actually just kind of dark and cold. And it didn’t start until 8:30, a little late for us. Due to all these things, we skated for maybe 45 minutes. Hailey is the SLOWEST skater of all time, so she maybe got around the rink twice. She is so cautious. She didn’t start out that way at the roller skating rink, but after a couple of falls a year or two ago, she has been slow as a snail ever since. Symantha had no problem, and we had fun taking turns and skating around with her. It was tough to take pictures of this event, because I am NOT comfortable on ice skates either. This is the only one to represent our night –

Fun family time, but we have had our fill of skating for a little while

Girly Girls

Our girls have always loved to put on shows for us. It began as ballet shows from Symantha, then came gymnastics, American idol, etc. with all of them. We are very familiar with shows. However, now that their cousin Lacey lives just down the street, they have created a dancing group called the “Girly Girls”. The shows have become a much bigger deal. They asked Grandma to embroider their group name on t-shirts for them, they have created routines for each family get-together, and have spent a lot of time making invitations and walking around to each family’s house delivering them (have I said how cool it is that cousins and family live right down the street?). It is pretty cute. Here are some pictures from their various performances:
Peeking around the door waiting for us to announce them at Thanksgiving (At Steph and Kurt’s house)…




Then the Christmas performance….

And a New year’s eve show, as well. This included some free dance time, so you can really see their moves:)

Hailey tends to watch the other two most of the time, and she is a little shy but super cute.
Their next plan is to have a fundraiser show at the event center at church. They want to call it “Hip Hop for Haiti,” and charge everyone a dollar to get in. They wrote us a letter asking to have an important meeting with us about this, and they are taking it very seriously. We love their hearts, and are looking for a way to let them do something special where we would invite a few of our friends and family… but probably not at the church event center:) Be ready for that invitation, I’m sure it will be quite a show!

Frog and Toad

At the beginning of January, we got to go with our friends to see Frog and Toad at the Seattle Children’s theater. I have been taking the kids to see these since Symantha was about 3 mo. old – obviously I love the plays as much as they do:). Plus, it’s fun to go downtown and there are always great picture opportunities. Andrea beat me to this post (by about 4 weeks, big surprise that I am a little behind…), but I still wanted to show some of our cute pics from the day.

We love hanging out with these cute girls!

Winter wonderland

That’s what it feels like outside my window – it is SO beautiful. I am giddy with appreciation for our new house, and fun neighbors for the kids to play in the snow with, and the outside fireplace that they can warm up on, and running out of hot cocoa because I am giving all these friends and neighbors lots of hot cocoa by the fire, and a covered patio where I can take pictures of them, and the gorgeous snowy trees outside every big window….. I feel SO BLESSED. Insert happy sigh:)

      

      

Braceface

Symantha is not offended by this name at all right now. She has actually called herself it. This makes sense due to her total excitement over getting braces. We have entered that phase – the orthodontist, expander, bite plate, braces, rubberbands and so on phase. I never had braces, so the whole thing is pretty foreign to me, but I am learning quickly. Symantha has hardly complained at all and has been surprisingly tough about the whole thing. She loved picking out the color of her rubber bands and cement for her expander. The braces went on Dec. 22, luckily the day after she had her kids’ choir performance where she sang a solo and had speaking parts. Learning to speak clearly with this large appliance in her mouth has been a little tricky. But she has adjusted and is doing great with it all. Here she is on the day she got them.

Luckily, she only has to have that large appliance in for a few more weeks, then the braces for 10-12 months. We are just correcting the overbite and adjusting her jaw through this whole process, since she doesn’t even have all of her permanent teeth. Phase 2 will be determined later. Probably when we have another kid with braces at the same time, lucky us:) But so far, so good.

Sebastian

Each kid in Hailey’s class gets to take Sebastian home for the weekend throughout the school year. This is Sebastian.

We kept Sebastian with us all weekend and he had all sorts of adventures. He got in trouble at a Mexican restaurant, was very picky with picking out our Christmas tree, and got flour all over him while Hailey was at a cookie decorating party. It was a busy weekend.

                                 

Then she had to report about their time together and add her report to the class book. She had waited for weeks for it to be her turn with Sebastian and this was all very exciting. Here were her pages:

Such a fun project!