Pinewood Derby

We are back into cub scouts again. I wish I could excited about that.

Anyway, Ezra had his first pinewood derby last week and having gone through two of these already with Roman, I have lost all interest. But, I did what I could.

We purchased a pre-cut wedge, slapped on a skin, glued on some weights and called it good. We couldn't have given it much less thought than we did if we had painted the original block of wood yellow and called it a bus (which I was all for... trust me, I tried)

I warned Ezra that we would NOT be winning so he wouldn't get it in his head that he might.

Then.... he won all three of his races and got 3rd place out of 43 kids. HA!

He was excited.

Oh cub scouts. Way to go Ezra!

Christmas Break

We didn't do a whole lot over Christmas break. It was just over a week long and the kids have been really into staying home lately. So, that's really mostly what we did.

Marisa and Ezra built their Knex sets.

We went out and found a sledding hill

Everyone stayed up until midnight on New Years Eve watching movies, eating food and celebrating the end of another year.

It snowed, we shoveled, it snowed, we shoveled, it snowed..... you guessed it.

It snowed so much that they delayed school on the first day back by two whole hours! The kids used it as an opportunity to play in the snow before school which is SO much better than playing in the snow after school.

We had a good time. Goodbye 2016! I wish I could say I'll miss you... ok. I will really miss some parts, other parts, not so much.

Christmas Shenanigans

Our Christmas this year was pretty low key.

The kids only had one week off of school so we didn't have a lot of time to go crazy. And I never really want to go crazy this time of year anyway.

I helped the 2nd graders make gingerbread houses at school.

My brothers family was in town from Texas so we got to spend a little time with them. Sure wish we could see them a little more often.

The kids had fun playing video games and going to a BYU basketball game together.  Can you spot Roman Nathan and Justin?

Marisa was babysitting her friends Guinea pig.  That was fun.

We had our regular tradition of making gingerbread houses. I love watching how different each of their approaches was. Roman was in a hurry but still wanted it to look good. Marisa was slow and artistic. Ezra had already done this at school once so he was only thinking of what he would like to eat from his house later and he kept it pretty simple.

Christmas PJ's were a hit as always. I think I'm pretty much done making them. It costs more than buying them and good grief... these are cute!

 

 

Christmas Day was also great!

 

 

The kids were up earlier than they have ever been up on Christmas morning before. 

They were all really happy with their gifts and they spent the rest of the day enjoying them.

 

 

Here are their favorites:

 

It was a nice day. I'm so glad that even though the kids didn't really ask for much and didn't really get anything all that fantastic, they were happy. I have some pretty great kids!

I'll write some more about the rest of our break next and then that will wrap it up for the year. Can you believe it?!