CHRISTMAS

HIPHOP

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Christmas Disco

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Ava's Gymnastics

Ava's dance shoe was this weekend. This year she took gymnastics and she loved it!

These are pictures taken after the show, Ava is in the outfit she wore for the father-daughter dance. They danced to thriller. She is proudly holding her trophy! Now she has two trophies for her trophy shelf!! I am very proud of her. She just loves gymnastics and she practiced hard all year. She is one of the few in her class that mastered the one handed cartwheel! She was so determined.

Here is Ava on the way to her show. Brendan had to have his picture taken as well. Ava was a little nervous all day about being on stage in front of all of those people, but she is all smiles here!

Baby Birds

A robin made a nest very low in one of our trees. I think she just did it so that the kids would have a good view, and we did (as well as all of the neighbor kids)! But it is amazing how fast thwy grow, because a week after taking this picture they had left the nest. The mother is still hanging around with one baby in our yard though. The baby can fly, but we saw the mother feed her a worm yesterday!!

Puppy

This is our puppy Samantha. She is whining because she hears Sara our older lab barking by the door to come outside. She loves to play with Sara. Unfortunately we just found out Brendan is allergic to dogs (and a lot of foods)so we are going to have to find her a new home:(

Lighthouse

I have lived here for years, but have never seen the lighthouse lit up at night. It's blurry, but still beautiful!

Spring Concert "Blue Skies"

Easter!!

A visit with Grandma and Grandpa's!!

Over winter break, we took a ride down to have lunch with Grandma and Grandpa H. at their house. It was a nice visit, but I wish it could have been longer.It was fun looking at all of those old pictures and the lunch was delicious.
The kids were able to see a train go by on the way home. Brendan was in awe! I video taped it and now he can watch it at home which he asks to do once in awhile.
On the drive hope we saw a bald eagle! It flew right in front of our car and landed in a tree on the side of the road. We backed up and pulled over, but I think we scared it because he flew away before I could get my camera. I have never seen a bald eagle in the wild. It is a beautiful sighgt to see them fly.

Ava's Class of Penguins

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Ava's class learned all about penguins. Here are some pictures of her class teaching the other grades about what they learned.

News

I haven't been blogging lately so I thought that I would update everybody with our news. Brendan is doing great. I can't believe how he is growing up so fast. His vocabulary has increased so much in the past few months. I can have real conversations with him now which makes it so much easier for me and probably a lot less frustrating for him. One thing I like about this, is that now he can tell me if anything is bothering him. A couple of days ago he told me very clearly that his tummy hurt. Before he probably would have just whined and I wouldn't know if something was bothering him or if he was just being grumpy. So I love that he can communicate better now.
Ava is doing great in school. She is starting to be a typical kid now and love snow days and she can't WAIT until summer vacation! I was joking with her last week because I remember when she was two she longed to go to school. She wanted to go to preschool. When she was three I signed her up for preschool which was more like playtime for two days a week for two hours. She loved that and did the same when she was four, but when she was four, all I ever heard was that she couldn't wait to go to kindergarten. She wanted so bad to go to "real school!" Last year she went to kindergarten and loved it, but towards the end of the year, she really wanted first grade, because it was when the "grades" really started. (in her words) First grade was for big kids. Now she is in first grade and although she likes it, it is a lot of work and I don't hear any more about wanting to go to school! haha. She was sick a few weeks ago with a mild stomach ache, so I kept her out of school just in case and she spent the day with Jenny and the girls learning about penguins and Antartica. She had so much fun and the next day she did tell me her stomach ached again. I think she was hoping to to Jenny's again, but I sent her to school and she was fine!!Thank you Jenny and the girls for sharing your day with her. She learned so much and still talks about what she learned at your house.
Ava is also enrolled in acrobatics. She goes every tuesday night.She is learning to do cartwheels and forward rolls. She loves this and always demonstrates at home. Her cartwheels are coming along great!!
Paul is doing good and keeping busy. Hopefully now that football is coming to an end, he will slow down at work and his hours will come down. I started a part time job tutoring high school kids at a local high school. I love it and I love the hours.I also love how I am getting a review of everything I learned in highschool that you tend to forget over the years. Every night I go over what I am going to do with the kids the next day and now I can name every bone in the human body, I know the parts of a pig, I remember how to find the diagonals in a square
(thanks Matt D.), I can tell you all about Alexander the Great and Greek history, and I am reading classic literature again!haha. This is all stuff I didn't remember before I started the job! I feel like I am getting my highschool education all over again! Now I am confident that maybe I will be be able to help Ava with her homework in highschool!!) I work four mornings a week. Paul is home Tues and Wed. So he and Brendan spend the morning together. They both enjoy this and now almost every morning Brendan wakes up looking for Paul. He gets disappointed sometimes when I tell him he's at work. They really love there guy time together!! The other two mornings he spends at my neighbor's who is a child care provider. Brendan has known her since he was born and loves her and the babies she watches, so he is happy there as well! Well I feel like I just wrote a book, but that is all of our news! I hope everybody else is doing well too!! Happy Superbowl!!

Ava's Classroom Pajama Day Brunch!!

Sci-Tech

Yesterday we took a quick afternoon trip to the sci tech center. Brenan loved the dinosaur display!!

Digging for fossils and dinosaur bones!

It makes me feel old when I see the telephones that I used to use on display as though they are Antiques!! Ava couldn't believe how large cell phones used to be either!