Jonah wrestling

This is a picture of Jonah's first wrestling meet. Do you think he cares what place he got? He wrestled hard and did a great job. He was mostly excited that he got to eat a hot dog!

Other Winter Projects

We've had a lot of free time from several snow days in a row. (Actually, school was cancelled more from frigid temperatures, not from snow.) So we had to get creative. So we've done more creative crafts than usual. Here is our igloos, made from mini marshmallows:

Our snowflakes. Who says snowflakes have to be white?
Jonah and Grace made these adorable sock and rice snowmen.

MLKJr Day

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr, we learned a little about him today and his famous "I have a dream" speech. Then, I had the kids write their own dreams on cloud shapes. These are Annabelle's dreams: 

I have a dream that every day candy will fall from the sky.

I have a dream that I have a ranch of horses all to myself.

I have a dream that when I grow up I will be a famous artist.

Jonah's dreams:

I have a dream that it could be Independence Day and Halloween forever and it would never stop.

I have a wish that whenever it rained it would be grape juice and when it snowed it would be marshmallows, and storms of hamburgers.

I have a dream that when I grow up I will be a baseball player and a gymnast.

Grace's dream:

I have a dream that I will be pink.

Ezra's dream: 

I have a dream that little children will pick up after themselves.

I forgot to mention before that Grandpa Slaugh gave Jonah a rope before he left to go home. Well, Jonah had already put it to good use before Grandpa even had a chance to put his coat on and get out the door! He was already making booby traps and pulleys.
Making brownies:

Visit from Grandpa Slaugh

Grandpa Slaugh came to visit us! Yeah! The kids made sure to show him all their tricks they can do, all their pictures they've colored, all their cool toys, and all their projects they've made. They loved having an audience. Grandpa brought gummy worms and gummy bones. They thought that was great.

Grandpa brought projects to work on with the kids - 2 bird feeders. The first one we just had to paint. Here they are taking turns painting it:

And here is the bird feeder finished, and hanging up off our back porch. Why is there a branch tied and hanging from it? Just for fun!
And here is the other bird feeder we helped screw together.
We love our Grandpa!! He told us stories every night after the kids were tucked in bed. My favorite was about when Joey was about 6 years old or so. The family went to pick out a tree together. When we brought it home, Dad cut a slice off the bottom of the tree trunk with a bow saw before bringing it in the house and putting it in the water. A little while later, Dad was looking out the back window when he noticed, "Hey, didn't we have 2 fruit trees out there? I only see one!" He went out to investigate, and found the second fruit tree standing up in the sand pit - with ropes tied to it to help it stand up! The culprit: Joey, of course!

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