Colored snow

We put colored water in squirt bottles one day for them to use on the snow. It kept them busy for a very long time. The neon food coloring seemed to work really well. It made nice bright colors. It's so much fun to watch them when they really get in the zone learning, exploring and creating things. Imagination is a beautiful thing! :)

Christmas in Washington

At the last minute we decided to go up to Washington to spend Christmas with my family. I don't think we have been there for Christmas since I was pregnant with Jackson......  wow. It was a lot of fun and brought back a lot of memories :) We did a lot of sledding, movies and playing. Aunt Jamie made minion hats for each of them. They thought that was great. We also had a visit from the awesome Santa. That was a huge hit too.
We watched the weather and did the drive on the days that looked best. Our first two hours on the road were pretty bad but other than that it was almost clear the whole way.

Happy New Year

On New Year's Eve the kids really wanted to have a party with their friends - they started asking at about 8 or so that night....... I told them we would have to try to plan that for another year. So we did our own little family party. We played a game, had a snack, made party hats and watched the ball drop. They LOVED having a plan like that - it was funny and cute at the same time :) We did put Hailey and Caleb to bed around 10  (it's great to be back West so we can watch the ball drop at 10)

Christmas Lights

For some reason I have had a really hard time posting from Picasa - that means it's not quite as easy so I slacked off. Guess I shouldn't be so lazy :)

We went to a Christmas light show over the holidays. It's the same one we used to go to when we lived here before. Jackson remembered it. It was really foggy - so foggy that we almost turned around and went home because it was so hard to see when driving. It cleared off around the freeway though so we kept going but it settled back in once we are the lights. It was also really cold. Everyone was in their snow gear so we could go on the wagon ride. It was a lot of fun. Caleb threw a major fit about not getting to warm his hands by the fire. It took us awhile to figure out the problem since he was too upset to do anything but cry....... he never did get to do it since we were in the car and leaving by then.

Caleb's Christmas Show

This is how Caleb participated in his preschool Christmas show. If he makes the choice to ham it up and be the center of attention he doesn't mind at all. If it's a planned activity ...... he hates it :) He did start to warm up and participate towards the end. His teachers were funny when we came in and he refused to join the others. In class he's silly and really, really into the songs and actions so they thought he would be great for the show. This has happened a few times...... he refused to be in the costume parade too.
Jackson was the camera man. He loved it. He took some videos too. I will try t post one.

Parkour

We recently decided to let the kids try out some classes and Jackson chose Parkour (also called free running). I call it unstructured gymnastics for boys - there is lots of running, jumping, flipping and doing tricks off of things in your environment (like walls). He loves it.
He takes the class at a gymnastics center (Caleb also has preschool there but it's not gymnastics based). They put on a holiday show that Jackson was really excited to participate in eventhough he had only had three classes. The parkour boys were dressed as "lumps of coal" and they did a little obstacle course to show off their tricks. After watching all the perfomance, Hailey wants to do cheerleading and Maggie wants to do gymnastics :)

This is only picture we have of the kids with Santa this year. Hailey was kind of mad that she didn't get to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted :)

2013 Christmas card

Here is our Christmas card from this last year. I love that the kids are all still so cooperative in the photo studio. We have to enjoy that as it lasts :) It's been a busy year. If I didn't send you a card let me know and I will add you to the list.