There is a wonderful lake nearby and they have a resident population of geese (in the big pond) and ducks (in the little pond). Since the weather was nice and the girls love feeding the ducks, we spent a little time in the cold sunshine with our feathered friends.
Dolly the horse is still a big hit and she really enjoy photo ops with Natalie (upper) and Abby (lower).
Uh-Oh...caught! Not in the cookie jar but with the sacred jar of Nutella! Abby is a chocoholic. We are considering treatment options.
Including Natalie in her chocolate schemes...
We also took some time to bake and have some fun with crafts.
We can thank Olivia (remember that swiney upstart who usurped The Wonder Pets?) for the inspiration for what will become our paper-mache planet Earths. Sarcasm aside, I actually love Olivia. I think she's pretty adorable. I do miss The Wonder Pets though, and have to speak up on their behalf. Anyway, I regress. One Olivia episode involved a school assignment to make a model of the planets. Olivia, of course, ended up making the whole solar system plus Planet Olivia. The girls enthusiastically wished to follow suit and Earth was our first attempt. We have since added our continents and hung them on a string...just like Olivia.
The biggest event of January was probably the end of the fall session of their Little Gym class. It culminated with a display of skills on all the major apparatus: Uneven bars, balance beam and floor. They actually had little routines and it was really, really cute. At the end they received ribbons - their first ribbons! Natalie is in the purple and Abby is brown (I think she was being chocolate that day). In that last picture, their little friend, Kenan, is between them.
We did have a special visitor in January. Unfortunately, I don't think he felt the same way. I'm not sure how, but somehow this poor little guy slipped into our garage. I don't know how long he was in there (we don't open it daily) but one day we found him curled up at the foot of the stairs. I had been in the garage the day before and saw no evidence of the little fellow. He was barely alive, but we scooped him into a box, gave him some water and a banana, and covered him up. Sadly, I think he was too far gone (I'm guessing starvation and dehydration) and the next morning he was dead. Bye-bye little possum, we hardly knew you.
January did have a few nice days where the girls could run around outside. Natalie is becoming quite the tricycle-riding expert. Abby enjoys speeding down the oh-so-slightly inclined driveway on her little blue car. Even on the not-as-nice days, the girls were thrilled to put on their jackets and gloves and have a little fun digging in the dirt (or spilled bird-seed) and playing on their own little gym. (These pictures are just Abby. It's hard to tell, but in the third picture, Abby is throwing hand-fulls of birdseed into the air - and into her hair:-))
We capped off the month with a post-Christmas gathering of my dad's family. He has 5 brothers and we generally all get together at Christmas. I think this was the first year since I was a child that we didn't have it. I guess it's harder now that all the cousins are grown-up with kids of their own and going in so many different directions. This year, Ben and I were happy to host everyone who could come in a post-Christmas event. We had a lot of fun and might just start it has a new tradition.Hanging around the kitchen - where all good parties start!
Cousins having fun - or hiding - in the playroom:-)
My dad and 3 of his brothers.
Looking back, it's possible January was more exciting than I thought! Thank goodness for a visual record or I wouldn't remember anything:-)
I had hoped to stay up-to-date in February, but clearly that battle has already been lost. I will try to get February's "post of the month" up asap and do better in March.
