Ahhhh WARM

It's 57 degrees outside today. Pure absolute unadulterated bliss. The sun is shining and the clouds are minimal. Carter and I just finished running around the front yard and playing frisbee. This consists of Carter throwing the frisbee at me. I would purposefully not catch it (he has a great arm) and he'd charge over to pick up the frisbee and get tickled. Like I said before, pure absolute unadulterated bliss.

Reading Writing and Arithmetic

Athena came home on Friday with her Intermin Report Card for this Quarter. She is doing a wonderful job! Her teacher, Mrs. Jones, moved her to her own desk before Christmas to see if she could concentrate better and it's been working. She received all check marks and here's what Mrs. Jones wrote:

"Athena is really soaring in reading. She demonstrates higher level thinking when it comes to comprehension. Furthermore, I have seen improvement in her behavior. She's doing so well!"

Yeah!!!!

Loosie Toothies Moving Out

We had the most exciting event on Valentine's Day: Athena lost her first tooth! She had been jiggling a bottom front tooth around for a few weeks and near the end could do a pretty cool party trick that scared or most people at least jump.  We made a video of it. For some reason it's

dedicated to Uncle James. What a lucky man. :~)

 

Since the 14th, she now has three more loose teeth. One more on the bottom and two front top.  Pretty soon she is going to have a wonderful toothless grin.  We told her we'd get her some false teeth so that she'd be able to chew.  The Tooth Fairy came and left her one gold dollar coin and one silver dollar coin.  Athena told everyone that she got 200 cents from the TF.

Here's her newest photo:

Snow Snow Where Did You Go?

I can't believe it's already almost mid-February. Since my last post we've been in winter at full tilt! Carter came down with a stomach bug the night of my last post (1/1/09). He was ill for 5 days. He finally kicked it and we started to settle back into our normal routine when snow hit and it hit hard! We had two of the worst snow storms that I can remember. 

It began with one of the coldest weather in 12 years that took us into the single digits. It was miserably cold.  When snow hit we had about 2 inches of snow followed by one inch of sleet that turned to ice and then another five inches of snow on top.  The kids were off school for 4 days the last week in January. We were all stir crazy and bored by the end.  

It wasn't great snow for building snowmen, so no great photos. We did go sled riding that weekend and it was great! We went to Sharon Woods and we were the second fastest ones on the hill. The fastest was a LL Bean Tobaggon (we must get one of these! it was amazing!!). All of us had a fantastic time despite the bitter cold.

This past week Athena went on a field trip to the Aquarium on Tuesday morning. By the time she arrived back at school, the next snow storm was moving in. We had 10 inches of snow last Tuesday. At one point it was snowing so hard I couldn't see the highway in front of the house.  All this snow led to another day off on Wednesday.  We currently have to make up 2 days in June.  I hope that will be it!

This weekend the temperature was in the 50's.  Almost all of the snow is gone. This coming week will continue to be warm and hopefully we'll continue to have some lovely sunshine!

Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!

We had our own little partee here on New Year's Eve. It was both kids idea and we had some fun with it. We cut out Happy New Year and taped this to the fireplace and then planned the evening. After dinner the kids watched a movie and ate popcorn. After the movie it was ice cream. Everyone had a blast! Athena thought for sure she would get to stay up until midnight, um no.

On New Year's Day we decided to do something super fun and different. We went out to Dover, Indiana (same exit off  the highway as Camp) and rode around on little trains with a group called the Cinder Sniffers.  

The tracks had big bridges and tunnels and lots of curves.  The men who run this are really really nice and are all about making sure everyone has a great time.  It was a cold day, but we bundled up in snow suits, boots and coats. 

Here's some photos of the train and the kids:

Christmas 2008

Our Christmas week started out really really cold - in the teens; Tuesday brought freezing rain and Wednesday, Christmas Eve brought torrential rainfall and temperatures in the 60's.  It was warm on Christmas day as well but it continued to rain.  Athena and I went to Christmas Eve service at SonRise Church where she sang in the Children's Choir.  It was a one time a year appearance for the choir and they sang one song.  Athena did a lovely job and was very pleased to get to do this this year (her first). 

After church, we came home and picked up the boys and headed down to Tom & Teresa's in Sugar Tit, KY.  This was the first year for them to host Christmas Eve and it was great! They've spent the past year finishing their basement and it was a nice big open space for my wild family to charge around, eat, drink and be merry. We were all able to be in the same room but didn't feel cramped.

Everyone had a great time and Santa came and brought a bag of goodies for the kids.  On Christmas day we did our normal hanging out at home and enjoying each other gig.  Athena asked for three things for Christmas - an ipod, roller skates and some Littlest Pet Shop toys.  Jesy and George gave her Jesy's old ipod and Santa brought LPS and both kids got roller blades.  We also bought Athena a keyboard and Carter electric drums.  The kids bought Patrick his very own scooter and helmet.

We tried to keep Christmas simple but we always seem to go overboard. I had to hold back some things that we bought. We did 3 presents each from Santa and 5 each from us - 1 "big" one and the rest smaller (less expensive ones). 

All in all it was a lovely Christmas.

A Snowflake in the Nutcracker

Athena was a snowflake in the Moscow Ballet's Nutcracker production this year in Cincinnati. The performance was on Sunday, November 30th at the Taft Theatre downtown.  We had to get there at 9:30 a.m. for a 3 p.m. performance.  Most of the day was spent sitting below the stage talking with the other girls that Athena is in ballet with. They also got to try on their costumes and had photos taken.  We weren't allowed to take any photographs. The website has finally posted the photos here http://www.shutterfly.com/progal/album.jsp?aid=768a5498cf3d1c52effd She's on page 2 and 3.  I'm not planning on purchasing any of the photos, but if you'd like any, please let me know and I can either purchase them for you and mail them on or if you can purchase them direct and need me to mail them to you, I can do that as well.

Here she is:

It truly was a magical day and experience.  The real ballet dancers were absolutely fantastic and they were very kind to all of the little girls.  Athena was mesmerized by all of gorgeous costumes and music and dancing.  Hopefully we'll get to do this again next year.