February!

 On February 7, Zack signed up to show his class a simple science experiment, with the help of a parent.  We decided to make dry ice bubbles and Kip helped him with it.  You take dry ice and put it in a container of water that has some sort of hose coming out of it.  You then put the end of the hose into a funnel and dip it in soapy water.  Then drop the bubbles onto a towel and ta-da you have bubbles filled with fog.  The students all thought it was pretty cool but we forgot to take any pictures of it.  Here are the kids watching the fog from some leftover dry ice.

 On February 23 it snowed and snowed.  Jaki had signed up for a 5k for that day and did it in the snow.  She was running through 3-4 inches of snow the whole time.  It wasn't that hard but we'd guess somewhat like running on sand only not as bad.  Her time was 32:00.4.  Not her best time but not too bad either, for running in the snow.  There were only about 30 participants but Jaki finished 3rd overall in women's and 2nd in her age group women's.  Here is a picture before the race started.  Kip and the kids hung out in this room that is inside of the Timbermine Restaurant, where the race started and ended and where prizes were given.

 Here is the beginning of the race.  Jaki is about in the middle in the white shirt, blue pants, and pink striped beanie.  You can see how hard it was snowing and it snowed that hard the whole time.  The only downside to the snow was that Jaki's ankles and feet were soaked and frozen by the time she was done and her clothes were wet, too.  The wetness didn't matter until the race was over and she started cooling down, then it got cold, luckily we had brought a few blankets with us.



And the end of the race...

 Here are just some pictures of the kids from throughout the month.  Addi and Jane are starting to play, although Addi is picking on Jane some of the time, I'm sure that will change soon.

 Addi's hair is now long enough and thick enough to do cute little ponytails or pigtails in.  She won't leave them in for long most of the time though.  In the picture above, Addi has a small pony in the top of her hair.

 One Thursday, while Jaki was tending Sally's kids and Christy had come over to visit and drop off/pick up a couple of things, the kids decided they all wanted to play with Jaki's hair.  We thought we should get a picture.  Addi was napping, Zack, Brynlee and Aibree were at school and Bentley was at a friend's house.

Zack's just trying to have fun and Will is not enjoying it.

Zack is so smart.  He can read most words now if he just takes the time to sound them out, he is getting better at all of his math things, although he really doesn't like to do the homework.  We are so proud of him.

Will is getting pretty smart too.  He can count to 10 although he won't do it when we ask but he does it when he's moving toys/food around and counts them as he's stacking them or placing them side by side.  He will also sing the alphabet song but also not when we ask just when he wants to.  He doesn't get all of the letters but he is getting close.  These kids are just growing up too fast!

 She just has such a cute smile and she loves to cheese for the camera!

Addi thinks she is such a big girl now.  She moves chairs around and uses them to climb on the table.  She's just exploring more and more things these days and such a smart little thing, too!  She is now saying Mom and Mama, which I think is for Grandma since she was pointing to a picture of her when she said it.  Her vocabulary seems to grow each day as she mimics everything that we say and do.  We just love her!

 The boys needed a haircut and since it's finally getting warmer we did a buzz cut.  They are getting along most of the time now, except when Zack tries to boss Will around or Will is just being stubborn.

 ROAR!!!!!

We tried to do a picture with all three kids but Addi was not so happy right then and the added annoyance of Zack picking her up didn't help.

It's not all grins and giggles from this cute little thing.  She is definitely spoiled, since we pick her up to save her from her brothers, mainly Will.