January fun

The kids have been working their way through Lego sets from Christmas. If you have a spare 8 minutes, Owen will tell you about his Minecraft sets.

The kids enjoyed a sleepover at Nana and Grandpa's and made a fun craft from Aunt Linda. She also made us awesome holiday banners!!

Willow started getting a monthly cooking box from Radish Kids from the Caldwells. She's enjoyed making quite a few recipes so far. This ravioli was fun to make!

Grading papers has taken over many of my weekends (sigh!!). Their spelling errors make me smile though :)

Willow is playing indoor soccer with a couple friends. It's been nice for her to have a way to stay active and see friends too!

She was invited to go swimming with those same friends :)

 Still practicing...

I'm super thankful to have an opportunity to receive my first COVID vaccine through school. It gave me such a sense of hope as I saw the number of people receiving the vaccine, knowing how many more are arriving daily!

Christmas in VA

We were blessed with a white Christmas in VA this year! I'm not sure if that's ever happened before! It was a fun surprise since it'd been rainy and mid-50s all day Christmas Eve!

The kids set out cookies and milk for Santa!

Whiskers was dangerously curious about it...

Santa came with Minecraft and Harry Potter Legos and a new scratching post and food dishes for the kittens.

Beautiful snow at dawn!

Whiskers enjoyed the view from inside but Tilly bolted out the door to check it out. 

Willow was pretty excited about her Chromebook (laptop that's screen folds back to be like a tablet):

Owen was pretty excited about his Minecraft Lego sets too:

The living room quickly became a disaster zone!

After presents the kids enjoyed playing outside (even though it was in the low 20s!!):

Trampoline fun!

Tilly was hiding under a little table so Chris rescued her. I'm not sure what her plan was...

We headed up to Nana and Grandpa's for the rest of the day. The kids were blessed with more thoughtful gifts and enjoyed time playing together...and lots of yummy food!

Disaster zone strikes again!

Why I have job security:

End of Christmas Break fun

The kids got a lot of fun games for Christmas so we enjoyed playing them together over break. Owen really fell in love with Risk at the beach last year so he was excited to play it. We set a "deadline" of the first day back to school and, although we played for a week, there was not a winner before school started back. 

We met Kim and the kids at the Children's Museum. They had a great time!

Owen built and built and built the Lego sets he got for Christmas. This Yoda one is super cute!!

We met Nana, Grandpa and the kids at the pool. Who cares what the weather is outside if it's an indoor pool, right??

Check out the kids jumping in!

Hunter loves amusement park rides and water slides. He's been waiting and waiting to be able to do this slide for a couple years. He was able to pass the swim test to do the slide for the first time! He then did it on repeat for 2 hours (with the exception of about 10 minutes). Here's his first time down! All the kids going down!

Willow joined Nana, Kim and me for "Girls Night Out" for the first time. We went to dinner and a movie (Little Women). She then read by "headlamp light" on the drive back since her reading light battery needed replaced. ;)

I'm not sure if you've ever judged someone based on their name but in my life I've never met a Sara(h) or Linda who wasn't the sweetest person in the world. On my Emmaus walk last April I met TWO Lindas who were both super sweet ladies. One of them ended up feeling like my "Emmaus Angel." She's my parents age and has a granddaughter Willow's age who also loves Harry Potter. We've gotten together a handful of times since the walk. We had them over during break then she sent me this super sweet text afterwards. We all need more Lindas in our life!

Christmas break = lots of Alli cuddles and naps!

Hopefully you'll notice a different quality in pictures on the blog now thanks to my phone upgrade! I'm super excited about it!!

We all got pumped up to watch the Bills in the playoffs!

The excitement was too exhausting for some!

 The kids lucked out with a snow day for what was supposed to be their first day back to school. "Some of us" still had school (ended up being a MESS and they cancelled middle school and high school but elementary had to stay. Hmmmmm) but it sure was beautiful!!

The kids enjoyed the snow at home:

The kids also enjoyed doing things like this and this, as well as going to the trampoline park with Nana and Grandpa! Check them out here and here.