Preschool Fun

There have been quite a few fun activities in Haleigh's class over the past few weeks. They had a week dedicated to books and reading called LOL (Love of Literature) week which included things like character dress-up day and pajama day. They invited parents to come in and spend some time reading together with the kids.

Annaliese was a mermaid and Haleigh was Dora the Explorer.

Pajama Day!

Reading stories with Mallory and Auntie Kelsey

For Valentine's Day, they had a fun party at school. I had to work and wasn't able to make it but I'm sure they did some fun crafts and handed out Valentines to one another. Haleigh was very excited about all the Valentine's she received from her friends!

Last week, we went on a field trip to the fire station. They did a great job showing the kids the ambulance and the fire engine as well as explaining what a firefighter does. They got all dressed up in their gear and emphasized how they were there to help and not someone to be scared of! Because of the timing of the field trip, I picked up Annaliese early from school and she came along! 

Sitting inside the fire engine

Annaliese's turn in the fire engine

Haleigh, Keziah, Annaliese, and Faith

  

Watching FireFighter Aaron get dressed in his gear.

Mallory in the back of the ambulance

The whole class (plus a few siblings!)

Paying close attention to everything FireFighter Tim had to say! (Haleigh is in the grey shirt with pink sleeves)

There were a few loud noises...Annaliese borrowed Senora Polinder's earmuffs!

It's been fun watching Haleigh learn and grow as the year has progressed. She loves going to school and every once in awhile we hear her use a few Spanish words! 

Cross-Country Skiing

Last Friday while Annaliese was at school, Kyle and I dropped Haleigh and Lydia off with Auntie Kelsey and headed up to Salmon Ridge Sno-Park to try out our cross-country skies. The weather forecast predicted rain but we knew that if we didn't go, it would probably be awhile before we would have the opportunity to go again. It drizzled a little bit, but overall was a pretty good day! 

There were quite a few waterfalls along the way!

I am not very good at skiing and struggled to go up even the smallest up-hills! While the skis are partly to blame, I'm pretty sure my lack of skill also contributed a bit. Kyle had to help push me up because I kept sliding back down...it was one 'step' up, two 'steps' back! My whole body was sore for several days- I'm pretty sure I was using every muscle to help me get where I needed to be:) 

In the end, we both had fun and definitely want to go again. We are hoping to get the girls on skis soon too! Thanks Dad and Mom G. for sending us the skis and motivating us to get out and enjoy the snow!

January in Review

With the trip to New York followed by the trip to San Diego, January flew by! After coming back from San Diego, I felt like I was able to take a few breaths and get back into the swing of things! 

We are back into the normal routine of school, work, and dance class. In between, we fill our time with things like playing Go-Fish, building train tracks, getting outside as much as we can and hanging out with our cousins. 

Trying to pop the air-filled things that come in Amazon packages!

Playing with Malachi

Character dress up day...a mermaid and Dora

Pajama Day

Getting ready for dance 

Manicures and Pedicures...Kyle let the girls paint his fingers and toes!

New York

A few weeks ago, Kim, Elias, Kelsey, Mallory, Grandma, Annaliese and I took a quick little trip out to Long Island, NY to visit my grandpa. We had been planning on going in June, but he has been in and out of the hospital recently and we aren't really sure what things will look like in June so we thought we should go visit now. He has never met any of his great-grandkids so we each brought our oldest and gave him the opportunity to at least meet three of the 7!

We had a red-eye flight out of Seattle and we were hoping that the kids might sleep a little bit on the flight to JFK but that was wishful thinking and we arrived in New York all having had very minimal sleep! Once at the airport, we caught the air-train to Jamaica Station and then took the Long Island Railroad to Babylon, where we picked up our rental cars.

Annaliese and Mallory playing in the snow at Great-Grandpa's house

Sound asleep on the couch in the hotel!

We checked into our hotel and everyone took a nap! We got a suite, so we had a room with two queen beds and a bathroom and then a separate space that had a pull-out couch and kitchenette.We did a little grocery shopping and were able to eat the majority of our meals at our hotel. It had an indoor swimming pool so we also took advantage of that (although it was freezing!)

Annaliese got a new camera for Christmas that is waterproof...we tried to get a few pics in the water...ignore the datestamp- clearly I hadn't set it yet! 

The next day we headed over to the rehab facility where Grandpa was staying. He was pretty easily fatigued and dealing with quite a bit of pain so our visits with him were pretty short.  We tried to see him twice each day and it was really fun to see how Annaliese, Elias, and Mallory warmed up to him and wanted to tell him stories and draw him pictures!

Mallory showing Great-Grandpa her unicorn

Busy drawing pictures

We filled the rest of our time by hanging out at the hotel where the kids were quite content to play together, draw pictures and play with silly putty! We also ventured out to Heckscher State Park, but it was too cold and foggy to do much there! We tried to visit a fire station museum that was close to the hotel, but we showed up and the doors were locked and it was clearly not open that day! We also made it to Connetquot River Preserve State Park.

We stopped for a quick picture in front of the church where Grandma Tara and Grandpa Glen got married.

Playing cards in the hotel lobby

Walking back to the hotel...the museum was closed!

Visiting with Uncle Craig

Foggy day at Heckscher State Park

We were also able to fit in a quick visit with Uncle Bill and Aunt Grace.

They have this fun elevator/lift in their house!

Our flight left Sunday afternoon from JFK, so we repeated the whole process of returning rental cars, taking the train from Babylon to Jamaica Station, catching the Air Train to the airport and then getting through security and to our gate...everything went super smooth and the kids did great! On the flight home, Annaliese and Elias got to sit next to each other and Annaliese spent almost the entire flight playing little video games!

On the train!