Benny's first Elementary School party!

Benjamin's elementary school had a 'Winterfest' at the beginning of February. Jed was working that night, so I took Ben, Eliza and Sam to his school party.  We had purchased tickets earlier that week so we could play the games in the booths. It was a lot of fun. Ben was so excited, he ran from booth to booth!  I was helping Eliza also play the games after Ben, and he was too excited to wait for us. He is so independent, it didn't surprise me one bit when he started to get his own tickets from the stash so he could run ahead and play games. I had to put the tickets in my pocket so he would have to come back to me between games, so I could keep tabs on him and also try to get him to wait for me so I could watch him play.  :)  At the end of the night, they got to cash in their points for some little prizes, which was very exciting!

another SNOW DAY!

We had a massive snowfall on Tuesday, February 1st, and so the next day was a SNOW DAY!!  Both Ben and Jed got to stay home!  The kids started their bonus 'Saturday' snuggled up in my electric blanket watching cartoons, thanks to their cool Daddy. (I can't take any credit for being spontaneous and fun... I wouldn't have even thought of it.) :)

Then we all trekked outside to shovel walks and enjoy the SNOW!  Our neighbor let Jed use his snowblower when he was done with his own driveway, and that saved a lot of time and effort!  Check out the steep edges of snow on the sidewalks.  It was a lot of snow!

There were big drifts along the fences and sides of the house...

Jed and Ben turned this big pile of snow that I'm standing on ...

Into a tunnel!  :)  It made a 90 degree turn, and it was a little tricky to get myself through it! 

There are my feet sticking out the back. You can tell it was a long tunnel!  I barely could squeeze through it. After I went through it, Jed said he was going to try it and I told him there was NO way he could fit through it. But he still said he would go through. So, he went down to go into the entryway, and he couldn't even get his shoulders in.  :) 

Here is Ben showing off the awesome tunnel that his Daddy made for him.

Fun fun fun!

Sam + Dirt = True Love

The other day I discovered Sammy in our living room, happily munching on the dirt from my potted plant! He had made quite a mess of it, too!  The next day I caught him at it again.  Oh no!  And he was way too pleased with himself!

Well, once he found how fun it was to play in the dirt, he kept gravitating to the pot. Then he quickly discovered the other pot on the floor in the living room, and it was all I could do to keep him away from those two plants! In a matter of a few days I had caught him red-handed multiple times! 

Finally I moved all the pots to the far corner of the kitchen, which definitely helped, but he still would head over there for some fun (and a taste!) if he spotted them. 

Then Jed had an idea. A brilliant idea. He seran wrapped the pots. I was a little skeptical at first, but he was sure it would work. And it did!  Samuel is proud to say that he is going on two weeks being soil-free!

Now, he's moved on to plucking the leaves off of the plants...

I snapped some pictures of him today:

"Look, Mom! I got one!"

Being a true 'taste' connoisseur (as everything he comes across must first be investigated by putting it in his mouth), he is rating this leaf on a scale of one to ten...

The Secret of Nimh

Last week Ben, Eliza, and I finished reading The Secret of Nimh together.  We had a lot of fun reading it!  It took us 8 days to finish the book (it's 249 pages), and we read it almost every day.  It was so much fun to snuggle under my electric blanket (that Jed gave me for Christmas - I love it!) and read it together when Ben got home from school.  I looked forward to it!  Ben followed along with me as I read and comprehended everything that was going on. Eliza, surprisingly, sat there with us listening, even when we read for almost an hour.  She would sometimes go get a toy or something to look at, but she would still be listening while she fiddled with it on the couch next to me. I was pretty surprised at her attention span!
Jed took this picture when he got home from work one day and found us lounging on the couch after just reading part of our book together.  :)
The actual book was very interesting and I completely enjoyed it. I didn't realize that it had a somewhat different storyline than the movie, and I liked the book much better.  (It had been ages since I had read it when I was young.) After we finished our book, the kids watched the movie The Secret of Nimh, which my parents gave to Ben for Christmas.  Getting to watch the movie when we finished the book was very exciting to Eliza (well, both of them, but especially to her), and it probably motivated her to stick with it to the end!  :)