Piano, Zoo and Derby

Here are some of the things we've been doing lately.


Our kids started taking piano lessons from Grandma Judy in February. We are loving it. She's an amazing teacher and the kids are making tons of progress. They had their first recital this past week. Three of their cousins are also taking lessons from grandma. (Tara must have the picture with everyone looking at her - I don't know how I ended up with this picture being the best of the 6 pics I took).


Pinewood Derby time! Addison's car is the red one. His car came in first or second in the first four races . He won enough races to make it to the finals, but then came in sixth place (out of six in the finals). It was an interesting night. The meeting started late, they did the scouting awards and flag ceremony, then the man who came and set up the track talked for 30 minutes about the rules and having fun and being good sports. He went on and on and on. I'm sure he's seen it all (and he told us about a lot of it), but I couldn't wait for him to start. We arrived at 7:00 and they started racing the cars at 8:15. They weren't done until nearly 9:00 p.m.



Kindergarten field trip to the zoo. It was miserable. We went on Tuesday and it was raining (pouring buckets) the entire 2 1/2 hours while we were there. It was also 40 degrees, so it was cold and wet. All the covered pavilions were taken so we ended up setting up our picnic under the awning for the elephant exhibit. The kids were ready to go home an hour before it was over. Here are a few pictures of the animals we saw.


Anna is in the teal colored jacket. She loved having her hand on the glass while the leopard paced back and forth on the other side of the glass. It was crazy to be within inches of him.



Andrew and the giraffe.



The tigers were very active. That's one good thing about going on a rainy day - some of the animals were more active. However, a lot of the animals were not out. There weren't any animals in the zebra enclosure. The bear and cougar enclosures were also empty. I guess schools can't reschedule field trips. The kids seemed to have fun despite the lousy weather.

Wordless Wednesday

I read a blog where the woman does a "Wordless Wednesday" and posts pictures of her kids. Since I really don't have much to say about this, here's Andrew.


In my defense--- I was sewing a baby quilt and had checked on him only a few minutes earlier. He's handy with a screw driver. He took his two story fire house toy apart with an allen wrench a month after getting it for Christmas. It took my dad about an hour to build it and it took Andrew less than 10 minutes to take it apart. But no worries, he put it back together again by himself.


Both doors were attached and functioning well this morning. I have no idea what goes through this kid's mind.

My Brother's Farm

My brother Jacob lives in a city, really. He has a mini farm on his property. We went out to visit his baby lambs and I snapped some pictures of his other animals while we were there.


Three of the mama sheep with their babies. One ewe had triplets, one had twins and the one on the far left had a single baby.

Yolanda the Yak with the ram and one of the one-year old ewes.

Nine ducklings

This white peacock adopted Jake and Edie. He shows up each day to visit. Jake wonders how peacock tastes.... just kidding.

Sarah holding one of the baby bunnies.

Jenna holding one of the baby lambs. The mama was not happy and she let us know! We put the baby back pretty fast.

Jacob came home from work last week and found one of the babies nearly frozen. This baby lamb is one of the triplets and the mama could only feed two of the babies so we think she hadn't been nursing this one. Jake brought her into the house and put her under a heat lamp. He tried feeding her electrolytes (the orange stuff in the rootbeer bottle) from his lamb rescue kit. Even after three hours under the heat lamp she was still freezing (her legs and gums were so cold.) Jake hesitated to warm her up in water because once you do that there is no chance that the mama ewe will take the baby back. After a few hours he felt like he was losing her, so we helped him warm her up in a hot bath. It was amazing to see how fast she recovered. She was able to drink the electrolytes and then the colostrum replacement. By the time we left she looked like she was going to make it.


Now they have a bottle fed lamb. She has to be fed every 2 hours (even at night!) for the first week, then every three hours for the next week, then ever fours the next week, and then you can go every 6 hours until she's weaned (which is probably in 2 months).


Since Jake and Edie work all day, my mom has been taking care of the baby lamb during the day. Jenna decided to name the lamb "Hope", but Jake isn't sure he wants to call her that. Jake and Edie haven't chosen a name for their baby girl that is going to be born in April, so my dad calls their baby girl "Faith". That's why Jenna thought it would be good to name the lamb "Hope".

Hope is doing much better now and was following my mom around the kitchen the other day.

Addison's B-Day

Addsion turned 9 this week. He's having a few friends over next week for a party, but we had a little family party for him on his birthday.



I'm pretty proud of this cake. (It's a lego cake in case you can't tell!)

Andrew Singing

As many of you know, Andrew was not an early talker. He's in a speech class and doing much better now. We are enjoying hearing him talk and sing finally. :)

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam

(The best part of this clip is in the first few seconds. You don't have to listen to me sing the rest of the song if you don't want to!)

On a seperate note, the short haircut he's sporting is a result of his and Anna's decision to cut their hair. I must say, fixing a boy's haircut is much easier than fixing a girl's self-haircut.

Just Say No!!!

Anna came home from school this week with her red ribbon bracelet on. Red ribbon week is the "Just Say No to Drugs" week. I asked her what she had learned at school that day. She said, "I promise to not eat slugs." She was completely serious and unsure why we were all giggling. We told her that was a great thing to promise and that we would make the same promise!

Here are two pictures from her gymnastics show week.

Halloween

Addison as Harry Potter.

Andrew as Mickey Mouse Fireman - he refused to
trick-or-treat and came home with an empty bucket.

Jenna and her friend Paige. They were "dark fairies".

Sarah as Wednesday Adamms (but she wouldn't wear the wig),
her friend, and Anna as a purple witch.