Weeks 7 & 8: Celebrations

February has been all over the place this year. In addition to Valentine's Day and President's Day excitement we've had a classmate birthday party almost every single week, Zach's cub scout pack Blue & Gold banquet, snow days, a day off for flooding (!), and now WV teachers are on strike since the 22nd. We have come to expect the unexpected lately, as much as we can anyway.

Us at Ikea. That's always fun.

Excited about her Ring Pop.

Fourth graders. He felt grown up that this was a Friday night birthday party and not a weekend afternoon one.

It was the first time for all of us to attend this function that honors the fifth graders moving to boy scouts. Only one more year as a cub for Zach's den!

Awesome new containers for flour, sugar, etc. Sometimes it's the little things.

Zach and I are bonding over the Harry Potter movies while working on the Harry Potter puzzle during these teacher strike days.

It's still all about the Minecraft. Though Gabe does enjoy the games where you have to bounce a ball/cube/etc over and around obstacles without crashing. He's surprisingly good at those. He also beat Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch the other day.

Steaks came out wonderfully in a new cast iron pan.

Classmate party for Charlotte at a bouncy house place.

Here are a couple of funny Charlotte videos. She has been going to day care through the teacher strike, but when she's here she doesn't stop talking or singing to herself.

Week 6: Derby time

Yesterday was the annual Pinewood Derby. Alas, Zach did not get a trophy this year. His den has gained scouts each year, more of them participated in the race, and some have gotten quite good at building fast cars. It's still a fun time for all the scouts, though to the rest of us it seemed to take the whole day. Gabe watched the races or drew pictures on his clipboard, and Charlotte ran around with another little sister and watched the races but also had fun taking selfies with Frank.

Week 5: Slime and puzzles

More snow and cold; bleh. There was one snow day and one delayed day. I let Charlotte get crafty cutting up magazines, and Gabe helped me construct a Minecraft slime stuffed animal/thing. Zach has been super excited about puzzles the last couple of weeks. Friday night Frank and I went out for dinner to celebrate my birthday, then Saturday we all went to lunch. We're really hoping it doesn't feel like winter for 6 more weeks.

Weeks 3 & 4: Board games, school, and the dentist

The last two weeks saw no school for MLK, two snow days, two delayed start days, two days I volunteered at school for Zach's classes, two birthday parties, and an unexpected two-appointments-in-one-day dentist visit. Whew!

And in the biggest news of all, our nephew, Jaden, was born very early on the 14th.

I used snow days stuck-in-the-house time to finally put away all the Christmas stuff. I'm not thrilled that it continues to grow each year...

We played lots of games during the snow days.

We've played this one, Carcassonne, about a dozen times, and it's really fun.

School visit number 1: all the parents were invited to help the fourth grade science classes with an owl pellet dissection. They had to try to figure out what the owl ate based on the bones they found.

I took Gabe to a birthday party at a place with arcade games, bowling, bumper cars, and his favorite, the tea cup ride. It was for his friend Eden, who shares his love of Mario, Minecraft, Pokemon, and drawing comic books.

As Gabe and I were heading out for the party, Charlotte wanted me to take this map she drew, just in case I got lost. She wanted to make sure that I could find my way back to her. It was one of the most adorable things she's ever said!

A visit to a pediatric dentist for Gabe's cavity turned into having a couple of baby teeth pulled and a very long day for us. But this is their second floor play area!

School visit number 2: The Agriculture learning bus came to the school where Zach has gifted class. I helped out with a strawberry DNA extraction.

Nothing like a Friday night at the mall. We stopped by the gaming shop for Zach to pick up Yu-Gi-Oh cards for his friend's birthday party the next day.