Snow Day!

One of the great things about homeschooling is that you can declare a "snow day" whenever you want.  Even if the weather is 80 outside!  We have been wanting to go to the snow all winter, but we were either busy, or the roads weren't clear on our favorite mountaintop.  Thankfully, we've had lots of rain this year, which means lots of snow in the mountains.  I called the ranger station to make sure there was still snow, since it suddenly got hot here.  She said it is melting and there won't be much, but no one had been up there all week.  We decided to risk it, since it is probably our last chance.  We even braved it without the Daddy!  Big brother helped a lot, it's so nice to have big kids now! Going to the snow on a school day is great, we were the only ones up there for an hour, and by the time we left, there were only 6 cars!

Melting!?  Look at the signs!  There is at least 3 or 4 feet here!

Wild things:

At the top of the hill:

Giant snowman that someone else made.  They had already beheaded the poor guy before I stopped them.  So he got a new head:

A sea of purple, at the foot of the mountains!

 

Dressing Up

My boys have never worn ties.  I bought those little "kits", the shirt and clip on matching tie.  Someone had traded ties in the package with a smaller one, which would have been very short!  So our oldest got to wear one of Daddy's real ties.  I think they look great.  We need to go somewhere fancy to wear them again, maybe a nice dinner someday.

The oldest girl likes to wear dresses, but not the youngest, so this is different, too :)

New Year's Eve

January is almost over already, but I wanted to share these neat pictures from New Year's Eve.  We went to the hills at some friends' land.

They made this huge bonfire.  Here is my son in front of it to see how big it is:

These brave men are standing on a pallet on a fork lift to put the toilet paper rolls up there:

Watch how the heat causes the toilet paper to unroll almost straight up. 

Some of the toilet paper will eventually break and float down in huge streams, unburned! 

You can feel the heat from this thing from very far away!

Our Baby is Eight!

I know she isn't a baby anymore, she is a big girl and big helper, when she wants to be! Here she is through the years.  I am so thankful for her.

7 weeks:

7 months:

1 1/2:

 

 

2, with her new "baby safe" glasses:

 4:

5:

6:

7:

8!:

 

 

Isn't She Lovely?

15 years ago today, I began the wonderful journey of being a Mommy.  I can hardly believe my girl is 15 now, but I  can hardly remember a time without her.  Here are some pictures of our first little blessing:

3 mos

1st birthday:

2 years old:

3

5:

8:

 10:

11:

13:

15!

PS, she got up at 5:30 this morning to make homemade cinnamon rolls.  She made a huge mess, but they were good.  Then she made her own cake from scratch, and even dinner, spaghetti, using spaghetti squash instead of pasta!

Time Capsule Opened!

The kids just couldn't wait until the next day, but we did wait until after midnight, on January 1, 2010 to open our time capsule.  It wasn't quite as exciting as we had all hoped.  No long lost toys were in there.  No dollars. I took pictures of some of the items.  I will list the rest at the end of this post.

Pictures of all of us on January 1, 2000:

(some ink got on some of them)

 

C, above, almost 5

D, age 3

A age 1 1/2

B, 6 weeks!

I had put in a few newspapers:

I put this Y2K book inside, that was obviously useless since nothing happened :) Yes, we did some preparing for that.

Also:

Coins from 1999, and some pennies from the years of our births or high school graduations.

Two Duplos

Lowly Worm in an apple car toy.

My 1999 Calendar

A faded receipt from Albertsons.  It's hard to read, but large red delicious apples were $1.19 a lb.

The kids have been working on our next time capsule to be opened in 2020!  My youngest will be a Senior in High School!  They all said they would come home to open it :)  They wrote about what they are doing now, what they are like, and what they think or hope they will be doing in 10 years.   They added some kind of keepsake, artwork, money, photos.  I will add to it, and I'll try to make it a little more interesting and surprising for them.  I will for sure make the box prettier, seal it up and put it away. Check back here in January 2020 :)

 

Merry Christmas!!