Snow Day!

Up until today, these were the only snowflakes seen around here.

But this morning, we woke up to the real stuff! Of course, school was cancelled and we had a great time playing in the snow! It continued snowing for much of the day, and all in all we have about 5 inches on the ground.

This morning we played in our yard, then later this afternoon, we went sledding.

Ben was all about the snowballs. Here he is getting ready to throw one. I love the tongue out and look of concentration.

Kate was one of the recipients of Ben's snowballs.

The snow wasn't wet enough to make a good snowman, but Rachel had to make one anyway. It is about a foot tall at the base of a tree in our yard.

First Lost Tooth

Ben finally lost his first tooth! He's been wiggling it for so long--it very stubbornly did not want to come out. David finally pulled it to put him out of his misery. He's almost 7 and halfway through first grade and still hadn't lost a tooth (and Kate had to have a tooth pulled, so she beat him to it), so he was so excited to be a part of the "Lost Tooth Club." Tonight he kept saying, "Raise your hand if you've lost a tooth!"

More Concerts

We started out this week with the Kids' Inaugural Concert at the Verizon Center. Then on Thursday was Rachel's chorus concert. The chorus at her school has about 50 children in it. They sang several songs and even did two from the musical "Hello Dolly, complete with choreography using bowler hats and parisols. They did a great job! Then today Sarah and Rachel had their winter piano recital. They both performed well and it is always good as the parent to see their hard work pay off. They have practiced hard this year and both really improved. In fact, Rachel won the most improved award at the recital. She got a trophy for this and was very excited.

However, I must note that Sarah and Rachel have an ongoing rivalry about trophies. Rachel has gotten several more trophies than Sarah for various activities (soccer, perfect attendance at school, etc). Sarah has not had the same opportunities or experiences as Rachel and as a result does not have the same number of trophies (read: a lot less). So Sarah was pretty irritated that Rachel got yet another trophy. Rachel was very sweet about it and did not rub it in (actually, I felt bad for her that her moment of glory was tempered by Sarah's hurt feelings). Rachel came home from the concert and decided to make a trophy for Sarah.

Here is the "Best Big Sister Award" presented to Sarah Harper, January 2009. She made it out of an empty tissue box covered in metalic wrapping paper with stars on it, topped with an upside-down water bottle and some beads. It was a beautiful work of art. She gave it to her at dinner. I love it when my children do nice things spontaneously for each other!

Blog to Book Part 2

Thanks to those of you who gave suggestions on turning my blog into a book. Just in case anyone is also trying to do this, here is what I've found: I've determined that both Blog2Print and Scrapbookblogger.com will download from blogger. Scrapbookblogger has better layouts and is easier to rearrange photos, edit text, etc. Blog2Print was very cumbersome to work with, and both are pretty pricey (at least $60 for posts from 2008). However, I still don't think I'm going to do it. Because each post has a different amount of pictures, they don't always fit with the text on the correct pages in their predesigned layouts and there ends up being a lot of wasted space. Also, the pictures don't always fit into their sizes and I got a lot of !!! error messages telling me my photos were low resolution and they weren't going to print well. I guess if I am going to spend a lot of money on a book, I want it to look good. So, my plan for now is to continue to print off my photos and scrapbook them. At least I can print the text from my blog posts to use as journaling on my scrapbook pages. Please let me know if anyone finds something better.

Kids Inaugural Concert

Monday morning we were given four tickets to the Kids' Innaugural Concert at the Verizon Center in Washington DC held that evening. We were excited for an opportunity to attend SOMETHING for the inauguration since it was here so close to us. And this event seemed perfect since it did not require waiting for long periods of time outside in the cold. Also, this was an event to honor military families, so we were glad for the chance to go. We got a babysitter for Ben and Kate and took Sarah and Rachel with us to the concert. The girls aren't really into Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers, but decided it would be a great opportunity to say they had been there.

We had great seats--about 12 rows up to the left side of the stage.

Miley Cyrus was the first performer.She came out later and did a duet with her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus.

We had a great line of sight view of Michelle Obama and her girls and Jill Biden and her grandchildren.

Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Biden both spoke during the concert, which was broadcast live on the Disney Channel.

The Jonas Brothers were the final performers. We were sort of laughing at ourselves that we didn't know any of their songs, but it was still fun to be a part of the excitement. And actually, I had a great time taking pictures--I kept trying all sorts of different camera settings to deal with the terrible lighting. I think I finally got it right by the time the Jonas Brothers performed--their pictures turned out much better.

Rachel didn't really like all the noise (her favorite part was dessert afterward), but we all still had a great time. It was a really fun night! It's a lot of fun living in DC! Thanks Annette for the tickets!

A few pictures from our fall photo shoot

One beautiful fall afternoon I forced the kids to go on a photo shoot (they weren't super excited about it). I had scoped out a place by the kids' school that I thought would be perfect for pictures. I was hoping to get a good one of the kids all together for our Christmas card, but I wasn't very happy with how the group ones turned out. So, I ended up using some individual ones for the Christmas card instead. I was looking at them again the other day and realized that I never put any on my blog. And after looking at them again, I decided I even liked a few of them, although none of them are perfect.

I can't believe how grown up Sarah looks in this picture!

Kate is showing me how old she turned. (Yes, she had to get a cut on her face just before I'd planned to take pictures...)

David took this one and I wish he would have zoomed in more, but I think if I crop it, it will be a nice picture.

Blog to Book?

One of the main reasons I started a blog was to keep a record or a journal for our family. I had every intention of printing this at the end of each year so we could have a permanent record. I have not scrapbooked anything from this year in anticipation of having it all in a blog book. I was planning on using blurb.com to print this book. However, after spending the last hour downloading software and trying to make this work, I have discovered that blurb.com no longer supports blogger and will no longer accept uploads directly into their software. I'm so bummed. The only way I know is to cut and paste directly, but that will take forever. I'm not nearly as excited about blogging if I can't turn it into a book. Anyone have any suggestions?

New Year's Eve

For several years in a row when the kids were little, David worked on New Year's Eve. I tried to come up with some fun traditions for the kids and I to do to make it seem like a special day. By New Year's, most of the treats we made for Christmas had been eaten, so we needed a new treat to make. So one year we decided to make ice cream in plastic bags. The kids liked it so much, we have been doing it ever since.


To make the ice cream, put 1/2 cup whole milk, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla in a small freezer bag (I usually double bag it to be safe). Then put the smaller bag inside of a larger gallon size freezer bag that is about 1/2 to 3/4 full of ice and rock salt. (Once again, double bagging is a good idea.)


Then...you shake the bag. It takes 8-10 minutes of shaking before it turns into ice cream.





Music makes this a lot more fun. So for our New Year's Eve party, we blast the music and everyone dances around with their ice cream. The kids love it, and I love watching their dance moves progress from year to year. This year we put in the Grease Soundtrack and danced around while David rolled his eyes in the other room (Grease is not his favorite movie by any means). David was on call this year, but gets to take home call now, so we were glad he was home with us.



Sarah had a friend over this year, and it was fun to share our tradition with someone else.



After it's done, the kids add sprinkles and/or chocolate sauce.

Here's Kate, already in her nightgown, showing off her very own ice cream.

After the ice cream, we watched a movie, played games, and watched the ball drop in Times Square at midnight. Everyone but Kate stayed up until midnight this year.

................................................

Our New Year's Day tradition is a Penny Hunt. The saying goes,

Find a penny
pick it up
all the day
you'll have good luck.

So, if one penny brings luck for a day, finding lots of pennies will bring you luck for the whole year. Every New Year's Day I hide pennies around the house for the kids to find. They love the penny hunt. This year I hid 150 pennies--30 for each of the 5 kids to find (our four plus Sarah's friend). Once they find their 30, they can help the other kids find the rest. They had a great time!

The Botanical Gardens

A few days after Christmas we went downtown to do some sightseeing. The weather was beautiful and it seems the entire Eastern seaboard had the same idea. As we drove through the city we saw lines to get into every museum--there were more people downtown than during cherry blossom festival. Despite the crowds we eventually found a parking spot and waited in line to go see the train display in the botanical gardens.

Even though we had heard how wonderful the trains were, we hadn't been to see it yet. The pictures definitely don't do it justice.

There were little villages made out of plants and trees with trains winding throughout.

They also had scale replicas of many of the buildings downtown. They were amazing.

After the botanical gardens we went briefly to the new visitor center at the Capitol. We only had a half hour before closing, so we only saw a few things, and decided we definitely need to go back.

Christmas Morning

We had a wonderful Christmas morning! Of course, it started way too early...

We unwrapped, laughed, hugged, thanked, and unwrapped more! I hope your Christmas was wonderful too!