January Pictures

Sophie got to bring 'spot' home from school for a week and write in his journal. She is loving her new elementary school. It may not be as academically challenging, but she is so happy.

Our little diva "take a picture of me and my prizes mom!!"

Rich and never get our picture taken together. Sophie is a great photographer.

Max had a few requests for his birthday. A train cake, chuck-e-cheese, and a lollipop from chuck-e-cheese. It was easy to fill his list this year. If only they could stay little and want little things...

Oops, its sideways. But Max loved his cake:)

Gavin thought it was a great day at chuck-e-cheese. Can you see the balloon strings behind him? We tied balloons on the back of his pants for the times we knew he would wander away from us. We could still see the balloons bouncing around and then he was easy to locate. Great idea!

I love wac-a-mole. Especially if it gives you tickets. It was out of tickets today.

Chucky is a little less scary when you don't actually have to look at his face.

What do you see in this picture??? A sad boy? Yes, and look at his foot... Yuck. He is walking on his wet diaper like a shoe. Eww. This is what happens sometimes when Rich watches the kids while I am gone at school. Poor guy! - Gavin, that is.

We got this awesome train table on KSL for only $5!!!!! We were so excited. We got it a few weeks before Max's birthday and he knew about it, be we kept saying that it was for his birthday. He really was so patient and waited till the day:) And the presents on top of it were like icing on a cake! He ripped into them with gusto! He loved it all:)

We all shed a tear...
Rich and I painted pottery when we were newly married (great gift idea) and we made a family birthday plate and a family birthday goblet. It is something the whole family looks forward to using on our birthdays. It makes us feel extra special... We had the table set for breakfast and Max was so excited. He sat up at the table and the place mat slid and the goblet tumbled onto the floor and smashed into pieces. Oh he felt so bad, and was really upset. And Sophie was really upset too because hers is the next birthday and she won't get to use the cup. Poor girl. So we took a picture, not to remember the sad incident, but to remember what it looks like. We want to remake it as soon as possible, and try to make it look as close to the original as possible.

This was a fun and easy cake to make for Max. The hardest part was driving all the way to Zurcher's to buy the candy rocks. Good pick Max:)

Happy Birthday to me:) We had our good friends the Horsley's over for dinner. Since we didn't get to have our traditional fancy New Year's Day dinner on New Years, we had it today. It was so yummy, and now I am officially old.

Sophie and Mrs. Buchholz.

I could write a whole post on this picture. We sent Sophie to a charter school this year. We loved everything about it. She was able to advance and excel where she could, and split up for things like math (she actually went into the 2nd grade classroom for math) and switch rooms for a higher reading group. She had great friends, challenging homework and I loved that she had a dress code/uniform that she needed to wear everyday.

But...

Over Christmas break it hit us pretty hard that Sophie wasn't able to actually play with her great friends from school. They all lived too far away. And it was really hard on me to try and load up all the kids to drive Sophie 20 min one way to play for 2 hours. That would be 80 min of driving for me (and all the other kids loaded in the car) and 120 min of playing for Sophie. So it didn't happen. We tried to arrange things for her to play with her old friends from kindergarten, but it didn't work out very well. Rich and I talked it over and then we asked Sophie if she wanted to go back to school at her old kindergarten school. Where Peter goes. That's another story. It didn't work out for them both to go to the charter school. So they were at different schools... Not fun for me. Anyway, her whole face lit up at the suggestion and the rest is history. She was sad to say goodbye, but excited for the new fun ahead back with her old friends.

Turns out I didn't take all that many pictures this month. Where have I been. or better yet, where has the time gone??