tales from a far-land

Happy Valentine's Day from my two little cupids.  Hoping your Valentine's Day was full of love and happiness.   The kids spent the night before the holiday signing their cards so that they could participate int eh card exchange with their classmates.  They came home with really cute Valentine's mailboxes they created in Engineering full of Valentine's and candy.     Our Valentine's evening was spent finishing homework, studying for their spelling test and cleaning up their rooms.  Not a very fun night overall.  The kids lacked focus and the parents lacked patience.  Not a very fun combination.  But we did, at least, dine on  our traditional meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup.  Maybe next year, this holiday will go a tad more smoothly. Kids signing their V-Day cards V-Day Mailboxes V-Day morning treats Aiden Madi My two cupids

Much of our January was spent vacationing on the beach, so we decided for the kids' February school break that we would enjoy some time in snow country.  Thus, a trip to Tahoe to visit Josh's college friend, Rose, at her cabin on the lake.  It was a wonderful long weekend.  We did all things snow related:  snowball fights, sledded, made snowmen, shoveled the driveway, and drank hot chocolate while watching the snow fall.  We even enrolled the kids on Sunday in snowboarding school at Squaw Valley Ski Resort while Josh and Ian snowboarded.  They thoroughly loved it.  The only downside we had to the entire trip occurred on Tuesday when were ready to leave Tahoe to drive to Reno but the over eight feet of snow caused some departure issues.  The snow plow didn't come rescue us until mid-afternoon, so we missed our flight and had to take a later one that re-routed us through San Jose before flying south to Phoenix.  Just a good reminder as to why I live in Phoenix -- no snow

Grading period three at BASIS Phoenix Primary concluded for the kids in mid-January.  We are officially halfway through the school year.  Scary!  The kids had a pretty good first half of the school year. Both kids still love to go to school, which is great.  Our days are full of homework, spelling tests, vocabulary tests, Science projects, Connection projects, art drawings, and concert rehearsals.  And, this year has included some fun challenges that have made Josh and I have to work harder in the parenting department.  There are definitely days that I wished these little people came with operational manuals.  Madilyn is the optimal student.  She loves to learn and help in the classroom.  She wants to make her teachers happy and will readily do her homework (except on those days that her brother doesn't have any and then she finds life very unfair).  But, she continues to struggle with learning some key math facts and concepts, but she doesn't give up and is gaining better fl