Snowy Days

It snowed 3 days this week.  One storm was just an inch or so, but then Friday and Saturday we got about 2-3 feet. 

 The first little snow was good for sledding.  Friday afternoon was fine too, but by Saturday morning the snow was too deep for it.

 The chickens were nearly buried in the snow!  They are fine.  They hate walking in snow and normally the tarp keeps their run pretty dry in winter. But there was too much snow this time, it came in the sides.  I spread a thick layer of straw over the snow in their run area so that the would come out.  (Otherwise their coop gets stinky pretty fast).  They are still laying though.  We have been getting 2-3 eggs a day.

 I spent about 5 hours shoveling on the driveway.   I only cleared the same 1/3 of of it twice over.  Their driveway is super long. At the end the piles were so tall that I was having trouble throwing the snow on top.  Fortunately Uncle P has a nice neighbor with a little back hoe.  He came and helped us on Sunday.

The kids could barely walk, the snow was so deep.

Baby L came out to check on my shoveling.

 

Happy 1st Birthday Baby L

For family home evening a couple weeks ago we worked on the model plane brother M got for his birthday. Everyone helped paint a part. 

 Curly man got his hair cut off again.

And Baby L had brownies and ice cream in celebration of turning 1!  She was not sure how she felt about the ice cream at first...

But decided after the first few bites that it was pretty tasty.

She has grown so much this year. She is walking like it's no big deal. Chasing after the big kids as often as she can. She says "doggie", "ball", and something like "jazzy" regularly. I think she is my littlest climber, but maybe I am not remembering right. She is already climbing on chairs to reach light switches (copying cousin E) and scaring me by easily climbing up and sitting in the middle of the dining room table. She seems like she'll be a red head like her big sis, though it is still hard to tell with so little hair.
She sleeps with me every night... I know it breaks all the rules.  But she is the baby of all my babies and I am enjoying cuddling with her while it lasts. We will transition her into her crib when we move to the new house. She is still nursing, and we are going to take our time with weaning as well.

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning Grandpop came up to Uncle P's house before church and took some more great pics. These cousins can't get enough of each other. 

They put on a "show" for Grandpop, which usually involves all kinds of couch acrobatics. You can see our family's makeshift closet in the hallway down there and L's crib next to the couch.

Uncle P and his family:

 Our latest family photo:

Art Class and Cousin's Baptism

 For our Meet the Masters class this week we learned about Georgia O'Keefe.  It was interesting to listen to the voice recording of an interview with her. She spoke about her artwork and why she chose a unique perspective.  The exercise was to paint hills and show perspective using size and paint them different color values (tint and shade).

We drove down to Virginia for cousin A's baptism. (All the good quality pics are from my dad).
We arrived at the church about an hour early since we were allowing plenty of time for traffic. That gave Grandpop time to take some cute shots in the gym.

 

Aunt S made cousin A a beautiful winter baptism dress, but she decided to keep it dry and wear it for pictures after the baptism.

At the after party the girls were playing on one tablet and...

 the boys on another. Notice how bad brother S wanted to be part of the action...

They had yummy refreshments and all the kids had a picnic

On our way home we took advantage of Grandpop's hotel pool for a family swim.