Her little friend Mike

Leeli's been busy again. A friend had a birthday, and those smart fingers got to work.

Concord Museum (in the 3rd grade)

I went on a really great field trip.
All of my kids have taken this trip in third grade and come home raving about everything that is Concord-fantastic.
Recently my sixth and final child brought home the field trip permission slip for the Concord Museum.  I decided this might very well be my last opportunity to experience Concord in the third grade.
Let me report: The Concord Museum is a desirable destination. The staff there caters perfectly to third graders. And chaperone-moms. The trip was everything they said it would be, and MORE.

 If you don't live near Concord, Massachusetts, put it on your short list of places to explore. Besides the Old North Bridge (the shot heard 'round the world?), Louisa May Alcott's house (Little Women fans?) and a quaint New England town FULL of history that makes you want to wander in and out of little shops and have tea and crumpets, the Concord Museum is the crown jewel of this historic area.  I can't believe until now, I managed to miss this experience.

 I loved the hands-on parts of the day.  Each student was allowed to touch and explore colonial period artifacts, 

 try their hands at the art of apprenticing with a tinsmith, 

put together a model of a colonial town, 

sew a simple project 

and they helped cook an entire meal over an open fire in a working colonial kitchen. 

They even ate the food and washed the dishes.

 The experience left me so enthused about colonial life I was ready to move in and set up shop.

...AND...

I learned something NEW on my trip to Concord.

The very famous statue of the Minuteman 

(picture is of the museum replica)

was an early sculpture by Daniel Chester French.

The very same man who, later in life, 

sculpted the Lincoln Memorial.

sisters

I met my cute sister at the Boston Temple yesterday.

She brought two more cute sisters along.

One of them comes from a town where one of my very best BFF's lives.

  It's a pretty great day when the temple figures into the plan. 

It's even better when you make new friends and find out you have top notch people in common. 

raising cain in Virginia

We spent a day with cousin Logan in Charlottesville.

He's a lot of fun.

(He even tolerated some shopping)

We asked him where we should stop for lunch.

We like to try new things.

 He took us to his favorite spot.

 It's a good thing we almost had the place to ourselves.

 (I try to emphasize manners at meal time)

 We can't help it... we raise cain wherever we go.

road trip

do you wanna build a snowman?

Junior Basketball

 It's been another season for the record books. There will be many more years of basketball in our future.

winter vacation

We're on February break.

Here's the view from our family room.

 It's good to have a break from school and the daily routine. Maybe what we'd really appreciate is a break from this February snow. There's more coming tomorrow.

In the meantime, thank heavens we enjoy playing in it.

Friendship: a gospel principle

If we truly want to be tools in the hands of our Heavenly Father in bringing to pass His eternal purposes, we need only to be a friend.

-Marlin K. Jensen

We've been saying good-bye to a lot of good friends of late. This week we bid farewell to another family, and hosted a gathering in their honor.

 It was a group of friends who could just as well pass for family. I'm grateful for friendships.

snowflakes (inside and out)

Happy Valentine's Day

Olympic sleeping-in

It's snowing again!

It's really beautiful.

We knew before bedtime last night that school would be canceled.

Mostly because I didn't want morning boy rushing out of bed at an early hour (which he is prone to do on non-school days) I challenged him to be a medal contender in the newest Olympic event: sleeping in. To his credit, he made a valiant effort. Of the six of us, he was third out of bed. We really ought NOT to include Dub, since he was padding down the stairs before the clock even read 4:00 am. For the record, I made it to 7:19 am.  Morning boy clocked in at 7:55, and my money for the gold was on Rooney. Much to my surprise, the podium looked like this:

Now the Nor'easter is raging outside, we're keeping tabs on the Sochi games and winter is looking just as beautiful on the inside.

it's still winter outside

Inside, we're forcing Spring.

(sometimes just knowing things will still grow makes all the difference)

breakfast: comfort food

just so we're clear:

I'm a big fan of dessert.

But it's not ALL breakfast dessert all of the time. Some days I go for the comfort food option. THEN I have dessert.

still working on the kitchen

Dub has taken down the kitchen cabinets so that he can refinish them in the basement. Meanwhile, I'm painting away.

just arrived: more SNOW!

 We enjoyed our first official snow day yesterday.

We've had plenty of snow; just that it's arrived on weekends and holidays. Yesterday's storm happened to time itself so that schools were canceled and Mr. Dub stayed home from work.

 It gave us the perfect excuse to dust off the cross country skis and go gliding around the neighborhood.

 It ended up snowing ALL day and into the night.

 More than a foot of snow fell,

 which will make for a few more good days (at least) of packing down the trails and skiing in the yard.