Pinewood video

Here is a link to a video Rick made about the derby experience. Some may have seen it already, but it is fun to see his face during the races. You can paste it into a browser to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRX8QbXfVyA

Phoenix & the Pine wood derby

To say Phoenix was excited for his first pine wood derby would be putting it mildly. He was BEYOND excitement....for weeks! All he could talk about really. What boy isn't excited about that first derby. Hoping to win it all, or have the coolest car. Pure boy fun!

So Phoenix worked with his dad on it for a few saturdays and finished up with the best number ever. Surely the car to take home the prize. I think only Phoenix would have his car number be 8, 792,530. I kept wondering how they would call the car out. :)

This year we had a stake pinwood derby so there were 59 boys participating in the derby. When the boys got there their cars got re-numbered from 1-59, so no cool number being called out. He ended up being #12. It was a great number to have since he managed to take 5th place out of 59. Not bad for a beginner. Really even if you win 1 race you feel pretty cool. Here is Phoenix with his Rockin Car!

Finished product

Dad helping out

Gotta make sure it weighs the right amount

Talia wanting in on the fun

Marek's Birthday

It's hard to believe that Marek is 7 now! Time sure does fly by- and fast! He was pretty excited about the big day. It was a pretty low key birthday. Opened presents, birthday dinner and of course cake.

This year Marek wanted me to make an ice cream cake. It turned out delicous. It had a brownie crust, chocolate ice cream, and whoppers candy topping it. Very good! Marek also looks forward to the cake eating part. He always says "ok guys... get me to talk so I can go under the table". He thinks it is fun to be sent under the table to eat cake and no one has to try hardly to get him to talk. Silly boy. :)

Present time!

At ease under the table...

Enjoying my cake

Heart shaped world...

Every year on Valentines day we have loads of heart shapped foods. Typically I purchase some heart shapped pizzas for dinner, this time I decided to make them. The kids love it. Here is our Heart shapped world for 2011.

Pizza

Pancakes - mmmm

Red Cake

Mom Homework

Sometimes I wonder if teachers sit around thinking of projects or "mom homework" as I call it - to give to their students. Every year we go through a couple of phases where the projects that need assistance (aka Mom Homework) are enough to get me more than mildly annoyed. They all seem to hit at once so that an entire weekend or week is spent doing the projects. Such is the life of parenting I suppose.

In 1st grade every year they have a 100 day party. The kids have to make a t-shirt with 100 items on it via paint, marker, iron on transfer. Whatever you want to do. They also have to make a project using 100 items. By the time you get to child #4 the excitement of the project has definitely worn off! In the past we have gone the easy route and done an iron on transfer (I would highly recommend this). Choose some clip art of activities the kids love to do- print off all 100 on 1 sheet - and ta-da iron them on the shirt. Well.... we no longer have an ink jet printer. We switched a few years ago to laser and no longer have the easy iron on treatment. :( So I ended up purchasing an iron on packet at the store and ironed 100 items on the shirt. Then on to the project. Marek decided to use 100 mini marshmallows. This is what it turned out to be - an iglooish thing. My boys don't really like doing craft projects so it is like pulling teeth to get them to do these projects. But eventually he stopped complaining and got into gluing the marshamllows. He liked the finished project and we put a flag and dog along with it. Me - I kept thinking - just one more 100 day project to go....

Marek with his T-shirt & igloo

Back of his T-shirt

Packer Fever- Superbowl champs!

What could be more exciting than being in Wisconsin when the Packers go to the superbowl? I'm sure there's lots, but really it is quite an adventure! Just about every story on the news is related to the Packers, every store has green and gold food, they have Packer tents set up to stock up on everything Packers. It is really quite amazing. You can't help but get excited about it.

Unlike most people we had our Packer party on Monday morning starting at 4 am. For years now we have not watched TV on Sunday - even if the Packers are in the superbowl. The kids were SO excited to eat their green and gold Kringle and chips and dip for breakfast. We had to start a bit earlier this year since Harper leaves for school at 6:45. On sunday we stayed away from anything that would let us know how they were doing or if they won. Everyone went to bed early as well. The younger kids at 7 and Rick and Harper at 8. Savannah and I were hanging out when it ended and figured they must have won - due to the fireworks going off in the neighborhood. :)

Definitely a memorable morning. The kids went to school excited about the win - even if they were a little tired. I did't take any pictures - who can think that early in the morning? I certainly can't.

Packer gear... Get your Packer gear

Yes the tent at Walmart - I think they had 2 of these

Green and Gold Kringle Yummy!

The great blizzard

So in February we got hit with lots of snow storms. Sometimes the weather man gets it right other times they seem to be way off. However with this storm we were wishing they were wrong! For a couple of days they were warning of this great storm coming, but really I didn't believe it would be as bad as they said. I was wrong. It was a full blown blizzard and we didn't even get the brunt of it.

As you can see by these pictures the shoveling out was BRUTAL! It took us 3 hours to clear out our driveway. That is with all 7 of us shoveling for almost the entire time. Of course if we had a snow blower it would have been less. When we got our driveway almost cleared Rick asked the kids "does anyone want to pitch in their allowance towards a snowblower?" The only one mildly interested was Marek - until he realized that it meant giving us money to put towards one. There was great satisfaction of working together and getting the job done. However after this shoveling experience I was ready for winter to be over!

Harper taking a break

We were literally running out of places to put the snow

Nettesheim Snow removal squad

Phoenix was the 1st to make it to the top of the bank

Sheer exhaustion!

2 feet?

Making some progress

ALL DONE!!!

Some parts of the sidewalks the drifts

were up to my waist!

I must say that we were very grateful for good neighbors who used their snowblowers on our sidewalks. They received some nice warm chocolate chip cookies for their help. :)