Monday, February 22, 2010

new things

Here is a picture blog. I have been attempting this for days and blogger is being a butt. I finally got the pictures uploaded but blogger won't let me move them around and put them in order, so this is going to be a little random.

First are some more pictures from our two days of winter fun when we enjoyed much snow and many hours of cold play time.

we missed our valentine parties at school due to the snow so I let Reese decorate the cookie cake and then the kids devoured it. It was hours later that I learned we would be allowed to have our parties on Monday...oh well, back to baking.


soren and her friends built a large fort that left snow remnants in our yard for a full week

inside to warm up with a swim


Reese turned Six!
For her birthday, Reese and Pete planned an "Olympics" party. I thought this was great; they plan all of the activities and all I have to do is plan the food. 30 minutes before the party starts Pete gets called into work. Great. I don't have a clue what was planned, so Pete writes it out for me, I recruit Soren as my official helper and we dive into the first event. The girls did great, had a good time and the party was a success. Pete's idea was pretty fun. They would do a series of events and then have awards for those events before moving on to the next series and awards. By the time we finished all of the games it was time to come in, eat dinner, open presents and have cake, leaving less than 30 minutes of "free" time. Perfect.

program of events
team "cheetah"
team "panther"

the standing long jump


three legged race





And here is our BIGGEST news...quite literally
Meet Prefontaine.
more birthday pics, out of order, dumb blogger!

Back to the big news. This dog found me on a long run the day before the big snow. He ran over 12 miles with me back to the highway that leads to my house. I did not want him to run up the highway with all of the traffic, so I called Pete to pick us up. He spent the night with us and the following day I took him to the vet to see if he was chipped; he was not, so I took him to the shelter which is only a few miles away from where he first started following me. After a few days, no one had claimed him or called about him and Pete had not stopped talking about him. A dog that can run that far is a dream come true for Pete. We had a week long discussion/argument about it before Pre came home to live with us. Pete gets up every morning and takes him running and the girls have really enjoyed playing with him as well. He is pretty well behaved, but he started doggy school yesterday to make sure he learns good manners. His size is pretty amazing. He weighs 70 pounds, is very lean and very tall. When he stands on his back feet he looks me in the eye (and you all know how tall that is!). So here we go on a whole new adventure.

On Sunday we enjoyed 68 degrees with sunshine, so we loaded up the bikes and headed to the trail. Good times.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Fun Stuff

Last weekend, Grandma treated us to a 'girls only' trip to Dallas. We started off Friday afternoon by going to the Ameri*can Girl Store at the Galleria. We had dinner reservations at the bistro but traffic on 635 had other plans, so we shopped for a while, ate in the mall, and then headed to our hotel nearby for some swimming and relaxation. Saturday morning we enjoyed sleeping in and breakfast in our pj's at the hotel before heading back to the mall for our lunch date at the doll store. After a fabulous time (with lots of fun purchases - thanks Grandma!) we headed north to Grandma's house. As if the excursion to the doll store was not enough, we were taken out Saturday night for pizza and laser tag. This was the girls' first experience and they are now hooked. It was a blast. Thanks for a great time, Grandma!

this is something we do for fun at Grandma's house...

sweet sleepy reese


Today brought another treat...more snow! This is a crazy amount of snow for us, so the schools let the kids out early and we are making the most of the white stuff before it disappears.





Other updates and some bragging...
Soren is two weeks into her job as anchor on the school news that is televised each morning. If you care to watch, they are posted on the website at: http://www.joshuaisd.org/11982011291422540/site/default.asp (it takes quite a while to load)
Last week I was looking through Soren's graded papers and I noticed a 4 page composition that she wrote about snorkeling in Cozumel. It was graded a 4 (grading scale 1-4; 1=failing and 4=perfect) and I made a comment to Soren about it. She then explained that when the teacher was returning the papers she announced that only one student in the entire 5th grade received a perfect score and then handed the paper to her. Wow! Nice job, Soren!