Happy Easter and March Little Things!

Wow - somehow the month of March has passed us right by.  We're going to try to catch you up and treat you to a taste of our Easter weekend.  

First up - Hints of Spring Days.  We had snow this past week, but in between wintry storms, we've had a few days here and there of warm weather.  We took advantage of a recent March warm day to play some mini golf.  

Here's Sam - he loves the holes where the ball has to go in a specific spot to come out in a lower green from a couple of different tubes.  His is trying to figure out where the ball needs to go to come out in the best spot.

He was also having lots of fun jumping over our balls as they traveled down the greens.  

We're finally to the point in our lives where we generally like to play for a good score.  

Sam does more jumping.  Good times!

Check out that great golf form!  Keep my head down, arms locked, feet properly positioned!

March is also the month of our Speech Festival at school.  Both Sam and I made it to our grade finals this year.

Sam's 2nd grade group was up first.  He performed "Sick" by Shel Silverstein.  He did great!  He needed to work on volume - other than that he did really well!  

His good friend Yaw also made it in to the finals - here is Sam with Yaw, his younger brother, and Yaw's parents.

Then it was time for the 4th grade finals.  I did "The Man in the Arena" - an excerpt of a speech from Theodore Roosevelt, my favorite president.  

I also did a fantastic job!  I got tripped up a little bit on one line which kept me out of the top three.  But i did it perfectly every other time, darn it!  I've already started thinking about which speech I want to do next year.  

In Easter happenings . . . . we got to have our traditional Easter Egg hunt at Grandma L's yesterday with our cousins.  It is our most favorite Easter tradition!  

Here's Sam, gathering up eggs.  

And me - loving the eggs and the lure of all the candy hiding inside.

Here we are emptying our stash.  Sam really hauled in the most eggs this year.

Grandma L is so good to us!

 We spent last evening coloring our eggs.  Of course this is another fun tradition that we have.  And how delicious are hard boiled eggs?  We love them!

We love the old classic color tablet dyes and got creative with rubber bands and wax crayons.

Ah - Easter eggs we love you!

And then the big Easter morning arrived.  The Easter bunny was good to us this year.  Sticker books, candy, and games.  Oh, and a cute little stuffed animal for each of us.

We even got a couple of micro lego-type sets that we spent all morning building.

And of course, some breakable erasers.  These are quite the thing at our school!

Both Sam and I made Easter egg hunts for the Easter bunny to do when he visited our house.  He left us notes saying how much fun he had doing them.  

Sam Alert:  Hey everyone - Sam here.  Here I am loading up my eggs after the hunt, taking them back out to storage.  We love this tradition and love being with our family.  We got to have Easter dinner with a good friend's family tonight.  It's all about family, isn't it!

Just for fun - mom snapped this picture of me early one morning before I woke up.  

I'm all snuggled up with my stuffed animal friends.  

Ok - Sam out.  Have a great week everyone!

Wrapping up February

There have been lots of fun happenings in February.  

We ended the month with a trip to the Provo City Temple open house.  It was a beautiful day and it is a really beautiful temple!  

The attention to detail on the inside was amazing.  They had a little museum after you finished the tour that showed some of the old details prior to the fire.  They really did a wonderful job rebuilding it and transforming it.  We especially loved the stain glass and the round stairways on the corners.

Here's Sam . . . .

and here's me.

It was a great evening.

To top our temple evening off, we stopped for a yummy dinner at Waffle Luv.  We usually eat at their food trucks, but they have actual restaurants too.  So we had a tasty meal - the best!

One of our neighborhood parks got all new playground equipment over the winter.  It's finally been warm enough to go test it out.  

Climbing and playing . . . . a great afternoon!

Oh - and sliding too!

Oh and wait - some football too! 

I ended February with my third broken bone - my little finger.  

I was playing a mean game of dodgeball at school and caught the ball wrong.  No worries - I heal quickly.  I'm a pro at broken bones!

Sam Alert:  Hey everybody - Sam here.  I love being outside - our play day at the park was just what I needed.  We've been riding scooters and enjoying the warm weather.  Ahh - spring is just around the corner - I can feel it in my bones!

Valentine's Day & Science Fairs

We're in the Dog Days of Winter it seems!  We're getting tiny hints of spring but still mostly cold and windy.  That kind of weather doesn't make for lots of fun times.

We do try to have fun whenever and where ever we can though.  We love to celebrate Chinese New Year.  This year our celebration consisted of a yummy Asian dinner at one of our favorite sushi places.

Sam loves to pile on the wasabi and pickled ginger.

I love my bento box - full of yumminess like sushi, teriyaki beef, dumplings, and a salad.

We have had fun playing on our tablets - tablet time has to be earned though, so there's been piano practicing, homework, and chores to do.

We had a great Valentine's day.  We had school parties and then we went to a wedding reception for a great friend of ours.  We ate, we visited with friends, and we danced.  Then we were tired!

Our school Science Fairs were held this week at school.  Sam's was first.  He was part of a group project on Visual versus Auditory Memory.  Enjoy a short video of his group's presentation.

Sam also got to answer a question from the crowd about what he liked best about the experiment.

 Here is Sam with his group's display board.

He did the results section all on his own. 

And here he is with Mr. Avila - his long-term substitute teacher helping out while his regular teacher is out with her new baby.

Then came my science fair.  I choose to do a project about the melting rate of ice cream.  It was tasty, fun, and a good project that I am proud of.

We have a real fair where friends and family come in and talk to everyone about their projects.  My friend Ben's dad asked me lots of questions and I could answer them all.

 Sam Alert:  Hey everyone - Sam here.  I loved Valentine's Day.  In fact, I pretty much love all holidays.  I chose to make a Hot Air Balloon Valentine's box to take to school this year.  It was cool!

I got to have a couple of dates with mom and dad this week.  Mason was sick one night and decided to stay home while the three of us went out for soup and ice cream.  The next night Mason was at a play date so the three of us went out for dinner.  It's kind of fun having the parents all to myself - talk about attention!

Ok, Sam out.  Have a great week!

Robotics and Winter

It's been a busy couple of weeks but we've been having tons of fun.

First up - Robotics.  I've been on a robotics team at school this year and we have been working hard all year long to get ready for our competition - it was last weekend.  

There were lots of different parts to the competition - technology projects, skits, core values, and, of course, the robots.  

This is me and my partner, Paige, getting our robot going on his challenge.  

My team came in 5th on the robot challenges overall.  Not bad for my first year!

Here is my team - the Lego Masterminds.  

I made a whole bunch of new friends this year and really loved doing it!

Of course, boys will be boys - during our down time at the competition there was a lot of video game playing going on.

Here we are getting ready for the awards ceremony.  

It was a great year - lots of work and lots of fun!

We finally got to take advantage of some snow and spend some quality play time outside.  I got a "snow scooter" for Christmas and it has been really fun to ride it.  

Sam loves to make snow angels.  And he's very good at them too.

I even got going down our little hill made from all our snow shoveling.

Sam enjoyed riding the scooter too.  Mom promised some big hills after the next big snow - we won't forget that promise!

One more snow picture.  Can you tell that it was raining on us while we were out playing?  We came in  soaking wet!

Sam Alert:  Hey everyone - I had so much fun watching Mason's robotics team compete.  I'm set on being on the team as soon as I'm old enough.  Here I am hanging with dad as we watch the competitions.  No, my arm isn't broken.  Mom had a minor shoulder problem and I'm taking care of the sling for her.

We had sooooo much fun playing out in the snow.  We've had a good winter so far with enough snow to play in but not too much for getting around and shoveling.  

Sam out - have a great week!