Box Top Winner X 2!

Our little Meri has been crazy about collecting box tops. She always spies them first here at home and gets dibs on them for her class. The kids' school collects all the box tops each month and then at the end of the month they draw 5 box tops out of a big jar (the kids are supposed to put their name on the back). Those 5 kids win a little tiger. A few months in to school Meri was so disappointed that she still hadn't won. But thanks to all of you who have sent her box tops - she has been a winner 2 months in a row! She loves her 2 little tigers that hang on her back pack. Thanks to all of you who sent her box tops!

Award winning students!

The science fair was last night and Brayton's robot project won him 1st place for 4th grade! He was very excited and proud. He built a robot with Shawn that sorts M&Ms by color. He compared the robot as a worker to himself as a worker. He found that he was a slower worker, but made less mistakes. The robot was faster, but made more mistakes.

Orion recently won awards at school for excellence in spelling and writing. Ethan won awards for excellence in Math and getting perfect attendance for the whole 1st semester. We are proud of the boys! They've really been working hard at school.

We had lots of fun with food on Valentines Day! Of course we ate bunches of candy! We made pink pancakes for breakfast and heart shaped pizzas for dinner and had lots of fun making it all. And the kids were thrilled to have strawberry flavored pop with dinner. It was a really fun day. The only sad thing was that Brayton decided not to make out valentines for his class because he felt like it was "little kid" stuff. He brought some cookies to share with this class instead. I was a teensy sad because to me it was a sign that he is growing up. I guess they can't stay small forever! And it sure is fun to watch them growing up!

Happy Valentines Day! We had a valentines day full of love. Flowers from Shawn - red roses, my favorite!



All week before Valentines Day Meri kept saying how she couldn't wait for it to come. She said it was her favorite holiday, even more than Christmas. I asked her why she was so excited - it had to be all the candy, right? Not so, she was so excited to deliver all her valentines to her classmates. For her, writing all the names of her kindergarten friends and signing them all was complete delight. (With the boys it was always such a chore!) The day finally came and she got to make her deliveries. Her she is passing them out at school. (She's the one reaching down delivering a valentine.)







Before heading over to Meri's class party Jessi and I celebrated Valentines with Angel. We thought she might like to try to red pepper. Our other guinea pig, Squeakers didn't like it, but Angel chomped it up! Jess thought it was funny to put bits of the pepper on her head! She kept saying, "mom, she has a cape!"

February 8, 2008 Brayton turned 10 years old!!














P.S. Yes, Orion is a big fan of not wearing his shirt.

Brayton turned 10 last week! What a decade it has been! It's hard to believe how much he is growing up. He has been talking about building a robot for a long time. He is always been a big science man. He got a robot for his birthday that he can build and program to make into different shapes and do different things. He has decided to use it in the science fair this month. His hypothesis is: Will a robot make a better worker, or a human? The robot will be sorting M&Ms for it's job. We will see what happens! Brayton enjoyed having his friends Jarod and Daniel sleep over for his birthday and they played with the robot a lot and definitely played their share of video games that night too.
P.S. Slick-slack, Brayton's lizard shed her skin for the first time a couple weeks ago. All the kids were very interested and excited about this event. And even more interested that she actually eats her old skin when she's done shedding! Below is a picture of her shedding.

Tea Party time! The girls love to do tea parties, especially with their pets. Here is Jess having a tea party with her guinea pig, Angel. Below is Meri having a tea party with Padme, her kitty. Lately Meri has been calling herself "momma" for Padme. She'll say things like "come to momma" to her. Well, the last few days she will pick up Padme and bring her over to me and say "you wanna see gramma?" Yes, she is refering to me as gramma!!! Good one Meri.

The Pine Wood Derby! This was Ethan's first and Brayton's 2nd derby. Brayton car is "The Squid", and Ethan's is "Boba Fett Bobsled". They both were great competitors in the races and Ethan's won 2nd for -best in show. It was an exciting night!

Here's Orion with his birthday gifts. Below is a picture of what the rocks looked like when we started them on his birthday. They are agates and petrified wood. We are now doing the final polish that should be done in a few days. We'll post a picture of the finish rocks soon! He loves doing all the steps with the polisher and looking at how his rocks are coming along.

On January 20, 2008 Orion turned 7 years old! To celebrate his birthday we went bowling as a family. We got to do the "Cosmic" bowl with the fun black lights and disco ball. Orion was the only one of us to bowl a strike which I even managed to get on video! He was a very happy boy. He was very specific that he wanted a United States cake so we did our best with that! He is our geology boy. He LOVES rocks.
He got his wish and received a rock tumbler, some rocks, and a couple of cool rock books from Grandpa Teare for his birthday.

Here's Orion sledding down the slope in the backyard. Below is our snowman.

Orion is becoming quite a reader. It's fun to see him reading to Jessi.

Yes, we got snow! several times! We've had 6 snow days in the last month. We've learned that in California if it snows that night (no matter how little the amount) school will be cancelled the next day. The kids have been loving it. We've made a snowman, slid down our slope in the backyard over and over, made snow angels, and made snow cones. In Lancaster we got snow only once for a couple hours in the 2 years that we lived there. I guess living in the mountains now we'll be getting more snow. Lots of fun! Here's Ethan and Jess eating snow on the trampoline.

Here's the kids out in front of the house and below is Meri making a snow angel.

a Sunbeep, a Sunbeep!

Here's Princess Jessi in her new princess dancing outfit - she is a girl who loves to do dress-ups!











Here is Jessi already for her first day as a Sunbeam.
- she calls it "sunbeeps". She did great! Since the move to Tehachapi she has been completely anti-nursery probably due to the fact that Mom and Dad were her nursery teachers for her whole nursery experience until the move. After a month or so of trying to get her to go to her new nursery class here and exhausting the nursery teachers with her tantrums we finally decided that she was a nursery drop out and she just started coming to primary with Mom. Anytime we'd even go near the nursery door she'd start to cry. So today when it was time for her to go to sunbeams we held our breath and hoped for the best, but kind of expected the worst. Luckily Mom was busy at the piano in primary and Dad was busy subbing for the CTR6 class so both of us were pretty unavailable when the sunbeams exited the primary room for class time. To our great surprise she walked right out the door with her teacher, no tears! Her teacher is wonderful and Jessi obviously trusted her enough to go with her which after her nursery fits was pretty shocking! After class she was so excited, just raving about how she got to go fishing and even got to color her own crown which she wore all the rest of the day! Hooray for sunbeams! Meri was in complete shock that Jessi actually went on her own - Meri has had her share of fits going to classes on her own. Tonight as we were getting ready for bed Meri asked Jessi "how come you went to class with out mom and dad?" and Jessi simply said "because I just wanted too." A sunbeam, a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for Him!