Child's Play

I often ask Piper to entertain Abe for me while I get some house work or cooking done. It always surprises me how she entertains him. Recently I found she and her brothers playing with the doll crib my grandfather made me as a child (which they fit in quite nicely, I must add):

Evidently she was Doctor Piper and the boys were in need of rehabilitation. She fed them water while they laid in the doll crib and eventually they were well enough to get out. I love to sit back and watch their imaginative play, kids are so refreshing!

The Neglected Blog

Seems like there are not enough hours in the day to do what we need to lately! We have had appointments and places to be every day and tried to squeeze in some school work along the way. We have been focusing on our reading and letting the math take a back seat, which has been quite refreshing to be honest! We are reading The Little House on the Prairie and Piper and Cohen cannot get enough. Everytime we get to the end of a chapter they beg to hear just one more. I am enjoying it too, you forget how wonderful those old classics are!

In other news, Abe has yet another tooth (this makes six!). No wonder the child can't sleep, he has had teeth coming in regularly for months! And he is officially crawling! He made his move this past Saturday and has been perfecting it all week. He is so slow though! He is so laid-back and crawls a little then stops to look around. It takes him forever to crawl from one room to the next.

We went to the kids gym yesterday and got out some extra energy. Here are some cute pics of my little monkeys:
No day is complete without a brotherly smack down!

Ski School

Here are some distant pics from the kids' ski school. My camera is not the greatest, especially from a distance. Cohen is the one in the navy coat and camouflage hat (talking to his teacher in the first pic):

Piper is the one in the navy/lime coat and pink ski bibs:

Water park

Chad & Cohen on the lazy river:

The boys hanging out at the baby pool:

Abe enjoying the warm water:

Piper riding the flow rider:

And Chad:

We're back!

We had a wonderful vacation week, although it is nice to be home! I am much happier with my own bed and shower; traveling always challenges me. I do not like sharing bathrooms and beds with strangers, I know they clean them but not to my standards :)

Anyway, we spent Monday, Thursday and Saturday at the indoor water park. We had such blast! Since I was not preggo this year, I was able to go down the big water slides with Piper and play endlessly with the big kids in the water-y play area. Abe seemed content playing in the baby area and enjoyed the lazy river too. Overall, it was great family fun!

Chad took Piper and Cohen snow tubing Tuesday for 2 hours, and then they had ski school Wednesday. I got great reports on both of them and Piper was going down the big slope when I got there to pick them up! Cohen's teacher said he took him up too but he wanted to go back to the training area. I found out later that Cohen's teacher was kidding about a bear being at the top of the slope, so Cohen got scared and did not want to go back :(

We had about 4 inches of snow fall Monday night! The kids were thrilled; that might be all the snow they see this year. I guess we have another month or two to get some snowfall, but considering it is 70 outside right now, I am not counting on it.

Here are some random pics from the snowfall Monday night and Tuesday morning:

And Cohen after a yummy chocolate treat!

Another week in review

So it has been rather boring in our world lately, if one can get bored with 3 small kids at home(?). We are homeschooling regularly every day, which goes great one day and then it's a total disaster the next! Piper had her annual testing (required by the state yearly, but we did it pretty early in the year to gain some insight) on Wednesday. She was so nervous about the test although I had told her there were no right or wrong answers, just to do the best she could. We were very pleased with the experience and she tested very well. Overall, the average scores were excellent (considering she is Kindergarten, 5th month):
Basic Reading Skills - 1st grade, 1st month (84%)
Academic Skills - 1st grade, 2nd month (93%)
Academic Knowledge - 2nd grade (92%)

I talked at length with the lady that tested her and was able to pin down some of the problems that we are having. So hopefully we are heading down a better path as we finish up the year.

The rest of the week consisted of carting the kids to dance (Piper) and gymnastics. Cohen's gymnastics teacher let me know how great he is doing and gave him some skills to practice at home. Cohen seems to have natural talent for gymnastics which I hope will translate into skills he can use in whatever sports he enjoys playing.

Also we are heading out of town today for the week! We were able to get a last-minute timeshare at our fave winter resort, so we are off for skiing, snow tubing and indoor waterpark-ing!! This will be our 4th year going, so this makes an excellent family tradition. I am looking forward to some quality family-time!