Some Memories of February

I have so much to write about, but I'll try to do it short bits with some pictures as a large overview so I can squeeze it all in!

When we were in Utah we took the twins skiing--on the rope tow--and they lasted about an hour. Will and I went up together for his first run. He and I talked for a minute about making a triangle shape with his skiis...then he took off and sailed down the hill with perfectly parallel skiis! He (and I) got scared at the end that he was going to continue past the rope tow and onto the real hill, so I yelled at him to "sit down!" and he desperately crashed, which resulted in some tears. After that he was super careful going down the hill and took it quite seriously. Ryrie and James had some great success for awhile and then we switched. It was a fun day, although Ryrie still looks at the pictures and says he didn't like doing that. Hmmm...







The twins have been taking piano lessons from Nana via the webcam, and I usually practice with them every morning. The last few weeks, on Wednesdays,I have been gone in the mornings, so James supervises them as they practice with each other. One day apparently, Owen even had his stint as the teacher!

The boys came home from school one day full of excitement about preparing Leprechaun Traps at school, and that if they caught one, they would each get three wishes. One of Will's was that he could be "smarter." This gave me an opportunity to Think What to Say!

Will made a little book at school about the foods he likes to eat the most, (all unhealthy items) and Ryrie looked at it for a minute then said, "If I made a book like that I would say broccoli is my favorite food." He's really on a broccoli kick right now! Crazy, I know.

Every night the twins each read to us for 15-20 minutes, and last week Will brought home a really cool book about huge working machines. It was really fun to read it with him and hear him discover things about the machines: for instance how many millions of pounds a giant bucket crane weighs, and how slowly a giant crawler moves. He gets such an awed look on his face as he really thinks about these things.

Today Will tied a jumprope to his monkey's foot and let it dangle over the banister at the top of the stairs. I was concerned that he was getting a bit violent, but he explained that his monkey was like an explorer...

Ryrie was eating his cereal this morning and suddenly held up something in his hand asking, "what's this?" It was his very first tooth to ever fall out! We were all very excited, and Owen, getting a bit mixed up, said, "You just pushed your tongue out with your teeth!"

James has created a character named Farmer Jim who stars in many bedtime tales, and I was privy to one such tale in our hotel on the way down to Utah. He really gets the boys involved in the issues of each story. In this particular one, Farmer Jim was trying to help a baker and needed a solution to a big problem. Will said, "First I need to ask you something, Dad. Does he go to church? (Yes) Then maybe he should pray about it!"