Jack's class hosted a French International Night for the whole school this month. Over 300 people attended the event.
Jack's class sang songs in French:
Then they performed the play Cinderella (Cendrillon in French). Jack played the part of Cinderella's coach:
Jack has a big crush on the little girl next to him in this picture:
Jack's cameo as Cinderella's coach:
After the play we had four stations set up for people visit. The first station was to sample French cheese with baguettes:
We also made crepes:
We had a station where you could build a castle out of cardboard boxes, a station to play a french game and a station where the kids could make crowns:
I'm not sure how it started, but we have been through some elaborate bed time routines with the kids. Our plan was always to read them a book and kiss them goodnight and not hear from them until morning. But then, things got complicated.
First it was the kids asking Luke to carry them to their room in all sorts of funny ways. Luke would carry them by their feet, upside down, over his shoulders, etc. This lasted a couple of weeks and then Luke's back started hurting.
So then we came up with raspberry kisses before bed. After books the kids would get raspberry kisses. The would giggle and thrash around so wildly I thought they would crack their heads on the bed board. So then we switched to rock, paper scissors.
And on and on.
All sorts of games the kids would come up with so they didn't have to go sleep.
One of the funnier traditions was to stick things in our pants as we gave them a hug goodnight. Then the kids would giggle and follow us back into our rooms until we discovered whatever was in our pants
The kids stuck their clothes in Luke's pants and it took him a while to figure it out
2015 is off to a great start! We rung in the near year with friends from Jack's school. We rented out a coffee shop/playhouse for the night and had a potluck with lots of wine. We also had a poker tournament and we rang in the New Year at 10:00 with New York:
Josie is getting bigger and has the sweetest/easiest little personality:
Lily and I get time to cook together when Jack is at school:
We also got tons of snow! So much that I didn't think we'd ever see the grass again. On the nice days we took the kids sledding. So far this winter we've bought 4 sleds and broke 2 of them:
Finally we had a warm enough day to get good snowman snow and we built a big one in the backyard.
Snow, snow everywhere!
Jack and Lily still adore their little sister:
Lily holds her hand on car rides:
And she is so gentle with Josie
I love to see this girl giggle and smile:
Josie is about ready to start rolling over. She actually did roll back to belly once but I missed it as I was busy with the other kiddos. I just turned back to see her grunting on her belly when I had put her down on her back. I tried to get her to do it again, but so far no luck
One day during the Christmas break Luke took Jack out for a day of skiing in Wyoming, while Lily and I had a girls day. This is the only picture Luke took of their boys day out:
However he did get this cool video of Jack skiing:
Meanwhile, I had my camera ready for our girls day. Here is Lily in her first outfit of the day
And then again a few minutes later dressed and ready to go
She told me that she wanted to get her nails painted and get a pair of earrings. So first we set off for the nail painting. Back last April my mom took her to get her nails done before we went to Hawaii and Lily had a hard time. That nail place had assigned some creepy asian guy to do Lily's nails and as soon as he walked up to her she lost it. She pretty much had a nervous breakdown with at least 15-30 minutes of crying. Finally she calmed down and they assigned a nice lady to do her nails.
This time around Lily had no problem whatsoever:
After that we went to Claire's to pick up some pretty clip on earrings. She was so excited for her "real" earrings.
