Four Months

 Annie turned four months old on Monday.  We celebrated by feeding her cereal for the first time.  On Wednesday she had her four-month well child appointment.  I took my camera but forgot to take pictures.  She weighs 14 lbs 8 oz.  She is 24 3/4 inches.

 Mollie has become really interested in doing school and is finally beginning to learn her letters.  First I had to convince her that they were letters and not numbers, though.

 Ben had his first baseball practice on Tuesday.  This year he plays with all six year olds.  It's called tee ball, but they are using a pitching machine.  They get three pitches with the pitching machine.  If they miss all three pitches then they have two attempts to hit off the tee.  If they miss all five, they are out.  They can also be thrown out this year.

 Ben ready to field a ball.  He is the one in green on the right.

Zoomed in.

Mollie enjoyed climbing to the top of the bleachers and eating snacks.  Ben had practice again tonight.  We dropped him off at the field with John and then Mollie, Annie, and I grocery shopped.  Mollie cried all the way to the store because she "wanted to watch the team" (imagine a very whiny crying voice).

Annie and I at practice.  It was in the 70s Tuesday night.

After practice we stopped at Sonic and got slushes with the gift cards MawMaw and PawPaw sent them for Valentine's Day.

Soccer

Today was Ben's first soccer game of the season.  It was amazing how much he's improved since last spring.  He played hard and scored three goals.  (Last year he only scored two all season.)  His team won 6-3.  Ben is #4 in the pictures below.  During the first half of the game, he's wearing gray pants.  

 Five from his coach after he scored.

 Mollie brought her pom poms to cheer.

 Annie was bundled up in my lap asleep.

 Playing goal keeper.  Last year they didn't play with a goal keeper and no one knew they were this year until right before the game and the coordinator told the coaches.  They took turns at this position.

 Stopping a goal.

A Week

Tuesday morning Mollie and Ben woke up in creative moods.  Mollie made a pirate spyglass with a paper towel roll and a toilet paper roll.

 Ben made skis from a Cheerios box and brown paper bags.  We've been watching a lot of the winter Olympics.

 On Tuesday for lunch we ate the squirrel they killed last weekend.

 Annie is beginning to take an interest in her toys.

 Frog legs, yum, yum.

Ben took this picture of some Valentine's friends with a heart that says I Love You.

Trail Cam

This picture of Ben and part of John showed up on the trail camera at the camp.  They obviously knew they were being photographed.

Valentine's party

At CC today, we had a Valentine's party and talent show.

 Ben placing his Valentines in his classmates bags.  I intended for us to make homemade Valentines last week, but we were so busy that on Friday I let Ben pick out Valentines candy with stickers at the grocery store.  He chose Skittles.

This is a fuzzy picture from the talent show.  Annie had nearly reached her limit by the time Ben went on stage.  Ben chose to tell jokes. He got his first joke from Clubhouse Jr magazine and he and John made up the other two. Here are his jokes:

What did the meat say to the dog that was chasing him?

Steak away

What did the policeman say to the snowman that he stopped on the side of the road?

Freeze!

What did the buck say to the doe at breakfast?

Good morning, deer.

Squirrel Hunting

John promised Ben to take him squirrel hunting.  With soccer games starting soon followed by t-ball, our weekends are about to get busy.  Although John was exhausted from going into work at 3 a.m. every morning last week, he wanted to make sure he kept his promise so they went to the camp Friday night.  

 This is the only squirrel they (John) killed.  It started raining and the squirrels went into hiding.  We're having squirrel and rice for lunch tomorrow.

Ben holding my 410.  PawPaw Sherman had a gun for each grandchild.  Mine has always been at their house, but at Christmas PawPaw gave it to John to take home.  John and Ben took it squirrel hunting this weekend and afterwards John helped Ben shoot it.  

Since John and Ben had my camera, I didn't take any pictures of mine and Mollie's girl weekend.  On Friday night we watched Sleeping Beauty and had ABC soup for supper (Mollie's request).  We spent most of Saturday having a tea party.  We ate heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast and poured orange juice from the tea pot.  Mollie served tea all morning.  For lunch we switched to apple juice in the tea pot and ate flower shaped turkey sandwiches cut with cookie cutters.

A Busy Week

Last week was a crazy busy week, partly because of things that had been rescheduled from the snow days the week before.  We had CC on Monday, dentist appointments on Tuesday morning and soccer practice Tuesday evening, Wednesday night church, zoo class Thursday morning, and grocery shopping Friday morning.  

 Ben is telling his class about Eric Carle, who created the pictures in Brown Bear, Brown Bear and wrote and illustrated The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  He paints pieces of tissue paper (some as many as four times) and then uses a collage technique to create the illustrations.  We tried and it and it is a LOT of work.

The bug Ben made in Eric Carle style.

 Water painting with his class at CC.  When you peeled off the painters tape, a white "bridge" was left on the paper.

 Making bear feet at zoo class.  They learned about animals that live in caves.

 Annie's first trip to the zoo.

 Mollie pretending to be a bear.

Petting the zoo's new boa constrictor.

Sunday

Since Mollie and Annie have these very similar dresses, I had to take their picture this morning.  Mollie wanted Annie dressed like her right down to her black shoes.  Annie did not make it into church in the shoes, though.  She kicked both off in the church parking lot.  

Snow Days

On Tuesday, we woke up to snow and ice falling.  We started our morning with pancakes.

 Ben made a Mickey Mouse pancake.

 Mollie and I made snowmen pancakes.

 After a few hours of snow and ice, the ground was barely covered but it was cold.  Ben and Mollie are wearing lots of layers.

 They found enough snow for snow angels in this corner.

 Sliding into the snow at the bottom of the slide.

 Throwing snow at each other.

 Warming up with hot chocolate by the fireplace.

 Mollie wrapped in a towel to warm up because "that's what they do in books."

 And did Annie enjoy the snow?  I never even took her outside to pose for a picture.  I wanted to keep her warm and dry.

 By afternoon, a lot more snow had fallen.  Ben decided they should "sled" by riding down the slide on shingles.

 Making snow icecream.  Since there was a lot of ice in our snow, it was crunchy so we put it in the blender, added a banana and strawberry jello (we didn't have any strawberries) and made smoothies.

 The pile of snow on our front walk.

 The snow stopped falling about 7 p.m. Tuesday, but because the temp never went above freezing it remained until about noon Thursday.  The second day they enjoyed finding big chunks of ice and breaking them on the slide.

Ben making hot chocolate.

 They played so hard in the snow Wednesday that they were knocked out at nap time.

 In the evenings before supper we played Monopoly.

Mollie took this picture.

 After playing for three days the same game, Mollie finally won.

Hal wanted to be the banker.