Catching the Sun

Josh and the kids were off on President's Day while I had to work and decided to do some pretty cool photography experiments....

Valentine's Day

We had a pretty low key Valentine's Day weekend, and enjoyed every minute of it!  On Saturday after doing a few chores we dropped the kids off at Josh's parents for the night and went out on a date!  On Sunday morning when the kids came home we had their Valentine's gifts waiting for them.  We gave them some candy and little knick knacks but the favorite gift was a cute little stuffed Pascal from the movie Tangled.

Later that day, I made my chocolate dipping recipe so that we could make chocolate covered strawberries!  Alex doesn't like eating them, but he sure likes to help make them!

After we dipped the strawberries we still had quite a bit of chocolate leftover so we experimented with some other stuff:

Pretzels

Bananas

Smores

It was a great weekend!

Bowling!

For Daddy's birthday last month, he decided he wanted to go bowling.  It was Alex's first time, as the last time we had gone Alex was still in a cast and had to just watch.

We decided to do the Cosmic Bowling, which is fun because they do black lights and play music.  When we got there, Alex said, "this is SO cool!"  He was very excited!

Megan and our friends Chris and Emily and Aiden came to join in the fun!  We put the kids in one lane and the adults in the other.  Alex didn't need much coaching - he took his ball and went right up there and tossed it down the lane!  Then when it hit the pins he would do a little dance.  Aurora is an old pro and didn't need any help either.  In fact, she probably wouldn't have even needed bumpers!

We had a great time and the kids showed no signs of stopping for the whole two hours.  Alex even beat everyone out!  It is definitely something we'll have to do more often!

Alex getting ready to bowl

 

Letting it loose!

Megan's turn!

 

Chris and Aiden

Aurora

Daddy

 

Alex rocked the house!

And a little video to show Alex's excitement:

Family Game Nights!

For Christmas the kids got lots of games from Santa and Mom and Dad that were easy for everyone to play.  Because they got so many, we thought it would be a great time to institute a new tradition of Family Game Night on the weekends!  One night each weekend, Aurora and Alex each pick a game and then Mom or Dad pick a game from the big stack:

 

We've had a blast tossing the Hot Potato around (which Ninja participates in as well):

We've graduated from Dragon Training School:

We've gotten all the Bedbugs out of our bed:

And we've gotten very competitive at Toss Across!  (Another of Ninja's favorites, as you can see below).  In fact, one time Mom and Dad were playing against each other and I threw my bean bag and Ninja jumped over the Toss Across board to chase after the bean bag and successfully turned over a square to give me a point!

The game nights have been so great at getting the family to hang on and focus on each other.  It has also been teaching the kids some invaluable lessons on taking turns and good sportsmanship.  And it's been fun to see the different areas in which each kid has skills.  We're having a great time!