Pi-newood Derby

 Isaac had his first (and last) Pinewood Derby.  (There was no cubscouts in Australia.).  It was turned into a "pi" night, since it was March 14th and everyone brought potluck pies!  Shepherd's pie, chicken pot pie, pizza pie, spaghetti pie, and a couple quiches for dinner (and some salads for good measure).  Then roll out fancy good pies for dessert!  It was great!

Isaac worked really hard on his car.  Mike cut it, Isaac sanded and painted all of it by himself, then Mike spent the night before doing all the tricky stuff like getting the weights in the right position and aligning the wheels.  Ha!  It was as much a peer competition for him as it was for Isaac. 

We went in with low expectations because we know several of the fathers are quite practiced in pinewood derby cars.  There were some great ones!  

Here is Isaac watching his first race, which he won, realizing with great pleasure his car had some promise!

Isaac got second place for the Webelos!  We were so excited!  Well done, boys!

Happy Birthday Mike!

So birthdays for me are sort of all about the cake.  Mike wanted a Black Forest cake.  I have finally graduated from canned cherry pie filling, and this puppy is all from scratch!  And it was good!

And who needs a fridge when you can stick it on your screened in porch and there's snow outside?

Here's how we do 37 candles.

Mike's birthday gift of a BYU beanie will serve him well for another little while, unfortunately.  (And look, I'm starting to paint the kitchen.  It's a slow process. Oh well.)

Happy Birthday to my wonderful man!

Stylin'

At the beginning of March we took the family to see Mary Poppins at the high school.  It was outstandingl!  Aside from Mr. Banks sounding German (hey, accents are hard, I get it.) and the technical glitches that gave us an extra 20 minutes of intermission, it was a fantastic production!  We took two cars thinking Mike would take the two littlies home at intermission, but they were loving it.  It was indeed a late night, but I'm glad we all got to go.

Cute girls home from church.

Great accessories!

Lydia had her second band concert.  I'm so glad she's enjoying her clarinet and that she has good friends!

February

February consisted of the kids taking turns being sick.  Here's a sick Isaac snuggling with Alice.  He sure does love her.  

We got to attend a pancake breakfast fundraiser for the highschool's upcoming Mary Poppins where the cast was in costume and sang a couple songs.  It was so fun!  The pancake man even tossed the pancakes onto our plates.  He got nice and close for the little ones.

But for the adults he tossed them much farther.  I won't mention that I failed to catch a couple of them.  (Don't put me on your baseball team.)

The pancakes were really quite good!  AND we got to be one of the first to buy tickets to the show so we got great seats!

The kids got another snow day and our neighbor came with his cool snow contraption.  Lydia and Isaac got our driveway cleared in no time!

Fun in the kitchen.  While I was busy working I let the girls do their own "cooking."  Oats, raisins, rice in a shaker, and and celery bits.  And we got crazy after that with some sprinkles.  One of my rare awesome mom moments.  And look at Bridget's name on the wall.  She is loving preschool and loves writing.  

We went to a hockey game of a young man in the ward.  Isaac enjoyed it while the girls ran around a big open space behind us and played tag with other little girls.  

To celebrate the Winter Olympics (which we loved!) Bridget had her own preschool Olympics complete with a gold medal.  She was very excited!  (This is their school shirt.  It is purposely enormous so they can go on field trips and wear them on the outside of their coats.)

Our community had a tragedy of two police officers killed in action.  It was amazing to sense the strength of the community and to see blue ribbons all over town.  Lucky for us Oma and Opa came to visit the afternoon of the funeral so the big kids and I could go stand in the cold for a bit to watch the procession not far from our house.  Here's a picture of the many police motorcycles that started the procession.  It doesn't do justice to their sheer volume.

We watched it for about a half hour and saw police cars from Indiana, West Virginia, Michigan, and many more states.  It was very touching.  But it was lucky for us we had an excuse to get back home to have dinner with them because it turns out the procession went for 2.5 hours!  I admire so many people who stuck it out that long in the cold.  I was honored to give the closing prayer at an inter-faith devotion in honor of the officers held at our Westerville church building.  It was then broadcast and a few of my neighbor friends said they saw it. I hope it gave a little bit of peace to those feeling down trodden.   

For Relief Society we had a paint night and this is the picture I taught the ladies to paint. (Don't be too impressed.  I learned it from a super easy YouTube video using a sponge and Q-tips!)

That night I was washing up in the church kitchen and came across this drawer of forks!  Someone had waaayy too much time on their hands!!