Winter busyness

Karl turned 7 in December.  It's hard to believe our boy is 7.  He wanted his cousins over for his birthday and requested a 3-layer white cake with lemon frosting.  I said, What??!!  He said he had a lemon Oreo at school and wanted his cake to taste like that.  No surprise that he didn't really like it - lemon isn't a flavor loved by most kids.  The adults thought it was good.

I finally got his t-shirt quilt finished for his birthday.  It had been a work in progress for at least a year and a half.  He's a kid that cares A LOT about his clothing - fussier than the girls about what he wears each day.  So when he outgrew his favorite truck shirts, he was so sad.  I promised to turn them into a quilt for him and was glad to finally give it to him.

An attempt at a picture in Christmas garb.  Sometimes I don't know why I bother. Four kids at these ages are so hard to photograph.  But I have proof that the girls had on Christmas dresses and apparently Karl had red untied shoelaces.  Good enough.

We've been getting out to enjoy the property.  Such a wonderful place to live!  I've been really trying to get outdoors more this year.  It's easier with Lena getting older and Matt got me Hok skis for Christmas which make getting out in the snow so much fun.  Here's Clare on her classic skis near the pond.

Winter days are so short and the sun hugs the horizon all day.

Play dough creation by Lena.  They usually expect me to pretend-eat whatever they are making. Their "ovens" are little shelves under the seats of their kid chairs, used for baking all sorts of play dough cookies and breads and sometimes worms.  Mmm.  

This cat.  She is the laziest thing.  She is not really allowed to roam freely through the house but she'll sneak in when she can.  Nora found her sleeping in the doll cradle upstairs one day.

Clare played her trumpet in her first band concert with the other fourth graders.  She did very well.

Looking so grown up.  I wish this wasn't so blurry.

Christmas Eve snowshoe.  I would like to make it an annual tradition.  Felt good to get out for a walk in the woods before digging into a ham dinner and too many desserts.

Over Christmas break Clare watched Frozen for the first time.  Yes, that's right - Frozen, not Frozen 2.  We don't really do movies over here.  Our kids haven't been able to handle the drama of a full length movie in the past.  Clare enjoyed Frozen though and when a friend gave us a "Snowman Kit", she built Sven and Olaf and the sleigh.

Karl can read!  He went from being a non-reader to all of a sudden reading everything. A pretty amazing transformation.  He said, "My teacher said most of us would be reading by Christmas and I can!"  Here he's reading "The Night Before Christmas" to his sisters.  Today he read a Berenstain Bear book to the cat, only needing help on the word "adhesive".  (To be honest, he has probably heard that book multiple times and I was able to help him on the word adhesive without needing to look at the page.)

Our school kids are participating in a local ski group on Saturdays and are loving it.  Clare is, at least. Karl thinks it is okay but would rather be playing Legos.

Karl's been skiing at school too.  His teacher is great at getting his class out on the school's trails, using the school's skis.  This was a particularly chilly day but they still went out and had fun.