Soaking it Up

We've had crazy awesome weather the last couple of weeks here! Yesterday, mid-December I sat out back in a T-shirt enjoying the warm sun while watching the kids swim in the jacuzzi. Eat your heart out Utah. Last week we enjoyed hanging out at the park after school.

Everyone was in such good spirits and getting all we can before pulling out the heavy coats.

The park has lots of trees and the kids enjoyed making some jumping piles.

A "lost dog" poster was discovered and every girl (and Weston) gathered round in great concern and mourning. It was kinda cute to see all these sweet little girls with their bleeding hearts forming rescue plans and sharing stories of pet sorrows.

There's something about pleasant weather and a park full of leaves that builds community. As soon as one person starts kicking leaves into a smal pile, everyone joins in and soon you have a gang of 10+ kids hauling in leaves from the far reaches of the park to contibute to the "world's biggest leaf pile." Even the grown-ups can't help but jump in and start using unconvential methods for leaf-hauling. I was impressed when there was no bickering over who gets the first jump or proper turn-taking. They all just dig in and enjoy the sharing. And what does it look like when you have 10 kids plowing through a 3-foot pile? Well, it's something like this (only this is just one of the kids):

And my boys discovered rc cars. Me thinks I bought the wrong Christmas present.

Randomness

I'm back. The deal was that we would list things we were grateful for every day until Thanksgiving but lest you think we couldn't be grateful for an entire month, here's Emma's gratitude turkey to finish out the month. My favorite is "I'm grateful for the awesome love".

And here's Emma's "get well" card for her teacher who is missing the final two weeks of school (before break) for foot surgery. Sorry the lighting is so bad, I hope you can still read it because it's rather cute. I find it interesting that her writing and spelling are awesome on her sheet work but not so much on cards. I guess the creativity trumps. Maybe it's like my blog writing, I just write and grammar goes down the drain :o)

Andrew has been terrified of monsters lately and has a rough time going down at night. So how do you ward off monsters? Monster spray of course. Spray this in your child's room at night, and you've got the ultimate monster shield and the room smells good to boot.

Here's Weston's final moments with his cast. He got it off the day before Thanksgiving giving us something new to be grateful for and not a moment too soon because "some say he stinketh." He was funny the first few hours walking around with his arm up like "I'm a little teapot."