Snowy and Blowy

 The kids had a snow day from school yesterday and today.  We got about 18 inches of snow, and temperatures were around 0.  (Even James's gym closed, which almost never happens! Normally everywhere else will be shutting down, and they'll be like, "Why aren't you at practice?")

A lot of places were closed yesterday, but amazingly, James's orthodontist's office was open. This was great because his expander had gotten loose, and needed to be fixed. So we ventured out into the cold. The roads actually weren't too bad, except for a few moments when the wind was blowing.  The snow was so light that the wind picked it up easily, and so visibility decreased very quickly. 

The orthodontist ended up taking the expander out, which was a wonderful development!  (The expander was a metal bar across the top of his mouth, and it had made it a bit challenging for him to eat.)  Now he just has to wear a mouthpiece at night, which is a lot easier. (James really really didn't want to get the mold made for it, which involved having the plaster material over his teeth briefly, but the orthodontist finally convinced him by offering him $5!)

Gymnast in the House

Well, that's one way to watch an iPad... :)

Mini-Do

 Matthew got a mini doughnut maker for Christmas.  (Thanks, D, N, & A!)  He and Mike tried it out the other week.  It worked pretty well, except that the recipe for the chocolate doughnuts called for cocoa, and we used the unsweetened baking cocoa. From the taste of the doughnuts, that probably wasn't the right choice. But we are resourceful people, and compensated by having them with ice cream!

Stars, Stripes, and Snow

 Last weekend we were in Erie, PA for the Stars and Stripes meet.  It's in a convention center which is directly attached to the two hotels, which is nice. James had a good meet, with an especially excellent rings routine (with a score of 11.2). 

James placed 2nd on rings, 5th on floor (9.40), 4th on parallel bars (9.1) and 6th all-around for his age group. 

After the meet, James tried the "hangman challenge" -- hanging for two minutes on a bar. Normally that would be easy for him, but this bar spins and you're not allowed to use a mixed grip (one hand facing one way and the other hand facing the other way).  He made it 42 seconds, which was a very good effort, but didn't win a prize. Of course, nobody had won the prize all day, so it's not too surprising! (I admit that I thought he might be able to do it, since he has such great grip strength from all his ninja stuff!) Matthew tried as well and had a respectable 25 seconds. 

There was a winter storm warning that day, so we were a bit concerned about the ride home, but it turned out to be fine -- there wasn't much traffic on the freeway (trucks were banned because of the potential storm) and they had it plowed well. 

Write On!

 Matthew was invited to be part of the ELA (Engligh and writing) gifted and talented program for the spring.  He was very excited and we are, too!  This means that he will have ELA with the gifted teacher three days a week instead of being in his regular class.  They get to do research projects and presentations on history topics, which he is looking forward to. 

New Girl in Town

 Isaac and Erin were thinking about getting a new dog, since Farley had seemed more lonely and anxious now that Ernie is not around. So they went to an adoption event, and lo and behold, there was a new canine member of the family!  She's a border collie mix puppy, now named Snowball. (Adrian was advocating for "Crumpet", but Seth didn't go for it.)  She is cute and sweet and spunky -- I expect she will end up being the boss. :)

Ironically, at first, Farley was scared of her -- he would not go near her at all.  But apparently now they're buddies. 

Snowball also had an eventful introduction to her new South Carolina home -- she had to spend some time at the emergency vet with a respiratory illness. But now she's back to health and enjoying running around her new place. 

Before the Dinos

 We took the boys to the museum for the Permian Monsters exhibit -- in case you're not familiar with these creatures, they look like dinosaurs but aren't officially dinosaurs. I think Auntie Erin was even more excited about it than the boys!

While we were there, they had to evacuate the museum -- we still don't know quite why, but since only one police car showed up, presumably it was nothing too serious. We had seen most of what we wanted to see by that point, so we went into the next door art museum (the Harn) for a little bit.  The kids were droopy and not particularly interested, but it did have a cool WWI exhibit with lots of the propaganda posters. That was a nice coincidence because James was doing a report for school on World War I.