February 2021

 Mom sent the kids a package for Valentine's that included a kit to make hand puppets.  It was fun to see their creativity in all of the stories they came up with and they even made their own puppet theater out of cardboard boxes. 

Brooklyn wanted me to give her a glitter tattoo one night and there wasn't much left in the box so we decided to keep doing them until we ran out. She immediately scratched most of hers off afterwards but we were fun glitter twins for a few minutes!  Ha ha

We got our fun Arctic freeze as usual in February. The kids schedule worked out just right so that they didn't have a single Friday at school for about 6 weeks!  It helped make February seem extra long... But we did get a ton more snow than I remember getting for years so they at least had snow to play in. I got very good at shoveling the driveway!  The snow was so weird; one day we had freezing rain and then heavy, slushy snow on top of that. It was killer to shovel!  Then a day or two later, we got the lightest, fluffiest snow I have ever seen. You could see all the flakes!  It felt very weird to play in, you would step on the fluffy snow and sink in and then hit a layer of solid ice. 

Kristi was looking for a fun activity to do for Tony's birthday and I saw an ad for a magic show over Zoom. We had watched Justin Willman's magic show on Netflix and really liked it so we thought it would be fun to be part of it!  It was a lot of comedy and less magic than I would have guessed but it was a lot of fun and definitely broke up the monotony of February a little bit. I loved watching the kid's reactions when he would do a trick! 

I love Holly's tradition of having the kids do a Presidential debate for President's Day but I always forget about it until after the fact.  Even though we did it late, the kids still wanted to do it and got super into it!  They spent quite a bit of time researching their presidents, dressing up like them, and preparing a speech.  We also had a Q&A session where Richard and I asked them questions. They also all got to choose new two laws that they would put into effect if they won.  Kaylee was Barack Obama, Brooklyn was Joe Biden, and McKenna was Kamala Harris. Kamala was the big winner and chose extra treats and screen time for everyone. What a generous president!

McKenna has the most gorgeous hair but hates when it starts getting long. She hates washing it, brushing it, and having it done so I gave in and chopped her hair short again.  She loves it!  What a cutie with any length of hair!

Richard has gone a LONG time without getting a haircut. He likes it longer anyway but the girls think it is extra fun to be able to do dad's hair in more fun ways now too.

I told the girls we would only have the snow for another day or two because it had started warming up. McKenna wanted to make sure she got a snowman in and I was impressed with how she molded the snow to include a hat, a face, and buttons for her little snowman.  Super cute!

We started going a little stir crazy in the house. Crazy enough that I am actually the one who suggested we go to the pet store!  You know I was desperate if I was suggested that! Kaylee and McKenna could have stayed with the dwarf hamsters all day but Brooklyn wasn't quite as interested in the animals as I thought she would be. It was just nice to be somewhere different! 

On our way home, the sun came out and it actually felt pretty nice.  We stopped at a little trail in Upper Arlington that we had never noticed before that led to two monuments erected for a Native American tribe that lived here in Ohio. Amazing how many things you can miss right in your own city! As we got back in the car, the girls were a little worn out and they all snuggled together and told me to take a picture. It makes me so happy to see them being good friends.

January 2021

 Instead of our usual tradition where we go out to breakfast on New Years Day, we decided to make a huge, special breakfast at home instead. I attempted to make stuffed French toast but it was just ok, plus a bunch of other yummy foods. I think I might like this tradition more because it means I don't have to get up and get ready super early!  Ha ha

Kaylee got a chess set for Christmas but I think Brooklyn has actually played it the most. She has really surprised us with how fast she picked up on it and how well she can actually play! She has even won against both Richard and me (with a little bit of help). What a smartie!

We finally finished our Riverboxes scavenger hunt.  It was very bittersweet finding the last one, it has been so much fun for us over the last few months! It was especially perfect for us this year to force us to get out even if the weather wasn't ideal. 

We found a tiny park near our library that had an interesting (and perhaps dangerous?) take on a swing set. Brooklyn wasn't a fan but the other two girls wanted to stay on it forever! Kaylee especially loved it when Richard would send them flying as fast as he possibly could and kept cheering and saying more, more! I didn't know she was such a daredevil!

The school finally figured out a way to have picture day. They won't have a class picture this year but at least we'll get some of these cuties. I couldn't believe how grown up and beautiful they all looked!

Richard got a woodburning set for his birthday and wanted to try it out.  He asked me to draw something for him and then he filled it in with patterns from all the of tools he got to see what they could do. I thought it turned out really cool and hope this turns out to be a fun hobby for him.  I already have a few things I want him to make for us!

The same place we got our Riverbox passport (Dublin Arts Council) has their gardens littered with tons of rocks people have painted with uplifting sayings or just beautiful art. They have a big pile of rocks that you can take and paint to bring back to add to their collection. The girls and I all painted rocks to take. It felt good to think that maybe we could cheer up someone's day with something we created!

The girl's piano teacher has always been so good to us. She knows that we haven't been going many places and haven't let the girls play with friends at all. So one day when her kids were all at school, she invited us over to skate on the ice rink they built in their backyard. Kaylee and McKenna are actually getting pretty good!  It was a very fun afternoon.

December 2020

 The girls couldn't wait to kick off the holiday season. I had bought a few crafts and things to do during December and they wanted to do all of them right away! We made gingerbread houses, paper snowflakes and went to see the Zoo Lights all in the first week of December! 

McKenna's house kept falling so instead of getting mad, she got creative a made up a story to go with it. She showed us how Santa had crashed his sleigh and had a lot of fun decorating how she thought it would look after the terrible accident. 

The weather was warm enough that we were able to go find a few more RiverBoxes.  It has been such a fun challenge! The snake one was one of our favorite pieces of art and probably took us the longest to find too. 

We got a little bit more snow that was perfect packing snow. The girls convinced Richard and I to help them build a giant snowman.  It was about as tall as Kaylee! It has been years since I've built a snowman and it was actually really fun. 

Kaylee heard about an outer space art contest through school and wanted to enter it. She sat down one afternoon and painted all of the planets. I was super proud of her! 

Another one of our favorite Christmas traditions is going to see the Christmas lights at Columbus Commons. It is still so eerie to me to see how deserted everything is downtown.  For the most part, we don't feel how much the world is still shut down in our own little bubble, but it was crazy to see how few cars were parked and how few people were walking around. We were sad we couldn't combine this with seeing the holiday train at the downtown library like we normally do but the lights were better this year than they have ever been so that made up for it. 

We also decided to go to a drive through light show this year since there aren't too many places we can go indoors. I'm not sure it's something I would do every year, but it was perfect for this year!  We started off the night a little rocky and it seemed like thing after thing after thing kept going wrong. It was something that could have made us all very frustrated and grumpy but we just started laughing at how many things kept happening! We got lost multiple times, we sat in line to pick up our dinner forever, we kept having to make U turns because our GPS kept having us go really strange ways, we got stuck behind an accident that completely closed off the road we needed to go on, we got super far out in the middle of nowhere (close to where the lights were) when we realized we needed to find a bathroom so we turned back and drove 15 mins back the way we came to find a store, on our way back we got stopped by the longest train I have ever seen and just as that train was about to finish, a train going the other direction came past and we were stopped twice as long, and then when we FINALLY got to the lights after going very far out of our way to avoid the road with the accident, we found out it was an hour and a half wait to get into the lightshow!  Oh and did I mention it was pouring rain through all of this?  By the time we got through the light show and drove home, we had all been in the car for almost 4 hours.  It could have been a very miserable night but instead turned into a very fun, memorable night for all of us!

The girls did the winter reading program through our library.  Besides entering in the hours that you read, they also had activities for you to complete.  One of them was to read a biography and then dress up like that person. Brooklyn and I read a biography on Gandhi and then she dressed up like him. She made the cutest little Gandhi!

Another fun thing we did was this color by number nativity. Every night you would color one piece of the picture and there was a song and a scripture to go with it. Sometimes we start things like this and then it peters out but all of us looked forward to doing it every night! Maybe with COVID we are just excited about anything we are doing in the future but I guess that made it perfect for this year ;)

Christmas Eve we had a Zoom party with my family that was so much fun. We filmed a lip sync video to our new favorite  Christmas song, I Believe In Santa, and then we also did a little Christmas video with 4 different endings, like in the movie Clue.  Sometimes I have way more fun than the kids do filming these, but this time everyone was really involved and loved doing it!  Each family also filmed a different part of the nativity and then we watched them all in order. 

That night the kids exchanged their sibling gifts.  We had some really creative ideas and hard working girls this year! I hope this becomes a favorite tradition of theirs. Brooklyn got a picture frame with a picture of the 3 girls and an amazing unicorn that Kaylee made from scratch!

McKenna got a painted frame with a picture of her and Brooklyn and a friendship bracelet Kaylee braided.

Kaylee got bookmarks made of pictures of herself and a snow globe. 

Christmas was pretty much the same as always for us.  The kids got extra gifts this year thanks to the generosity of their aunt and uncle who are starting a foundation in honor of their sweet baby Neil. 

We were hoping to go sledding but since the weather app said it felt like 5°, we decided to wait until the next day when it was a much warmer 17°!  Ha ha.  Sledding is one of my favorite winter activities and I think I go down more times than the kids do!

Our New Years Eve was pretty chill and I didn't get a single picture! As usual, we put a bunch of activity ideas inside balloons and would pop one when we were ready to do another activity. It seems like a very fitting ending to 2020 that a lot of our ideas didn't work or we kept having to change things around. Richard wanted to be in charge of the mixed up menu and he went a little overboard!  He bought a ton of appetizer type foods for the kids to try. It's always a big hit! Since none of the cities were doing their big firework shows, we just watched some countdowns from previous years while we did our Spanish grape tradition.  I don't think anyone was sorry to see 2020 go!