January Moments 2020

Did you make it through January?  We did and I'm happy to say we've almost made it through February too.  

January was filled with sickness, lots of coughs for our family.  It was also filled with reading aloud, piano music, little outings and lots of other little moments.  

We began January with an outing to Costco.  One of the few places I feel confident taking the four kids by myself.  It was the big monthly shopping trip and we filled two carts.  Isak was so awesome and pushed the second cart around for me.  

Noah received lots of compliments on his paw patrol hat.  :)

I rewarded Isak's help with a bowl full of ice cream.

Another outing was to the library.  I found this car book and Noah Loves it!

Sofie and Kira colored snowmen.  I love that she colored hers pink.

Sofie and Noah love to watch the gerbils at the library.

Kira played with toys too.  I love her finger nails.

Kira and Isak had a tower building contest.

Then Isak used Kira's blocks to build a tower as tall as he could get it.   I love taking the kids to the library.  Plus, the kids have lots of new books to read at home.

I made a new recipe...potato skins with toppings.  They were delicious.

Sofie wears this monster hat around the house.  It cracks me up.  Especially when she has a pretty dress on.

After church.  I got a cute pic of Isak.

First day at Sunbeams.  They did great.  But it all came out at home.

For both of them.  😂

Cute Sunday pic of Kira with her new unicorn tights.

Ready for school.

Ready for school.

I read "The Mitten" to the kids one night.  The next day I saw Sofie flipping through the book and retelling the story.  

The animals had to hold their breath to fit the mouse into the mitten.  So Sofie is holding her breath too.  😍

Mexican straw hat.  One of my favorites.

Here's Isak reading aloud to his daddy.

Nels reading to the kids.  Nice time to get some snuggles in too.

Here's Skye and Marshall playing with the sand.

Another trip to Costco.  I wanted to check out a couch bed that Nels wanted to get.  So we tested it out.  

I agreed it would be a great guest bed.  So later Nels bought it.  Now our guests have something to sleep on.  Yay!

A nice stranger saw me trying to take a pic of the kids and asked if she could take one of us.  Yes, please. :)  The kids were great so I treated them to ice cream.

Then we went to the library.  We played with trains.

And gears.

Sofie and Noah fell in love with these teddy bears.

Kira made a new friend and they built this pattern together.

This is why I love Nels.  He is an amazing dad.  The little twins did not want to walk...so tired from Sunbeams...so he scooped them up and carried them to the car.

He's amazing.

Our primary presidency put together a "Great to be 8" presentation for all of the kids turning 8 this year in our ward.  They got to take a tour of the dressing rooms and baptismal font and learn about baptism.  Then some donuts...two together for the number 8.  It turned out really well.

Kira got to be Star of the Week.  She decorated a poster and answered questions.

And I got to visit her class and read some of her favorite books to the class.  She chose "Fancy Nancy and the Quest for the Unicorn" and "The Mitten."

There's Sofie singing at the end of the line.  So cute!  Preschool pictures...

Styrofoam art?  I think?

Snow fun.

This Sofie is a snuggle bunny.  She loves blankets and stuffed animals.

One day, Noah and Sofie wore these monster hats almost the whole day.

They were cute little monsters.

And even nice sometimes...Noah hugging Sofie totally surprised me.

We did a 31 day read aloud challenge in January.  The idea came from Read Aloud Revival...she has a website and I listen to her podcast.  I printed these charts and every day (we were allowed to miss six days) the kids read aloud a book to someone for ten minutes.  It was awesome!  I loved hearing Isak read to the other kids and Kira too.  Or they read to me or Nels.  For Sofie and Noah it counted if I read aloud to them or they looked at books.  Sofie and Noah surprised me.  They really enjoyed it and loved coloring in the circle afterwards.

Also, I think Noah is a lefty...

Every five days or so we gave them a reward.  One time it was donuts, another time ice cream, playing games together or watching a movie.  The big reward at the end was dinner at McDonalds.  We ended up doing that reward in February...so pictures of that later.  Would I do the reading challenge again?  Definitely!

Sofie and Noah lined up all the of their stuffed animals.  So cute.

Some water coloring.

Noah loves to make faces in the mirror.  "Watch this Mom."

FHE - We acted out Lehi's dream from the Book of Mormon.  Here's the rod of iron...yarn.

Isak wanted to go through the darkness (blindfold).  See the blue blanket...that's the river.  Then the magnet tower is the great and spacious building - Sofie built it.  Nels is Lehi.  Kira drew a picture of the tree of life.  And the precious fruit was an apple.

The kids liked it.  :)

Nels is the pancake maker.  He's getting more and more creative.  Here's a dinosaur, along with the usual Mickey Mouses.

Snowman for Sofie with Frozen colored chocolate chips.

Morning snuggles.

We played a lot of games in January too.  Nels and Isak played Sorry a few times.  Isak was getting a little loopy with a basket on his head.  Haha!

I made these delicious banana chocolate bars.

More water color painting for Sofie.  She's chosen the messiest things to love playing with...paint, sand and play dough.

Noah has been getting into play dough a little bit more lately.

My delicious tall BLT with egg and cheese.

I started to give Isak and Kira piano lessons and Wow they have learned a lot in just one month!!!  Isak is rocking "Jingle Bells" in this picture.  I'm so proud of them!

Just before Nels and I left to go on a date we found Noah sound asleep on the table.  😍

I got some coding done in January.  I worked on this tic tac toe game.  This is when it was about half way done...

And this is the completed version.  I thought it would be fun to have pictures instead of X's and O's.

Nels and I did go on our monthly date...We ate dinner at the Country House.  A beautiful red building with twinkle lights that I've been wanting to eat at since we moved here.  It was a nice night out.

And that's January 2020!