Like a typical January in the PNW, we enjoyed some mild, sunny days. It is an oasis in the middle of dreary, wet winter. The boys and I love it and we played outside in the afternoons as much as we could. The City is replacing the playground at our neighborhood park. I took this picture just after they tore the old playground out to send to a neighbor friend who moved away. They are building the new playground now and Mason can hardly wait for it to be finished!
The boys like to play Star Wars with our neighbor T. sometimes. Mason LOVES it because T. is nice and always includes him and he gets to use weapons!
January is Bee month at Edy Ridge. Spencer qualified for both the Spelling Bee and Geography Bee this year! The top student in each 3rd-5th grade class competes. Spencer was in the final four for the spelling bee. He got out on the word "conservatory."
Basketball season continued with two practices during the week and a game every Saturday. We really lucked out with our schedule and only had to travel for one game. Every other game was here in Sherwood. Alan's and Spencer's team didn't start out amazing, but all of the players have improved and it has been fun to watch. Spencer mainly plays post and sometimes wing. He has never been very aggressive in sports and prefers to play defense. He had one super awesome game though where he scored 10 points!
Helping in the kitchen
Our new Church time is from noon-2:00. I don't love the later time, but it's a whole lot better than the 2:00-5:00 time we would have had without the switch to a two-hour block! We had Stake Conference in January and decided to spend some time on the Temple grounds that afternoon. It was cold so we didn't stay outside too long, but the boys still liked it. We also spent awhile looking around and watching videos in the Visitor's Center.
We wanted to go tubing on Mt. Hood on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I even bought a snow tube. In the end however, we decided the two hour drive to very crowded slopes wasn't worth it. We hadn't quite recovered from all of our driving over Christmas. Instead, we decided to try out the Clackamas Aquatic Center and then went to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. The boys all had a blast swimming. I was on the verge of a migraine and opted to sit and read while they swam. I felt like a party-pooper though and regretted it.
The Geography Bee was fun to watch. The questions started out super easy, but quickly got very difficult. Spencer wound up in a tie-breaker with one other boy. I think the moderator had to ask them 7-8 questions before one of them (Spencer!) finally got one right. He knew the capital of Iceland. I only knew the answer to one of them and it wasn't that one! Nice work Spencer! The second round of the Geo Bee was an online multiple choice test that he took the following week. We won't find out if he advances to the next round (state?) until the first week of March.
Mason was supposed to have a preschool field trip to OMSI one day, but we had to cancel because of the measles outbreak up here. OMSI was a contamination sight. Boo. Mason was really bummed so I took him to a pet store instead. He had a lot fun looking at the animals (the giant tortoises were his favorites this time), but I think he had the most fun playing with this twisted wood for fish tanks. Haha!
Another sunny day:
