cereal

8 year old Jared

13 year old Jared

I remember blogging a long time ago (6 years) about how each morning I would come into the kitchen and see Jared sitting there with a big bowl of cereal.  I wrote about how it made me smile.  Well, 6 years later, he is still having a big bowl of cereal (or two, or three-and they are bigger bowls-per pics) for breakfast, and after school snack, late night snack and lunch and dinner if we would let him.  The boy LOVES cereal and never tires of it.  He switches what kind he likes the most (right now its Cinnamon Life).  He eats so much, that cereal is now one of those items that I just always get when I'm at the store...milk, juice, bread...and cereal.  I took a picture of our pantry.  I went to the store today.  This will last us less than a week.  Jared and Allen are the only ones that eat cereal.

love of a dog

Dogs love their humans.  Here are some examples that we captured.  

These sweet things allow Claire to take countless "selfies" with them:

 When in the car, if there is a lap available, they must be on it:

 This is my favorite.  We are playing a game around the coffee table.  Jared is sitting on the ground.  Max keeps scooting closer to him until (it's hard to tell in the picture) Max is leaning off the couch so he can lay his head on Jared's shoulder.  That is real love my friends.

rainbow looms

Rainbow looms, have you heard of them?  They are the center of Claire's world right now.  She received her first "loom" for her birthday and was gifted many bags of bands for Christmas and even spent her hard earned money on a case and second loom and hook.  Since then she has been rainbow loom crazy.  All her free time is spent doing one of the following:  make a rainbow loom bracelet, watching a how-to video to learn a new pattern, or coming up with her own new pattern and making her own how-to video.  She is amazingly good at it. She has taught me a few things and I am slow and easily confused.  She gives them away to family and friends.  She has made a little money taking orders for them.  She has a drawer full of ones she just made for fun.  She also made a case for her i-touch, some head bands, rings, key chains, book marks, and pencil accessories.  

just like the good old days

My kids finally got to experience the kind of snow that I grew up with.  The kind you could sled down without removing all the snow on the first trip down, the kind that covered your shoes when you walked through it.  This January we had two great snow falls  two weeks apart from each other.  Both produced days off of school.   The first snow came fast and unexpectedly during the day and the schools and town rushed to get kids and get home.  There were cars on the sides of every road that either slid off or just parked there when the hill was just too steep.  It reminded me of a Valentine's day that we got a surprise snow and Joel and I walked home from school for some reason (didn't want to wait on the bus?) when it let out.  I remember how fun it was to trudge through the neighborhood  as the snow came down.  I also loved reliving the excitement of my youth as the phone call would come each day announcing one more day off school.  I love it all.

We had fun sledding and building large snow men.  Since the first snow came during the day, we waited until about 4pm to go out and play.  But we planned ahead-we put our swim suits on under our snow gear and when we were done playing, we peeled off our clothes and jumped in the hot tub.  We have lived at our place for 3 years now and I finally got to do this.  I have always wanted to be in a hot tub while it was snowing.  It was great.  We had a snow ball fight, Jared made a snow angel, and we relaxed and enjoyed the beauty of the snow (well, maybe just I did).

carter compared

Three years ago, while we were out playing in the snow, I took a picture of Carter because he looked old to me at that moment and I wanted to capture it-this older version of Carter that gave me a glimpse of what he might look like some day.  Well, we were back in the snow a few weeks back (post to come) and I thought about it and snapped another one.  I don't think I captured an older version of Carter this time; he looks his age of 15.  But I love to compare the two.

jared's eagle

Jared did his eagle scout project in January.  He, along with many family and friends, helped the Boys and Girls Club.  They had recently put in a new playground and had a huge pile of dirt that need to be spread around the elevated playground to make it safe.  I didn't get a before picture of the dirt pile, but it was huge and frozen.  We were there for about four to five hours and always had 4-8 people shoveling it.  Others moved and spread the dirt around the playground.  There was also a basketball court that had trash, tires, and layers of mud on it that the club wanted cleaned off.  It was a great day and Jared did a pretty good job of getting out of his comfort zone and taking charge of telling people what they needed to do.  

Jared is my natural born worker.  He is not afraid to get dirty and work hard.   We knew that his eagle project needed to be like this; hard labor.  It couldn't be collecting items for a charity because that is not what Jared is about.  He is about working hard, with this hands, physically getting a job done. And that's what he did; he never stopped working all day.  I see my dad's work ethic in Jared and it makes me proud.

letters to santa and passwords

I mentioned that our kids write letters to Santa each year and put them in their stockings on Christmas Eve.  Allen took a picture of them this year because they were quite memorable.  I thought I would share:

still laugh when I read it

a quad-ski is a jet ski-ATV combo (never going to happen)

she still believes

Claire did get that I-touch for Christmas and Carter spent the whole break trying to figure out Claire's password (numbers) and was successful 5 times.  It's pretty easy when the password is 1234.  The last time he changed her screen picture from the one of her to a new one of him.  We all had a good laugh then told him to stop breaking in.