Ben swim lessons

Ben has been super excited to learn to swim! We got him signed up for the

4yr old class at the aquatic center with his friend Addison and Cole. I figured

that if his friends were there, he would be much braver.... and he was!

All of the shivering little boys. They are so cute! Their teacher, MichaelAnn was great with them.

Ben's favorite part of lessons was jumping in!

I was most concerned for him getting his ears wet. He hasn't had a chance to swim without me and without tubes in, so my main hope was that he would be able to see that it wouldn't hurt to get water in his ears. It took a few lessons, but he was so brave and would dunk his head! He got brave enough to jump in without help! Last day of swim lessons was fun cause they got to wear life vests and float around the pool! Ben held on tight (death grip) to Addison, but he did it and loved it! One more time with lessons and I think he might turn into a fish!

The LONG winter months

Last Halloween the kids and I started decorating Great- Grandma Maxine's door up at the nursing home. We started with a haunted house (with tombstones that had funny sayings), then a turkey, a Christmas Tree with snowglobe ornaments, snowflakes, and snoopy with heart valentines. I finally decided to start taking pictures of them, so the kids would remember what they helped with. They (well Isabel) love helping me with the door each month. Here is the door for March.

Isabel cut out most of the gold pieces and arranged them

in the pile with the leprechaun on top. It was fun. I like crafting with her. She talks non-stop while we work on it together. :)

Nara found out that she had to have surgery for tubes in her ears and to get her tonsils and adenoids out. This picture is a day or two after surgery. Ben, Isabel, Ari, Nara and Sarah all were watching a movie :)

We've done some fun things for joy school lately. I found out that you can buy a dozen worms at the gas station for under $3! I was in charge of the letter W, so this worked out perfect. Ben is enamored with worms. The first thing Ben did was empty the container into his hands, and look at them individually. He stretched them, and got so excited when one of them curled up in his hand. "mom! It's cuddling with me! Aww, isn't that sweet!" Those were his exact words :)

Sarah wasn't going to come to school that day, until she found out that we had worms that they could play with. Then she was excited!

I eventually put a tablecloth down and let Ben play ALL day. He made homes for each of his worms.

He would just sit and stare at his worms. He loved to see which ones were fast, which ones were slow. He played helicopters with them (swung them around above his head like propellers...) The most indoor winter fun a 3yr old could have!

Isabel joined in the fun when she got home from school! They both love worms. Some cousins (Adam, Ari, Sarah and Sam) came over and played with them too! Ben and Ari held a stick between them, put a worm on it and tried to see how long it would take for it to crawl from one side to the other. Ben and Sarah put worms on the swings and pushed them so they wouldn't get bored....

Worms are one of his favorite things! Can't wait til it's time to work in the yard again, so we can go find some worms of our own in the yard!

This last picture is for V is for volcanoes. (If you can't tell, these are rice crispy volcanoes!) We made the paper mache kind for the kids to explode with vinegar and baking soda, and we also did the mentos and diet coke way! Mentos and diet coke are awesome! It shot a good 50 feet into the air! All the kids were fans :) The adults too!

For another activity, I froze some of the kids toys into a tray so they could hammer them out. We were talking about spring and how ducks have to break out of eggs.... (a stretch I know) then I gave the kids their ice with toys in it and a hammer and let them bust out their toys! They loved it! Ben thought it was awesome. Joy school has proven to be tons of fun :)