January

We've been busy, so we are playing catch up with the blog.  After flying home from Miami on New Year's Eve, the kids still had some Christmas presents to open that we didn't take with us on our trip.  Each of the kids got a Harry Potter Lego set that were a lot of fun to build - here's Karina with her Hogwarts Great Hall set.

Derek got a Hatchimal dragon (Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon).  He was very anxious for it to hatch out of its egg.

Lydia got a crazy indoor drone that so far has been able to sense the room's obstacles enough not to fly into walls, furniture, or electronics.  It's fun to send it around the room or "pass" it back and forth just by sticking your hand in front of it to get it to change direction.

Derek wanted to climb up me one day and he got pretty high.  He was proud of himself and I was too.

Snoopy is such a good dog and so very patient with kids that tend to smother him...

...and sometimes decide he needs to wear glasses that should be on Lydia.

The kids go through phases of playing with their stuffed animals - I'm not sure what the back story is with these pictures, but they are being cute with each other.

With virtual school still in place, snow days don't mean no-school days, but the kids have enough breaks during their online learning that they are still able to get out and enjoy the snow if we get any like we did one fun day in January.  Here's Derek helping me clear off the deck.

Then we broke out the sleds to slide down the gentle slope of a hill in our backyard.

The school is still planning on putting together a yearbook in spite of COVID keeping classrooms closed.  They asked parents to send in zoomed-out pictures of their children against a solid light-colored background, so we pulled off a school picture day at home.  These are the winners that will end up in the yearbook.