January - March 2025

We were blessed with a few decent (3 - 8 inches) snowstorms this winter which blanketed our driveway in white and shut down schools, work, etc.  I greatly enjoy the snow when we get it and miss having reliable snow like when I was younger.

 

Sometimes the kids would help me shovel snow.

We took the sleds to the school which is set on a large hill and is a popular place to play on snow days.

 

I remember Karina (and the other kids) when they were younger would try to build tall Lego towers and were always excited when they built a tower taller than they were.  Turns out it is still exciting to do when you get older as Karina managed to get this tower taller than she was on a chair and stay standing without crashing.

 

Lydia has been developing her culinary talents and one of her specialties has been fruit salads.  She and Derek would regularly gobble up a plate of fruit that she made and it looks delicious to me.

 

Derek was baptized and my grandmother (Derek's great grandmother) has spent a lot of time and effort making quilts for all her great grandchildren for their baptisms (in addition to baby blankets she has made for them when they are babies, quilts that she made for her grandchildren like me for weddings, etc.)  Here is the newly baptized boy bundled up in his quilt after the baptismal service.

 

I'm glad Grandma and Grandpa were able to come out to be part of the baptism in spite of the short notice and the horrible delay in traveling that made a long trip even longer.  Idaho winters caused their plane to be stuck on the tarmac for a couple hours waiting for de-icing, leading to a missed connection.  Hmm... maybe I don't miss the snow that much. ;-)

 

Grandma got to try some of Lydia's fruit salad.

We played lots of Apples to Apples.  Players take turns being the judge while the other players submit a card from their hand with a word they think best represents whatever the category is for that round.  We learned to save particular cards for Derek when he was the judge because if you could make him laugh or had something snake-related, you had a pretty good chance of being picked regardless of what the category was.

  

Karina played another season of rec basketball.  Her team was not very experienced in playing and they lost all their games in the regular season.  The league then set up a dual bracket tournament with the best teams from the regular season playing each other and the teams that struggled playing each other.  Perhaps having Grandma and Grandpa there worked as a good luck charm but Karina's team won their first game of the season during that first game of the tournament...and then won most of the remaining games during the tournament once they were playing teams closer to their skill level.

Grandma and Grandpa also enjoyed daily piano concerts as the kids were practicing.

 Family pictures on their last day before they left.

 

 

 

Derek climbed up to the top of the neighborhood sign at the bus stop.

 We celebrated Derek's 9th birthday.

 

He got a punching bag on a pole that bounces back up when you punch it down and the boxing gloves to punch with.

This game is a challenge.  The goggles have mirrors in them which flip everything and make it upside down.  The game requires you to wear the goggles and then complete a task like draw a picture, pour yourself a cup of water, etc.  Anytime I put the goggles on, I get a headache, but the kids have fun with it.

 

Derek wanted to have ice cream sundaes for his birthday treat and he and his sisters were happy with that choice.

 

Lydia made a couple video game controllers in her 21st Century Learning class at school with screws, cardboard, foil, and wires.  She also had to design the games on the Chromebook.  The two video game controllers she made would control the graphics on the computer screen, where for example you shoot arrows at food.  The wires connected to a Make Make board, allowing for her controller to send the signals to the Chromebook.  I'm thankful she got a teacher who is dedicated enough to come up with these cool projects; she has had a lot of fun in this class and is talking about wanting to study something in STEM like robotics or computer programming when she goes to college.

Here she is demonstrating her controller and her game.

With the temperatures warming and the snow melting, spring was on the way, and with spring come birds.  For whatever reason, a robin has decided that our cars in the driveway are better perches than the trees in our property.  We would regularly find the bird perched on top of our cars or on the side mirrors (and the telltale spray of bird poop down the car door).  Tanja's car was especially targeted, and she would find 10+ bird droppings on her car every morning, and the bird appeared to be sleeping on the car at night, though there was no 'nest.'   Tanja has taken to parking the van in our garage that we have only rarely used for housing cars in our time living here.  I have taken to leaving my car on the street where the birds don't perch on it nearly as often as when we leave cars in the driveway.  It was getting too annoying having to clean 10+ bird poops off our cars on a daily basis or else drive around looking like an aviary outhouse.

 

Of course once we started leaving the driveway clear, that dumb bird started flying up and attacking the window above our front door.  It would peck at the window and wait for Tanja to come look at it through the window.   The robin also left poop all over our front porch by spending so much time perched at the entry window.  In our war with this robin, I placed one of Derek's rubber snakes up on the window ledge and the next time the bird flew up there to peck at the window to tell us to park a car in the driveway, I laughed when it saw the snake before landing and flew back to the tree.  I thought I had outsmarted the bird, but it eventually learned that the snake was fake and didn't move, and then it fearlessly returned to peck at the window some more.  We have finally solved the problem by hanging some mesh over the window (and ducking when we leave through the door if it blows off since I didn't cut it to size or anything).  This had better not become a yearly tradition.  On rare occasions when I leave my car in the driveway for an hour in between taking kids to activities and picking them up or something, I still end up with a poop trail on my mirror and down my door.  Dumb birds.

Here are videos of the robin pecking at the window above the entry door, letting us know it is upset we moved its house (our cars) away from the driveway.  

   

 

 

 

We had international nights at the kids' schools and Tanja got Derek and Lydia to dress up in their Norwegian bunads for the parade fashion show and for pictures in our yard. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Lydia got Derek interested in the book series Wings of Fire about dragons and now he is regularly reading on his own to find out what happens next with all the dragons.  We are very happy that all our kids enjoy reading (assuming they can find something they are interested in reading).

 

 

Karina went through the steps to be certified as a soccer referee and now has her first job refereeing games for 6 and 7 year olds in the same league that Derek plays in, but a younger age group.  It's great because the field is close to our neighborhood in the local park, she earns some money, and she enjoys doing it.  It's a new experience for me to go to a soccer game and cheer for the referee, but I enjoy watching the little kids play and her keeping the game under control, correcting them when they don't do a proper throw-in, etc.