January 2015

Naomi decided that she wanted to get her hair cut like Annika's "but not *that* short." This was 8 inches cut off. She did great with the change until two days later when she declared she wanted her long hair back. I told her to wait a couple years. She seems to have gotten over that. This picture is also good to show how creepy a tooth can look when hanging on by a thread. The most persistent thread.

Naomi is pretty set on being the one to teach Annika how read. Probably so she can hold it over her the rest of her life. "If it wasn't for me you wouldn't even know how to read!"

 

Clifton took the big girls ice skating. Best. Dad. Ever. They started out like this...

...worked their way up to this. (They'll be cute in their 80s, huh? You can almost imagine that this picture is them as old ladies, Naomi reminding Annika that she taught her how to read...)

By the end of the afternoon Naomi was off. And Clifton's back was killing him.

Meanwhile Sarah and I went for a walk. A long walk.

By the way, this is the last sighting of taggie. Somewhere between here and there taggie disappeared. It was a rough couple days, but she seems to be surviving it. And no other taggie will ever be the same. I've tried.

What's this you ask? This is Naomi's negotiations with the tooth fairy asking the tooth fairy to just pull her tooth out for her while she sleeps. This went back and forth for a couple nights.

Don't miss the "I tooth you." Fortunately all ended well when it fell out while eating LIFE cereal and the tooth fairy was not forced to perform some top secret mission in the dark.

Yay! No front teeth!

For Clifton's birthday weekend we left the kids with Dave and Val and drove to Rocky Mountain National Park which is only 30 miles away. This is the view coming into Estes Park. So amazing.

My facebook feed is often sprinkled with pictures of pretty toes on a beach from my Florida friends. Here's the Colorado in January version. On the plus side, I'm sitting on top of a frozen waterfall. Which is pretty amazing too.

So much more comfortable than the last time we did this. I even got crazy hot and sweaty, stripping off gear as I went.

Bear Lake, one of my favorite views all year round.

The view leaving the park. Random trivia: RMNP is 100 years old this year.

Clifton's birthday dinner with the Parsons.

We spent a few evenings in the month of January working on Science Fair. Mac is looking the part.

80s day at school (which isn't that different than kid styles now as far as I can tell). This face has teenage sass written all over it.

Okay, a little better. And Naomi got Railsback hair in terms of quantity (thank goodness), but Hartemink hair in terms of ability to hold any body. Within an hour it was totally flat.

One weekend we went with Mac and Gyli to watch Clare perform in a play.

She's something of a famous actress now.

We had three adult January birthdays in our small group so we had a cake. Suzi was home with sick kids so Steve sat in for her for the cake.

You'll just have to guess who is 41, who is 38 and who is 31...

And look what happened this week. Annika wanted to ride without training wheels. I told her we could only go around the cul-de-sac once because this isn't great for my back. She told me she didn't need me and that I should just let go. I said something like, "Oh you think so?" and let go. And off she went.

Guess Uncle Chris gets the summer off. Unless he wants to try to get Sarah up and going.

Science Fair week! I was proud of the girls for doing almost all the work on this, though someone had to step up and supervise the glue. It's like gluesticks have made kids incapable of using regular glue in a reasonable fashion.

At the science fair open house. Yes, pompoms. Because nothing says scientific rigor like pompoms on your board.

But those three little rascals managed to win best overall in the first grade! There was much excitement. Also, that necklace? 100 beads for the 100th day of school. Is this kind of celebration a national thing? Or just Colorado?

Slumber party with the Parsons which was a blast. Here they are telling you what time they all decided to wake up. Which was slightly less of a blast for us, but totally worth it to see these kids have so much fun together...