January January

January brought a few fun Cub Scout events like the annual Pinewood Derby. Wyatt won the Lion race with his Lego creation that he made all by himself. Noah didn't place, but had a solid finish. Here Wyatt is receiving his fist place ribbon.

It's a long day and they usually get a little antsy. Noah spent some of his time voting in the pinewood artistic presentation contest. We didn't realize he was voting so many times until after they started to count the votes and the winners all ended up being members of his Wolf Den. Hmmm.

The kids helped us clean up afterwards, which really means they jumped on all the packing bubbles.

The boys went on the January hike.

And we got their official scout pictures.

And Grandpa came for a very special Wolf den meeting where he discussed fossils and brought a bunch of really cool samples.

We supported the PTO and went to Bingo night. Noah won a candle and Wyatt won a tiny football. Charlotte won the opportunity to leave early because it was getting long.

Nothing better than going out for some grilled cheese sandwiches.

After Wyatt did his experiments, Noah pulled out his kit and did the gummy bear experiment. It involved salt and what happens to the size of the gummy bear. Charlotte was a good assistant and helped dropped the bears in.

Noah started helping more with dinner prep. He is now a boss carrot peeler and can also snap broccoli and green beans. I mean look at that determination.

The kids continued to enjoy their Christmas presents. Noah enjoyed his Detective game for Osmo and his robot R2D2.

Wyatt tried to chisel out a dinosaur (we had to suspend this one until it got warmer out so we could bring the mess outdoors).

And Charlotte kept busy coloring with her electronic color/doodler.

The biggest event of January was adopting our first family pet: a guinea pig named Chippy. Wyatt picked him out. He was about 6 weeks old when we got him, so we decided his birthday was December 9th. The kids were all super excited to have a "real" pet. We placed him in the living room so he would always have someone around to keep him company.

One day I taped up Wyatt's thumbs so he could see how difficult it would be to do things without them such as picking up toys and turning a door handle.

 And it got cold. Real cold.

So cold it was seeping into our kitchen like the window wasn't even there.

We had to seal up the worst ones.

So cold our kitchen faucet broke right off (well maybe that was a long time coming).

The good news is we got to buy a new, prettier faucet.

So cold that we had to leave the kitchen cabinets open so the glasses could get some warm air because they were ice cold. And so cold we had to have a family movie night to watch The Day After Tomorrow, because that's what it felt like it was.

We were also delighted to see five deer hanging out right in front of our house.