Winter Weather...

This year in the lower mainland we have had some beautiful winter weather. This week has been the first week that we have seen our grass since it got blanketed with snow on December 5th.

Here are some pictures of the things we have been up to.

Karis finished her reading lesson book this week, so as per tradition, we went out for ice cream to celebrate.

I love how the reading practice is just naturally built in when you have younger siblings.

 It has been fun to see the kids nature journal entries about snow.

Peter loves to help out in the kitchen. He also is obsessed with ambulances. When he wakes up he usually mentions an ambulance right away. He wants to drive an ambulance when he is big. He goes around the house with his ambulance and asks me where my owie is. He then comes and touches his ambulance against my toe (or wherever my "owie" is) and assumes that it will be healed.

The other night when I was tucking him in, he said "if you have an owie when I'm big, I will come to you in my ambulance." I think this was the highest way he could have possibly expressed his love to me :)

This little man is 10 months old now.

Juliette and I had fun building a snow man last week.

Juliette and Ella have been busy knitting these days.

And the 3 girls are taking swimming lessons. While they are in their lessons, I swim with the boys. We have so much fun at the pool. And whoever thought of the idea of having a pack-n-play in the change room is a genius.

In case anybody is bored during quiet time, Ella has made a list of things to do. They all look like great ideas, except "look at a sand timer", I am not sure how exciting that would be.

The next generation of the double bob :)

We went on a few winter walks down to Robson Park. It was fun to see the frozen pond and the snow covered beaver lodge. We are so thankful to have this park in our neighborhood. 

Spencer and the kids made a fun slide in the yard last week.

I love my helpers. I have now outsourced the laundry, and the loading and emptying of the dishwasher. I once heard a mom talk about how as the kids get older the "scales start to tip" as they are able to help out more and more. I am feeling that the scales are starting to tip over here and it is so wonderful.

A little mathematician.

Ella's 10 month card to Silas on her typewriter.

Peter has started to tell Silas, "baby we brothers, we boys. I am big and you are little. We boys." It is so precious.

Ella made this hat for Peter. He loves it. He basically loves anything that Ella does, so receiving a hat from her was pretty special for him.

We went to the Surrey Nature Centre the other week. We did not know that they had such an amazing hill, or we would have brought our sled. The lack of a sled did not stop the kids from going down the hill though.