Yeah Seymour finally opened up...

Wondering now what we do with him...

I love that at 8 years (yikes... almost 9 years old) Phyllis is still played with, snuggled with and still very much loved!

Here was the scene last night... Phyllis all tucked in her own bed... complete with sleeping mask!

And this morning she was set for a day of relaxing in jammies with a good book...

School related news... Ainsley finished her first ever big book... 523 pages to be exact, and got a 90% on her AR testing which enabled her to meet her six week goal early... way early the goal had to be met by March 2.

Today was National Girls sports day at ISU. Ainsley was very excited to attend again this year..

This year she decided to try out fencing, cheer leading and rock climbing (since she loved it so much last year).

Left her early this morning doing some hula hooping before the classes started...

I was able to get a couple pictures of her rock climbing when I went to pick her up in the afternoon...

Once again rock climbing was the favorite... She did awesome made it all the way up to the top... twice and was so proud of herself! Working on getting a video up later on the blog if I can condense it down a bit. She's a tired and sore girl tonight.

Lately we've been finalizing our plans for a big trip later this year..

This will be the biggest and longest trip we've ever taken... a full 2 weeks! We will be seeing Yosemite NP, Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP, Death Valley NP, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon NP, Zion NP and Bryce Canyon NP.

Our Future Park Ranger is almost beside himself with giddiness at seeing so many National Parks... Ainsley is hoping for pools at the few hotels we will be attending and I am getting very excited at all the possible photos that will be taken!! Stewart is excited about all of it and a first "real vacation".

We've booked all our campgrounds and park hotel plans... we lucked out getting the last spot outside of Yosemite since the campground in the park was sold out the first day it was available in January! Still need to finalize our stay in Vegas... and the few other hotels along the way... but all in all it's shaping up to be quite the trip!!

We call him Seymour... as in Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors... he reminds me of the plant that ate everything and grew and grew. ( The guy in the film was actual named Seymour, the plant was named Audrey ll) but I thought Seymour was more fitting for our amaryllis bulb that's been growing since Christmas.

I'm seriously surprised that it has not tipped over because it is a tad top heavy! I really hope that he doesn't get sunburned too!

So here he was 3 weeks ago...

It's been a fun process to watch and makes us really anxious for spring to arrive.

Friday was Hippie day at school so earlier in the week we decided to tie dye shirts... and since we had dye left over we dyed socks too! I've never tie dyed before so I had no idea what to expect but they turned out really good!

Here they are all ready for school... was funny in the morning Ainsley kept practicing her hippie talk, "Peace... dude!"

"No Fair" that's what was said by Ainsley when Walker brought home a book in his new reading level. She can check out books from 3.6 to 5.0 reading level.

With Walker's new reading level he can now check out books in the 3.4 level!

I keep reminding Ainsley that he has learned everything from her... and that it's okay... that she's been a great big sister showing him a love of books. That little pep talk does nothing... we still get a, "Well, it's still not fair... that he's almost in my level and I'm 2 years older!"

Ainsley use to hand me notes that she'd drawn of a sad face when she was mad at me... now she just stomps her foot, huffs and yells, "Mommeeee."

Walker now leaves me Lego creations when he is Mad at Momma...

This is what was given to me when it was time to pick up Legos and wash hands for dinner.

So very proud of Ainsley for having the work ethic of working hard on a school project. She has a grizzly habitat report that is due towards the end of February and for the past few weeks she's been working hard. Taking notes, reading books and she decided she wanted to type up her report... it wasn't a required step but she sat down at the laptop and typed it up letter by letter. It took her a couple days to do it but she did!

Now she gets to move onto the habitat diagram part of the report... she's very excited to make her grizzly bears out of clay and make a river with swedish fish in it!

This morning school was delayed 2 hours... we had a sheet of ice under 3 inches of snow from last night!

Was nice to get up leisurely and make waffles and eggs for breakfast... not sure how hungry they will be for lunch that happens in an hour but it was a fun morning.

Kiddos thought it was so cool not to have to go to school at 8 and were very excited about all the snow and sunshine that awaited them as we headed out at 10 today...