Just a few recent pics...

Avery loves all her new manicure gear she got for Christmas. Here she is watching her iPad drying her nails!

Morgan loves chocolate cake milkshakes from Portillo's!

Girl Scout cookies have arrived!

Dance show

Morgan got dressed up in costume (her Halloween costume!) and put on a dance recital for us in the basement! She's been really interested in dance lately and wants to do a trial class at Avery's dance school.

Bring a friend to dance week

This week, Avery got to bring a friend to a dance class. She asked Maebel to come to Acro class with her. Luckily, Maebel is really good at all the Acro skills and was able to keep up just fine! The girls had a blast!

E-learning... again

 There was a huge ice storm, so they canceled school and had another e-learning day. I didn't get any pictures of the girls, but they spent their mornings on google meet with their classes. This is the second Tuesday in a row that we had e-learning, which means Morgan's basketball practice was canceled for a second week in a row!

Basketball

Morgan has been begging to play basketball for a while now, so we signed her up for the winter league. They had one practice so far and their first game was this weekend. And it turns out they played the 6th grade girls from their school! Morgan hasn't played basketball since kindergarten and I'm pretty sure she remembers nothing from that! She has practiced a few times at the park with me and Dad. She did really well! She had some steals and made some good passes for assists! She's also really fast, which always helps at this level. She had so much fun playing! And they crushed the 6th graders 17-6.

Morgan playing defense

Morgan on offense

Sleepover

The girls each had a friend over to sleep over Friday night. Morgan and her friend Lizzie made cookies! Then, they made up a scavenger hunt for Avery and her friend Maebel. They had so much fun making and doing the scavenger hunt! After dinner, Avery and Maebel did a scavenger hunt for Morgan and Lizzie! There were clues upstairs to the basement to the garage... they were running all over the house! And then, Lizzie pulled a tooth out! The girls finished off the night watching the Barbie movie in the loft and decided to sleep there. Fun times!

Dance

Avery's Thursday night jazz class picture

The backyard is his dinner!

All Milo wants to do when he goes outside is eat snow! He spends the first 10 minutes just lapping up the snow!

Crazy hair day

It was crazy hair day at school on Wednesday, so Morgan went for the bright pink hair!

E-learning... again

It was freezing cold outside (literally!), so the girls had an e-learning day. If the temperature is below -25 degrees (regular or with the wind chill), school is canceled.

Avery chillaxin' on her Google meet-up for Extend

Morgan hanging out in the loft again

That night, we decided to do bust out the Jelly Belly's. The girls each got a set of Jelly Belly's for Christmas, so we gave them a try. They were delicious!

Ice Skating

Well, the temps dropped drastically and it was no fun to be outside. We decided to take the girls and a couple friends ice skating. There was a public skate at a rink nearby in Naperville. We hadn't been in a year, but Morgan had been begging to go. I didn't skate because of the broken foot, but Matt and the girls all did.

Avery, Katherine and Elise started out near the ledge, then they grabbed some of the skating helpers. Katherine and Elise had never ice skated before, but they picked it up fast and did great! Morgan went out like she was a pro and just went for it (of course)! Avery stuck with the other two girls and got back used to being on the ice.

 

Pretty soon, they were all doing great and skating around like they had been doing it forever!

Morgan and Elise kept skating after Matt, Avery and Katherine had already changed back into their shoes. We told them they had to stop at 5:50, so they did a few more laps!

We survived without any major injuries - yay! Morgan took a big fall and has some pretty nasty bruises on her hip and knee. Katherine also took a fall and landed on her stomach and elbow. But, they all said they had fun and loved it!

The girls ended up having a sleepover at Katherine and Elise's house afterwards. Fun times!

Legally Blonde, Jr.

On Thursday night, the Academy of Music and Art held auditions for Legally Blonde, Jr. This is the same company Avery did Willy Wonka, Jr with and really enjoyed it. So, she wanted to do their next musical, which ended up being Legally Blonde, Jr. We watched the movie and also a few versions of the Jr musical on Youtube that schools had done to prepare. 

Then, on Saturday, they held callbacks for a few of the larger roles. Avery got called back to read for three different parts. The callbacks went over two hours! They sent out the final cast list later that day around 5:00. She's really excited to be playing the role of Pilar, Elle's Delta Nu sister. And she got named as a Dance captain, which she thinks means she will help the choreographer work with the other kids to learn the dances. The girls (and one boy) that are part of the show are all really fun and she gets along well with them. So, she's looking forward to rehearsals starting soon!

Sledding

We took advantage of the slightly warmer weather (ie, not below zero), to do some sledding. Morgan's friend, Maddie, joined us. It was SOOOOO windy! And the snow was more like ice and chunky. Made for some bumpy rides down the hill!

It's hard to tell, but at the bottom of the hill there was a little ramp out of snow/ice. Avery and Matt hit it and flew up in the air - ha!

E-Learning Day

We got a bunch of snow and high winds, so school was canceled. The girls had an e-learning day at home. Our school is doing construction next summer, so we can't have any true snow days off. They don't want to extend the school year any more than they have to. We already had to add a day for the heat days when the start of school was delayed in August.

Avery worked in her room at her desk.

Morgan worked in the loft.

Each of their classes had a little show-and-tell time. The girls both brought Milo for their show-and-tell! I love that Milo is in the screen shot the teacher sent out to everyone! Top middle - front and center!

They had to be on Google meet until lunchtime, then had some independent work in the afternoon. It went really smoothly. They did get a lot of practice during the pandemic. :)

Homework helper

Sometimes Milo misses the girls so much while they are at school. He won't leave them alone when they get home and try to do their homework!

A little bit of snow

There was a little bit of snow, so we busted out the sleds and headed to Ebersold Park.

The sledding was ok... not enough snow to make it great.

Someone had built a little snow fort and the girls tried to add to it. Their snowball got so big they couldn't push it!

They tried pushing it with their feet, but still didn't work!

Soccer win!

Morgan had a soccer game last night and I just happened to get a picture of one of the fouls the other team made on her. I didn't get any of the fouls she had on them, but there were a couple - ha! The girl locked arms with Morgan and pushed her down. There were some aggressive girls on the other team. Morgan's team only had 9 players, so no subs. They were pretty worn out by the end of the game, but they won 3-1.

Mama and Papa's house

The first week of January is always a busy one for us with work. Lots of year end disclosures are due. With the girls off school, we don't want them to just sit around on their iPads all week while we work. So, I took the girls to Rochester to visit with Mama and Papa! Our trip down was not bad until about an hour away from Rochester when the car started making some funny noises. The front drive side of the car would vibrate if I tried to turn the steering wheel! We made it to Rochester, though, and let Papa drive us around the next few days!

We decided to check out the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. Here is where you start off... looking at his cabin in Indiana, then walk through his life.

Then the second part is his life in the White House.

This was a really cool museum! They have a theater where they show a movie called "Lincoln's Eyes" that tells the story of his life through the words of the artist that painted pictures of him. It has layered screens that move up and down, along with special effects like smoke, noises and vibrating seats. Then, there is another production called the "Ghosts of the Library" that has a live person and uses Holavision (like holograms, mirrors, smoke, etc). This isn't my picture below, but I found it on their website - it was really neat to see! We talked with the tour guide at the end and he told us to google Pepper's Ghost to learn about the technology behind it.

Of course, after the museum, the girls wanted to see where Lincoln and his family was buried (well, all but Robert).

We met the tour guide, who was so nice and talked with the girls. He has granddaughters their age. He gave them each a quarter with Eleanor Roosevelt on it. He said the government is doing a program now where they are putting historical women on quarters. He told the girls to keep looking for more! He told us some interesting facts about the tomb and showed the girls some pictures of what it looked like when they dug up the coffins to remodel!

Of course, we couldn't leave without rubbing Lincoln's nose for good luck! Papa showed the girls how it's done! They were just tall enough to reach!

Then, we came home and chillaxed! Here's Morgan up in the loft. They loved all the decorations at Mama and Papa's house. Lots of games of Slap Jack, Bunco, War, Trash, and Rummikub were played. And Papa and the girls put together a puzzle. Avery even updated Papa's manicure with Harley Davidson colors!

On Wednesday, we went to Malibu Jack's. It's a huge game area with rides, go-karts, mini-golf, bowling, laser tag, etc. The girls had a blast! Avery played a lot of the games and won tickets for a prize. Morgan loved the rides! Unfortunately, the go-karts weren't running, so we didn't get to do those.

 

Avery and I went upstairs to watch Morgan ride the Wipeout again.

The girls played the motorcycle riding game. They both finished first in their games. Avery was super excited that she beat two teenagers - ha!

Back at the house, it was more games!

Grandma has a pickle ornament that the kids hide on the tree and everyone tries to find. It's like a fun little game. Well, it WAS a fun little game. Morgan dropped the ornament and it shattered! We'll have to find a non-breakable replacement for next year!

We checked out the new restaurant in Rochester called Nesty's. We got our food super fast and everything was delicious! They had some fun milkshakes!

After dinner, Morgan helped Papa finish off the puzzle!

The girls had so much fun at Mama and Papa's house and didn't want to leave. But, they also missed Milo (and Dad, of course)! We drove back on Friday morning... luckily we made it home without much trouble with the car. We are definitely going to need to get it checked out because you can't drive over 68 without the car shaking when you turn the steering wheel!