Countries Around the World

For the last four months Nathaniel has been working on a "Countries Around the World." The continent of choice this year was Asia and Nate picked Pakistan. We learned all sorts of things in the past few months. Here are some shots of the culminating evening.

Nate's Pakistan station.

The Lego men were a hit climbing K2.

Nate giving his presentation.

Nate's friend.

The entire gym was full of 60 different country stations.

One student folded origami stars to hand out. Elin loved them. My hands hurt thinking of all the folding he did.

Elin getting her passport "stamped."

Look at all the stamps!

We came in not long after we put Nate to bed and this is what we found! I think it was a good, but long day.

Recent Nate Projects

Nate has been keeping busy with some building projects that he got for Christmas, and here are some of the results...

He has a lego kit with a small motor, and instructions to build all sorts of different things. This is the one he chose first... a working crane that has managed to lift all sorts of things around the house. But he thinks he needs a stronger motor.

He has also been doing some excavating... here he is with T. Rex and Triceratops skulls that he had to excavate out of "rock". He has a blast with this kind of thing, and is pretty sure he's going to be a paleontologist when he grows up.

He and I also put together this robot which has a working motor and actually walks. This was a little tougher and required some more parental help. He then decided to paint it some cool colors.

Our cats don't like this project quite so much.

Family Christmas- Part II

And finally some pics from our visit up at Mimi's cabin. We were only able to visit for a few days, but it's always fun to stay at the cabin even for a short time. We did a night of Christmas gifts, games, playing out on the lake, hiking, and just hanging out. Good times!

Grandpa Zan reading a card with Elin.

Nate was SO excited about the Wii Star Wars, and he's done a pretty good job with it since.

Mark was in from Idaho- great to see you Mark!

And Mary was up from Purdue- great to see you, too!

April with some cool new pottery.

Elin turns into a sort of crazy goofball when she gets excited around family (Nate, too, for that matter), so here's some of her goofiness...

Aunt Mishay and Aunt Mary became very popular with Elin... all she wanted to do was hang out with them and sit in their laps.

I was very impressed with the kids... they survived a 1.5 mile hike through the forest. Great job kiddos!

There were a few snowball fights along the way...

and toward the end when legs were getting tired, they resorted to rolling down the hills. Hey, whatever works! Afterwards it was hot pizza and hot chocolate for lunch.

Zan put some deer feed on the driveway, and one morning we found 11 deer chowing down.

Aunt Mary and Mishay were big helpers decorating princess crowns with Elin...

And here are the princesses!

Family Christmas- Part I

The week before Christmas my Mom, Dad, and sister's family came up to visit us for a couple days. It was a quick whirlwind of a weekend, but we were glad we got to see them even for a short time. Thanks for coming Mom and Dad, Shawnta, Mike, Dylan, Lexi and Sadie!

April waking up on "Christmas" morning.

I beat him to the picture!

Lexi sporting her new leapord-skin warm-ups.

Lexi (with a "why are you taking my picture" look) checking out a new game.

The two princesses are trying out there matching "Paresian" princess outfits. Elin wore this every day for the next two weeks!

My Mom gets very excited about Christmas morning... I think she likes to see all the smiles on the grandkid's faces. Me too!

My Dad helping Sadie with some cool new jewelry.

Me with my little princess and her magic wand.

Shawn and Mike with their gang. It was great to hang out with them!

It wouldn't be the holidays if someone didn't get sick in our family. Nate came down with a low fever that day, but really no other symptoms.

Ibuprofen works wonders! And the fever never came back, and no other casualties. Yeah!

We had to take advantage of the snow, so Mike and I took the kids sledding. They had a blast, of course, but we sure wore them out. Nate was on his last leg by the end.

Dylan, master of the snowhill, showing us how it's done on his snowboard.

He actually did a great job and could stay on all the way down, way to go Dylan!

Elin was taking the easy way down, and up.

Mike, Lexi and Elin

These two were pretty funny together, I'm not sure how they ever got to sleep.

Are they 3 years old, or 13 years old?

Good night, sleep tight!