New Belt, New Friend

MiniM.E. is really climbing through the ranks at Taekwondo. She received her high red belt today and is thrilled. Throughout the intermediate belts, she was a little less motivated, but she's back on her A-game and learned the entire form for her new belt before arriving at class tonight. We are so proud of her!

LittleL.G. is always creating and made herself a paper friend yesterday.

Watzke enjoys it too.

A Birthday Celebration Weekend

Gram and Grumpy came to visit this weekend to celebrate Mr.T.'s birthday. Not a ton of excitement, since one-year-olds don't appreciate many of the activities adults enjoy. But plenty of playing and attention, a trip to the mall, a walk outside, and- of course- presents, cake and singing!

Happy Birthday again. You deserve all the cake, Mr.T.!

Happy Birthday Mr.T.!

Today Mr. T. turned one. I'm not sure where the last year went. Just yesterday we were bringing home a brand new person and today I can't imagine our family without him.

Mr. T., you have by far been our most easy going baby. You have made us all swoon, coo, giggle, laugh, and because you are so good, sometimes even forget you were there. You've grown into such an adorable little toddler with a love of music and dancing, opening things and most of all: stairs. Your sisters adore you and love taking care of you. SlimJim loves you too, even when much of his day consists of, "No, Baby!" and it's too cute to watch you follow him around and try to do everything he does.

We couldn't pull together a big fancy party right after Christmas with four kids and getting back into school, but with all of us at home all day every day is like a party. And lucky for us, Mr.T.'s birthday fell on a music class day, which is probably his favorite thing to do anyway.

So, we made birthday toast and sang "Happy Birthday" at breakfast:

Played all things Mr.T. in pajamas:

Enjoyed a music class:

And had a birthday dinner and get together with our closest friends:

Happy Birthday, Mr.T.! 

A Skating Party

To celebrate a friend's 10th birthday, we went to a skating party today. Her grandparents have a frozen pond in their backyard, and despite the warm weather, it was still frozen enough for skating!

The girls had a blast weaving in and out of the reeds and are both pretty decent at it. It was SlimJim's first time on skates and he thought it was the best, though my back and arms are exhausted from carrying his weight while he slipped and slid.

And Mr.T. enjoyed being pulled around by all the girls. 

We Rock the Spectrum

The kids have afternoon or evening activities every day of the week except Thursday, so if we ever want to get up from SlimJim's nap and do something, this is the only day of the week to do it. It was bitter cold today, so even though it looked nice out, we weren't spending time outside. The kids were troopers getting back into school and being patient with me not feeling well, and they needed to get out of the house and do something fun. 

We headed to an all abilities gym in Ballston Spa, We Rock the Spectrum. 

With only a couple other families, the kids had a fantastic time swinging, jumping, zip lining and just playing. 

We'll definitely have to visit again because the kids would have stayed there all night!

Taekwondo: Round Two

This is how I've felt the past couple days:

2020 hasn't been my favorite so far. The kids did a great job getting back into the routine of school the past couple days, but I have been struggling with being under the weather. Good thing we have the new rock wall to get everyone's wiggles out, because on top of schooling and playing mom taxi, I haven't been feeling up to doing much else.

The most exciting part of 2020 so far is LittleL.G. beginning Taekwondo. She went to her first Little Ninja class tonight and even though she was nervous all day, I think she ended up having a great time! MiniM.E. is really loving it now, and I hope LittleL.G. will feel the same soon. They do a great job with the kids at our studio.

While her first class was Wednesday, she took an intro class with a friend tonight and I think she's much more excited now!

The First Week of the New Year

The rest of the week went a lot like this:

Everyone was suffering from some serious holiday let down. All the build up, and all the presents, and all the family, and all the junk food, and then nothing exciting... at least there were lots of new toys to play with. My favorite new toy to play with is my new phone camera:

It was especially hard on the kids when Daddy went back to work Thursday and Friday and we were just hanging around without school or much to to. But we made it through with a trip to Target and the playground.

We tried to liven up the weekend with free swim at the Queensbury Elementary school, then Daddy took the girls ice skating Sunday.