From the Phone....

It's time again for an installment of "From the Phone"!  Right before Christmas our "nice" camera (35mm) broke, so it went to the shop and we had to use our phones and our video camera for pictures.  January started out with celebrating my birthday and one of our celebrations included watching the Vikings game at my Dad and Chris' house.  Tim, Alex, and Tad were sporting their Viking gear, but it wasn't enough to pull out a playoff win. 

My January birthday buddy boy, Tad, celebrated his first birthday!!  He's growing up so fast!  We all had fun at his birthday party, eating good food and cupcakes, and watching Tad open presents and smash cake in his face!

Alex also started swimming lessons in January!  He's doing great and really loves the class.  He took lessons when he was four and it was mostly about getting the kids used to the water and teaching them a few things about safety and floating.  Now that he is six they are actually trying to teach the kids how to swim!  

Now that we've hit February, Alex has been busy at school with lots of activities and projects.  His school has a Read-a-thon for the month of February, where the kids track all of the minutes they read and raise money for the school!  Alex has a goal of reading 840 minutes this month.  He has already read 396 minutes!  You can check out his progress here!  Alex is constantly reading anyway, but it has been fun to track his minutes and get even more excited about reading!  Before bed each night, we read a chapter book.  We just finished the 7th book in The Boxcar Children series and decided to try something else next (I'm sure we will be back to Boxcar books soon!), so we started The Mouse and the Motorcycle.  Grandpa Steve gave this to Alex for Christmas, and it's a special book because my dad read this book to me when I was a kid!

 The weather has been quite dramatic lately... it's been soooooo cold.  This last week we've gotten snow, but mostly the fluffy type (Joe has been clearing it with our leaf blower!)  Today we finally got the type of snow Alex has been waiting for... the snowman making kind!  Here is Alex and Mr. Snowman!!