Anna just loves it when Jude reads to her

Jude is starting to learn to read. He can recognize many short words and can sound out longer words. So a couple of times recently Jude has offered to read a book to Anna. The good thing about this is that while Jude is definitely reading the words he also knows these books by heart so he can fill in the gaps of the parts he can’t read.

Jude volunteering to answer a question from the zookeeper on his class trip to the zoo in front of the cheetah enclosure

We live less than a mile from the zoo and we are members so we go there a lot. We must have been there well over 100 times since the kids were born. But last week Jude’s 2nd grade class did a field trip to the zoo for the first time. They attended a class given by one of the zookeepers then went to see some of the animals, including a visit to the reptile house.

Anna trying to fly a kite in our backyard

For most of the past two weeks the weather has been glorious. It has been over 60 degrees nearly every day and so we have had a lot of outside time. We have played some family football, been to the playground and spent some time in our yard. Anna tried in vain to get her kite airborne during one of these days but there was pretty much no wind so she was unsuccessful. But she had fun trying.

Anna showing off some of her Valentine’s Day gifts with grey blankie

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and the kids were very excited to open up their gift baskets from Baba and dig into the special chocolate bars we gave them. Anna spent the morning putting together some of the crafts that Baba had sent.

Overall, it was a pretty quiet weekend. Anna had a birthday party to go to so I dropped her off there and took Jude to Dave & Buster’s for the first time. He had a blast. He spent most of the time there playing this soccer game where you kicked a real ball against a screen to try and score a goal. He did well at it.

This afternoon we played a family game of Monopoly. I have great memories of playing family games when I was a kid and we want to do the same. And Monopoly is great because we can all enjoy it and no one has a real advantage. Of course, these games take hours and we didn’t quite finish before dinner. We will leave it as is though, and finish one night this week.

Jude’s official ski school photo

It was a full weekend. Friday afternoon we drove up to Keystone. The kids had the last of their four week ski school lessons. So, it was also the last day Marcy and I got to have our “ski date” with just the two of us skiing. The snow was decent but not great. Marcy and I did our usual 8-9 runs, including 4-5 bump runs, along with a good break for lunch and we were both beat at the end of the day. Speaking of the bumps Marcy has improved dramatically since returning to skiing three years ago and she is flying down the bumps now.

Anna’s official ski school photo

We drove home on Saturday night because today we hosted the annual Superbowl party. This morning we awoke to see a decent snowfall overnight. It was a heavy, wet snow that was a real workout to shovel but it left everything sparking white.

The snow covering our backyard table and chairs

I made my usual red and green chilis and Marcy made brownies and a coconut/peanut butter dessert. We had a few people over to watch the game and it was a very enjoyable evening. Good to see an exciting game again in the Superbowl.

Jude and Anna licking the spatulas clean after Marcy made brownies

Anna all dressed up for the Superbowl party