January 2021

 Google's Then and Nows for this month:

I still can't believe how grown up this girl is getting!

The coolest thing that happened this month was that Hyrum received the Aaronic Priesthood! He is now a deacon in our church, and he gets to help pass the sacrament and go to Young Men's classes and activities. His ordination was broadcast on Zoom to lots of family from all over the country (plus Dallen got to help with the ordination since he lives nearby), and I just felt the importance of this occasion in Hyrum's and our own lives:

Also, it's so rough to get a good picture of this crew:

This month we did something a little bit crazy, and rented out an entire movie theater just for our family! We saw how relatively cheap it was to do this (because of the pandemic) and knew that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so we jumped on it! It was really fun, and by far the most relaxing movie experience we've had while bringing kids with us:

Ivy got a free balloon from our visit to Zurcher's this month, and she was just pleased as punch about it for days:

When Hyrum was looking for something he said, "I checked three times. That's once more than Santa."

Hyrum and Cora learned about and made some cool snowflakes in their GATE program at school this month:

For Ivy's home preschool, we did Luau/Hawaii for the letter L, which included some play with fake beach sand, a beach ball game, making a grass skirt for Pinkalicious, and learning a hula dance:

The next week we did M for music, and she enjoyed drumming, making a tambourine, plus lots of other things:

The third week this month was N for Nursery rhymes, where we did activities related to Humpty Dumpty, Hickory Dickory Dock, Little Miss Muffett, and more:

These kids love a good dog pile:

Zane tried to open a yogurt this month and when he couldn't do it he told me, "It's hard, kid! You don't know the mind of my kind?" He really likes to call everyone "kid."

Zane made this cool mask at school:

I took Ivy to the park one warm afternoon, and she LOVED it:

Mindi visited us one weekend, so we went to check out the ice stacks on Utah Lake at Vineyard Beach. It was super cold, so we didn't stay long, but Cora and Zane loved throwing the ice chunks into the water:

Zane has become such a good reader, and it's cute to see him reading to his little sister:

Our last week of preschool this month we did O for ocean. Some of the things we did: ocean foam, octopus ink experiment, and fishing for letters:

The kids built a very tall Duplo tower one day:

Hyrum and Cora dressed up as 100-year-olds for their 100th day of school:

All of the kids have gained an obsession with the song "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton, and I think every single one of them could sing most of it word for word at this point. A far more annoying obsession has been their new love of the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)."

Bean bag sandwich with the neighbors:

The last weekend in January we made a quick trip up to Rexburg to visit Aunt Maren and Uncle Andrew. We went to the Lava Hot Springs and the kids loved playing in the knee-deep snow!