I know I said I would blog and since the person who has been lately taking up a lot of my time happens to be out of town this weekend, I find that I have time to blog tonight. So this is some of the stuff that we have been doing the last few months. I'm sure there are other things I need to add, but this is the most recent stuff.
William has been doing a lot of origami. So much. Here is one picture of what happened when I left him alone for an hour after lunch.
I finally had to put a cap on the origami after they filled at least four grocery bags full of folded paper. They also tried to sell me their wares frequently in an effort to earn some money. I'm glad they learned how to do it, even if they have used so much paper in the process.
So I also finally got around to taking a Christmas photo. One day in February we happened to all wear Christmas-y kinds of things to church, so I did a quick photo session before we ate lunch. It wasn't great, but we were hungry and time was short. Too bad I can't post all of them, some are quite funny.
I know I already posted this picture, but it is worth mentioning again. These are the cookies that my mom helped William and Marissa make for me for Valentine's Day. My mom really excels on Valentine's Day. They always come up with very cute and lovely things for me. Thanks!
Next we come to our brief visit from the winter fairy. We really have had a night mild winter this year, which I appreciate since I have to drive so much. But I was really sad that we didn't get to sled like we did last year. So I was very happy when at last we had just enough snow to build some snowmen, make snow forts, and even sled down a big hill at the park.
This is just a picture of my cute cat, Owen. I actually have a lot of pictures of him sleeping because he always looks so funny. So this is one of him sleeping on my bed.
Here is another one. It reminded me of princess and the pea. How many cushions are under there?
We went to the zoo last month since we have had such great weather. The butterflies were a hit again. William and Marissa were wanting them to land on their fingers, but of course, that was unlikely and there was a sign that said not to touch them anyway. It was a great day though!
New baby elephant back there. 
They both used to fit in this hole so easily! When did they get so big? 
The hippos were putting on a show. 
Several weeks ago William went to a chess tournament. He started playing chess this past fall. I can't remember why exactly he started playing, but he loved it right away. He started doing chess club with other homeschoolers and learned more about how to play. I don't really play, so the fact that he beats me doesn't really mean much. But he is talented at it. This is the last regular game of the tournament before he had to go into a tie breaker.
Yeah, he won! He did really well. The boys in his group were pretty evenly matched, all of them would have beaten me!
He was so proud! And the next week his picture ended up in the local paper. He was so excited! He couldn't stop talking about it.
A couple weeks ago, the planets aligned!! The moon was hovering right around Jupiter and Venus. We went up to the observatory and looked at Jupiter and its moons. The next night we just looked at it with binoculars off the deck. It was pretty cool. You could really see the spots on the moon, not so much Jupiter's moons, but still cool. Even Owen thought it was cool.
So this week, we got some new shirts from Uncle Tyler! William and Marissa were very excited about it!
William has been using the cheese cutter the last couples weeks. He wanted to help in the kitchen with lunch the other day and painstakingly cut these little cheese squares for me! 
We went rollerskating this weekend with a friend. It was so fun! Here are some pictures from our adventure.
Well, it is late. Wow, even later than I thought it was. I will more fun adventures to blog about next week, I'm sure! Thanks for reading!
