The post-holiday remains of the gingerbread house.
The kids had moved on from sugary sweet spiced cookies to other delectable treats.
I have never. And I mean NEVER seen anyone eat Peeps like this.
I guess when you REALLY love sugar, you don't even bother seperating the Peeps.
This was the last pile of leaves in our yard.
It only took two whole months to rid the yard of leaves.
Finally.
Yay me.
On Friday, January 6th, we headed to a friend's house to celebrate Three Kings Day.
We did all the normal things....
Friend wrestling.
Tequila.
And, last but never least, Rosca de Reyes with a steaming cup of Abuelita.
Per tradition, we all took turns - from oldest to youngest - cutting a piece of cake to search for hidden Baby Jesus'.
I found a Baby Jesus.
Katie's turn.....
Baby Jesus acquired.
B's turn. No Baby Jesus.
S's turn. No Baby Jesus.
Mikey was the youngest of the bunch.
No Baby Jesus for him either.
Of course, the kids can't eat the Rosca.
Which means that I ate a lot of cake that night.
I had a lot of tequila too.
Blurgh.
Katie auditioned for a part in a local high schools' production of
Twelfth Night, but unfortuneatly didn't get a part.
But, I think she was okay with that.
It gave her the opportunity to try out "Tech Crew".
"Tech Crew" are the people who run the lights, take care of sound, create and manage props and build and move scenery around.
It's a lot of work.
The night of the performance, all of the students involved in the production have their photos posted in the lobby.
Katie officially adopted this photo as her "school picture" for the year.
She taped it over the framed school picture I had on our mantel.
Katie was part of the Props Team.
Their job was to find props to fit the scenery and to help manage them.
She also did a lot of work on building and painting scenery.
During the performance, you could see Katie when the scenery would change to or from Countess Olivia's house.
Her job was to place a vase and candelabra on set.
And then, to take them off when the set was changed.
It was very entertaining to watch.
It seemed like, at least in the first half of the show, the scene changed every 5 to 10 minutes.
They were all running so close together in the dark blue light that you were on the edge of your seat wondering if disaster would befall them at any moment.
Three drama kids reunited from back in middle school days.
We had a three-day weekend in mid-January thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
We took the opportunity to have a family night out at the local zoo.
We visited the Woodland Park Zoo for their Wild Lanterns event.
It was a bit breezy and rainy at the start of the event, so we ducked into a theater to watch
Chinese artistic performances.
These included traditional dances as well as more modern acts featuring daibolo and hula hoops.
After the performance, we enjoyed some of the lights as the sun was setting.
The lantern animals and plants were very colorful.
Some of them even moved.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa -"
"Take that, ya big lug!"
Most of the animal lanterns were of animals that were at the zoo.
"Nice kitty."
For the most part, the animal exhibits were closed to the public.
One exhibit that was open was the Komodo dragon and bat house.
We ducked inside to escape the drizzle and check out the "cuteness"*.
*Only Katie thinks they're cute.
After our visit with the dragons and a viewing of the equally cute* bats, we headed outside to get some dinner.
*Again. Bat cuteness is debatable.
We decided on tacos.
We had no expectation that Zoo Tacos would be the height of cuisine.
And we were right.
They were not.
They did fill up our stomachs.
So, there was that.
Next, we went to see what animals they had out at the Meet and Greet.
We met Turtle, who really didn't do much.
And Kookaburra, who at least moved its head a bit.
Sadly, we could not pet the animal ambassadors.
Much to her chagrin, I did not let Katie pet the life sized Emu lantern either.
This was one of Katie's favorite lanterns.
It was a giant ant that you could walk through.
Family picture time!
I'm surprised that a wet butt was not the end result of this photo.
UGH.
We stopped at the halfway point to warm up our piddies by the fire.
Soooooo warm.
It was hard to leave the fire.
But off we went so Katie could commune with a large grasshopper.
And this really cute caterpillar.
The back half of the walk was full of mostly buggy-themed lanterns.
They had these really colorful dragonfly lanterns that would change colors.
This display was a big as some of the trees.
Before the transition to farm animals, we spotted this mechanical looking praying mantis.
"Cute" goat.
"Surprised" cow.
"Blurry" selfie.
At the entrance/exit there was a lighted wisteria tunnel.
It was very pretty.
On our way out, we spotted these angel wings.
The kids thought it would be a perfect opportunity for a JoJo Pose.
If you're interested in learing more about JoJo Poses, you can view this video.
But, hmmmm, which one to do?
BAM!
SIZZLE!
Hmmmmmm.....
STAR!
One last pose under the entrance/exit.
Huzbend bought a kit to fix the dings that have accumulated on our granite kitchen countertops.
Here's one of his ultra-complicated rigs designed to help set the filler in a hole located on the edge of a counter.
Gotta take advantage of those sunny days.
In winter, they are few and far between around here.
We headed out one sunny Saturday for a game of frisbee golf.
The course was pretty muddy and Mikey had a rough go of it.
Ralph sure had a good time sniffing all the sniffs.
And, I am happy to report, that he did not pull me onto my butt.
That evening marked the last performance of Twelfth Night.
I was able to get some video of Katie doing her thing.
During the curtain call, the Tech Crew peeked in from the sides to get applause.
Unfortunately, Katie had her back to the audience.
See red circle below.
It was a chill day that Sunday.
The kids worked together to make some bacon wrapped dates.
We had some visitors up in the trees of our neighbors' yards.
They were talking to each other.
You ever heard an eagle?
The last Friday of January brought with it the end of the 1st Semester of the school year and the blitz of end-of-semester projects.
The kids had a three-day weekend ahead of them.
We got a special delivery that day......COOKIES!
Specifically, Groundhog cookies as an anniversary gift from Grandma.
They were gone in two days.
The kids ate them all.
(I did get one)
The last Saturday of January we spent at a VEX IQ Robotics competition.
Mikey and his team "Robotics People" were competing.
Here they are with their robot.
If you'd like to know what their robot had to do, you can watch this video.
In a very interesting way, the competition has two teams working together to score the most points.
They also have Robot Skills challenges where individual robots compete against each other for total number of points.
Each team has a set of qualification matches.
I think Mikey's team had 4 or 5.
The team members switch off during matches so that they can all have turns "driving".
They have 60 seconds to score as many points as they can.
There is another team playing on the same game board.
The two teams points are added together.
At about the halfway mark in time, the driver has to hand the controller to their wingman.
When time is up, the referees count all the points and check with the teams to make sure they agree with the assessment.
After the first round, Mikey and team had to fix a broken part of their robot.
Concentration.
I'm not sure why Mikey's team name sticker ended up on his belly.
At one point he was walking around with stickers ALL over him.
Here's a little video.
Mikeys' team's robot is the smaller one.
Verifying points.
After they are done, the teams have to reset the field for the next qualification match.
Mikey took a minute between matches to come and visit.
We were there for most of the day.
It was strangely NOT boring.
It was fun to cheer on the teams and see the different designs of their robots.
I'm not quite sure what's going on here.
Trying to get a laugh from his teammate in the grey hoodie at the front of the stage?
I spy with my little eye.....
Darn. He caught me.
They had one last match in the finals and then that was it.
They weren't going to move on.
Overall, their goal was reached......
"To do better than last year."
Good job, Team Robotics People!
