Formal Breakfast Attire?

Benji came downstairs to breakfast dressed like this on Saturday, for no apparent reason:

The Shabbat Bag

Each week, someone in Benji's Sunday School class gets to take home the shabbat bag.  The bag has everything you need for a fun family shabbat, along with a notebook for you to write down and share about your family's celebration.  This was Benji's week, but we had unfortunately forgotten that Abby had a class shabbat service on Friday, which we attended instead.  We had a small shabbat celebration on Saturday morning (just the blessing over the wine/juice) so we can say we used the bag.  Of course, neither child wanted to use the class kiddish cup, which had already been used by many other families (can't blame them - ick!), so it was there more as a symbol; the kids drank from their own kiddish cups.

Here is Benji reading his notebook entry in Sunday School the next day:

Hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway

It was beautiful this weekend and we decided it was high time to get outside. We headed out with hopes of hiking to humpback rock, but we forgot to check whether or not the Blue Ridge Parkway was open for the season yet (oops!). It wasn't, but that meant we could hike on the actual parkway instead, which was a nice consolation prize:

Being on the empty highway was neat

Benji, conquering this tree stump.  He yelled "mom, take a picture of me here!"

Mardi Gras, y'all

It was snowy and cold last week, so a little celebrating seemed in order:

Abby has gotten quite handy with the hot glue gun

Making our own beads

Benji, with the remnants of our king cake, and the "baby" (i.e., lego mini-figure) which he found in his piece

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Every year, Greenbrier Elementary (along with most other schools in the US, I think) celebrates Dr. Seuss's birthday on March 3rd as part of Read Across America.  The kindergarten classes have a "read-in" and invite parents to come and the older kids are invited to dress as their favorite characters and bring their favorite books to school. The cafeteria serves green eggs and ham for lunch. Benji was very excited because his teacher asked me to come read to the class at lunch.  Unfortunately, we were snowed out that day.  But, the kids still had a small celebration without parents on Wednesday when they got back to school:

Maybe next year.

Snow Day Hopes

Benji, wearing his pajamas inside out on Sunday and hoping for a snow day (which he got):

New Bank Accounts

We took the kids to the bank Saturday to open new accounts for them. Abby's account had long been lingering at an inconvenient bank and we had never even gotten around to opening one for Benji (oops!). They had such a great time, it turned out to be a terrific family outing:

Abby got to sign her own forms (the teller even commented on her pretty cursive)

The coin counting machine was a big hit

Abby insisted on hand sifting through all of her coins to pull out "special" quarters

the conveyer belt on the machine was really cool

The kids got little passbooks and both wanted to fill in their starting entries

Abby, patiently explaining to Benji how a bank works