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Valentines and More

Wow, have I gotten behind on blogging. This is my part one of two attempts to get caught up!

Last weekend Brynn had a sleepover at her good friend's house on Friday night. Cayden actually lives very close to us, when we picked up Brynn for roller staking lessons on Saturday morning, we brought Cayden with us so she could skate during the free skate with us.  Since it was so close to Valentine's, Skate City was doing a buddy skate theme for the day. They usually do fun games including the limbo during free skate, but this time it was buddy races and buddy limbo. Cayden and Brynn tried the buddy race and had a couple of mishaps. Ha.



She ended up coming home with us for the afternoon and the girls had fun playing together. Here they were making some kind of project where they dyed milk. Brynn looks like Oscar the Grouch because they had just put make-up - a lot of it - on.





For the past several weeks at Sunday School we have been learning about the Wellspring project that our church is participating in to help build wells in Africa. As part of raising money for the project, the Sunday School classes designed these Chitenge bags. The bags will be sewn by volunteers from the church and then the students are supposed to sell the bags to raise money for the project. Brynn is holding an example of one of the bags. Each bag that Brynn sells will be of the design she and her classmate created last weekend.


Here is a video explaining more about the project and the bags.




 They are pretty expensive, so I'm not having Brynn hit up everyone we know, but I just thought I'd put it up on the blog should any family or friends have interest to purchase one. (You can text or e-mail me if you are interested.) 

It has been pretty interesting and emotional to learn about the situation in Africa. Last weekend before they designed the bags, they set up a couple of stations where the students could walk across rocks barefoot while trying to carry buckets and jugs of water so they could get a feel for what it's like to walk miles (typically with no shoes on) to fetch (dirty) water several times a day. They even had bottles of dirty water at our tables to show the kids what the water in Africa looks like. Lastly, they set up this little hand-washing station as another example for the students. It proved very difficult for them to maneuver and they quickly realized how hard it would be to operate it at the same time as trying to wash your hands and not waste any water.





It wasn't all that nice last Sunday, but Clara really wanted to go outside. She offered to shovel off the deck. Such a helper.


She's probably wondering why Mom is on the inside.




The girls were working on their Valentines and boxes last week. Brynn made hers at home and Clara worked on hers at school







Brynn used some of her money that she had saved from Christmas and her birthday to purchase this Ozobot that she's had her eye on. It's supposed to be a basic introduction to coding for kids as this little robot thing reads the printed code and reacts accordingly. It comes with some already coded sheets and then you can create your own as well. It includes a code guide so you know what color combinations to do for certain reactions.



Pretty sunrise the other morning..



Clara had her last day of her swimming lessons session this past week. She is going to take a break now she tells me. :-) It takes two instructors to manage her in her class. Haha. She was the only one in her class this time and can be such a stinker about running the show; typically taking a third of the class just to get into the water. Once she's in she does seem to have  a good time. The instructors are always so good with the kids.




Daddy gave his Valentines gifts to the girls which included a KidzBop CD for Brynn and a cape for Clara. They were having fun dancing to Brynn's CD.








Comments

Amanda Lamm said…
Nice work out there. Love the walker option!

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