Heading into Spring!

I have intended to post LONG before now, but life has just been so consistently busy, there isn't much time to sit down and write or post!

So, before we move onto Spring things, I want to included some of our winter wrap-up photos!

We have SO enjoyed being in our new house, soaking in all of its coziness with winter snow storms!  Our biggest one in February brought us over two feet of snow!  The boys loved it!

 Another thing we enjoyed about winter was the daily visits from a group of Mule Deer who transited through our yard at sunset.  They come down off the mountain to seek shelter from mountain lions.  One mother deer and her fawn often spent the night in our yard and became pretty comfortable with the boys watching them through our windows!

 Our love for "birding" has been passed on to the next generation!  Jack has spotted several new kinds of birds:  a Stellar's Jay, this flock of Pinyon Jays....

 ...and these Evening Grossbeaks!  All new discoveries for our family!

 We had a wonderful visit from Aunt Gentry and Seth in February! We hope they don't wait too long to come back!

 With the first signs of snow melting and warmer temperatures, the boys have been spending most of their days outdoors.  This was their collaborative efforts to build a "fort".  :-)

We enjoyed a simple Valentine's Day at home...Toby's first!

 And at the end of February, we celebrated Toby's 11th birthday!  It was not only his first birthday in America with a family, it was the first time ANYONE had ever truly celebrated his life!

 This was his last night as a 10-year-old...being goofy with the brothers!

 We did everything we could to make his birthday truly special!  Balloons, Avengers decorations, gifts, cake, friends, hamburgers and borscht for dinner!  He was a happy kid!

 Pancakes for breakfast...his favorite!

 Cowboy boots!!!

 We had our new local friends, the Cluff family here for dinner...with all seven of their kids!  (Good thing we have a farmhouse table now to seat lots of friends!)

 Toby loved all of his gifts!  (Thank you Grandma Barb and Aunt Maddie for the clothes!)

 And our good friends, the Taylor family, came up from Las Vegas for the weekend!  It was a pleasure to have other Russian-speakers here to converse with Toby!  (They have lived in both Ukraine and Russia before!)

After the celebrating died down, we got back to school and celebrated our 100th day!  

For breakfast, the boys had to count 100 Fruit Loops into their bowls. 

 We read a great book called "From One to One Hundred".

 We found an excuse to break open Toby's birthday gift of fake mustaches - let's just say we were trying to be 100 years old!  :-)

 We played a "roll the dice until you get to 100" game...many rounds of it, since everyone had so much fun with it!

 And I made our traditional lunch of ONE HUNDRED items!  (Last year I only had two trays to prepare...it was a lot more work this time with FOUR HUNDRED items to cut and count out!)

 But it was worth it to see the excitement on the boys' faces!

 What a coincidence!  The party continued as our local elementary school had a family night and book fair!  The boys got cotton candy (Toby's first ever!) and were able to tie dye shirts.  They had a lot of fun and it was a good way to wrap up our fun day of 100s!

I've been waiting all year to dissect owl pellets with my little men!  We waited for a day when Dad was home to enjoy it with us. (He had never done this in school!)  We've been reading a lot about owls.  We found a great book called "An Owl in the House", which was a Vermont naturalist's diary about his rescue of a baby Great Horned owlet.  And we are reading Farley Mowat's humorous story, "Owls in the Family", so the boys have been really interested in owls.  It was a hit!

 The boys found multiple skeletons of voles in our pellets.  Not much else, but it was still interesting!

 Georgie, our little naturalist, took a long, long time to dissect his two pellets and he carefully took out each bone and laid it out according to the diagram.

 Now Joe....he wasn't quite sure what to think.  He kept saying "gross" and "yuck", but that didn't stop him from exploring like the rest of his brothers!

 This picture just about sums it up!  (And makes me die laughing every time I see it!!!!!!)

 So...with that, springtime is arriving in our beautiful Utah valley!  We have violets blooming, the first daffodils are peeking through, our apricot tree is beginning to blossom and we are preparing our garden and yard for a bountiful harvest!  Springtime would be a lovely time for a visit!!!  :-)