Fork!

Harper has been showing off lots of new tricks lately - including mastering the art of using a fork to eat. He is really good at it and you can see how proud of himself he is when he successfully stabs a bite of food and gets it into his mouth - it really is the little things in life. 

When we can start eating more of our meals outdoors we'll work on spoon skills - he can throw a bowl of applesauce on the ground outside all he wants - ha! :) 

Adam Earns his Orange Belt...

Adam did another great job practicing his Tai Kwon Do skills over the last 8 weeks. His kicks and punches have really gotten strong and controlled and he learned his new form very quickly which meant he had a good bulk of the 8 weeks to polish his moves. Needless to say he was all set for his 2nd color belt graduation. It's so fun watching him enjoy this sport and he's so proud when he gets to move to a new belt - we're so proud too! Next up - green belt! 

Spring came early....

What a crazy winter! Not a single snow day (to date) and not even a measurable amount of snow has fallen. Instead we've had super warm days, lots of sunshine, and tons of time spent outdoors. It's been pretty magical I have to admit. 

One of the highlights has been all the walks (bike rides for Adam of course) to the park. Harper has really enjoyed walking around at the park and loves the freedom he has to just explore. Luckily we are past the stage where he'd just want to put mulch in his mouth - ha. He definitely loves the swings and while it took a few tries, we've finally mastered the slide! (I promise, no Harper's were injured in the making of these videos....

Adam has loved playing in the backyard and he found a new appreciation for soccer - which he is now going to play this spring. He's also enjoyed getting to wear shorts most days to school - shorts in February?! What is happening?!

The dogs have also enjoyed all their time in the fresh air. Lots of walks and playing fetch in the backyard have also made for some happy pups. 

Andy and I have enjoyed all the time outdoors as well. A highlight was making fires each evening as we burned up our neighbor's Christmas tree -- so long winter - hello spring! 

Adam's Fort & Geocaching...

This unseasonably warm winter has allowed for so much outdoors time for the family. It has also been the perfect weather for Adam and the kiddos next door to work on their fort in the woods. I love that Adam has the opportunity now to spend time in the outdoors, using his imagination and playing with the neighborhood kids (now that there are some!)

A few weekends back during an early morning Walmart trip, Andy couldn't resist getting Adam a full on camo outfit. I'll admit - he does look pretty perfect in it with his walkie talkie, boots, and walking stick. 

It was also the perfect outfit for Adam to do some Geocaching in. If you don't know, Geocaching is this fun thing where people hide "treasure" then mark the coordinates on an app and then you go searching for it. When you find a "cache" there is typically a notebook to sign your name and usually some kind of trinket you can take with you (stickers, crayons, marbles - that kind of thing.) We had fun searching for caches near our house and then decided we ought to create our own. Adam loved the idea and so we gathered up some treasures to put in it and he found a great spot off one of the trails near our house to hide it. So far we've had about a dozen people find it and Adam gets such a kick out of looking in his cache to see people's signatures and he's even found that a few people have taken one of his treasures but left a new treasure in its place - so fun. 

Looking forward to Geocaching on our various camping trips now - they are everywhere!