Fun during the Winter Break

We still had a long winter break ahead, so we tried to fit in some fun activities while the kids were out of school. Once Kaitlynn received her roller skates, she was almost never without them. She skated all around the downstairs of the house, sometimes even with her new karaoke microphones in hand. I honestly don't think there is a more fitting picture that would describe this girl's current personality -- wearing a zebra t-shirt and shorts, rollerskating in her zebra-striped skates around the house while singing loudly into a microphone. That's our Kaitlynn!

Connor took some time outdoors with Kevin and Jeff to enjoy his new BB gun. They set up some targets in the backyard and really enjoyed the shooting practice.

On another day, I decided to take Kaitlynn out to use her new roller skates at the local skating rink. Connor begrudgingly joined us and was quite hilarious on the skates. He ended up getting the hang of it, and both kids were quite impressed when I put the skates on myself and showed them how it was done, ha! For her part, Kaitlynn has become quite the skilled skater as well.

On another occasion, I decided that I wanted us to spend some family time together and declared that it was "Family Fun Day." That turned out to be a little insensitive when we ended up using our time to visit the Houston Holocaust Museum, which was something we'd been wanting to do for a while. We enjoyed the museum and learned some interesting facts we'd never known before, but of course, it was definitely not your typical idea of fun. Afterwards, we drove downtown so that Jeff could take us to one of his all-time favorite Houston establishments - Treebeards. He was in heaven with his red beans and rice, while the kids barely found anything they would even try. Will these kids NEVER become less picky?! *insert eye roll*

On another occasion, we visited Katy Mills to see a movie. We were stunned to show up and find out that all shows were sold out within the following 2-3 hours. Apparently in this day and age, everyone buys their movie tickets in advance. That is a hard adjustment for me, as I'm used to showing up and not worrying about a seat. Oh well, at least we were able to snap a quick photo of the kids.

Lastly, much of our winter break was spent going back and forth between our house and the Aasmyr house, as we were pet sitting for their family zoo, ha! Their 5 pets were all at home and we visited 3 times a day for 2 straight weeks to make sure they were happy and well cared for. Sometimes we couldn't stay as long as we wanted, but we definitely got some focused love and attention from Duke, Abby, Pringles, Ollie, and Charlotte. Well, maybe not so much from Charlotte - she's the cat who just can't quite warm up to us. I snapped several photos during our times with the animals, but none was more special than the completely random picture I managed to take with ALL 5 PETS in the same photo! It was a complete accident but oh-so-difficult to accomplish!