January

January has been a non eventful month for the Cooper household.  We have been plenty busy, but just not with anything blog worthy.  The sickness has come through our household, but only to the parents. The kids have surprisingly not gotten sick which is a nice bonus, so we will count our blessings.  Life pretty much went back to normal busy routine for us after the holidays.  Anthony finished off cub scouts and is now a boy scout, Grant received a new calling as second counselor in the Elder Quorum and is getting adjusted to life with church meetings.  There is still piano, homework, therapy, and homeschooling.  Life for us is pretty much rolling on, but there were a few highlights that are worth mentioning.

For one week Spencer brought home kinderbear.  It was his assignment to do different activities with kinderbear and take pictures of them for the class scrapbook.  I have never seen a kid so excited about a homework assignment.  Kinderbear went everywhere and for one week they even slept together.  For our week, kinderbear went on a Spencer date with Mommy and Daddy to the grocery store and to McDonalds.  Kinderbear played at the park and even was able to go for a scooter ride.  Of course Spencer showed kinderbear the art of Wii and dinosaur playing, and to end the week kinderbear helped make ice cream sandwich cookies for FHE.  During Spencer's week with kinderbear, Spencer was also student of the week.  He was able to share his favorite toy, favorite book, and even some baby pictures.  The kids were able to ask questions and get to know Spencer.  Knowing Spencer I am sure his answers were very entertaining, sometimes you just never know what he is going to say.

For Christmas my sister made the kids a fort building kit and since then they have enjoyed building forts of all kinds of creations and then watching a movie inside.  I saw this idea on pinterest of putting Christmas lights on top of your fort for some extra fun.  We bought a few boxes of Christmas lights during the after Christmas sales and so we used those.  The kids really enjoyed building their fort with Christmas lights and they enjoyed having a movie and popcorn night as well.  This time they were able to sleep in their fort with the Christmas lights on all night long, they were over the moon with that one.  So now we have added Christmas lights to our fort building kit.  The kids are still not keen on cleaning it up though.

Last year for FHE we used the conference talks from the General Authorities as our FHE lessons and this year we are using Preach my Gospel, more specifically the chapter about developing Christ's attributes.  Grant was in charged of the lesson and he talked about the different armor we can put on to help us resist temptations.  He gathered some things around the house and dressed Spencer up.  We then took turns shooting the nerf gun (temptations that we might face) at Spencer and see which attribute he used to block the temptation; for example:  sword=scriptures.  jacket=faith.  helmet=prayer. shoes=helpfulness and kindness, etc.  For our activity we played a game that Grant did for FHE growing up.  We all had a turn with a stick and we each pretended to be an old man/woman and the object of the game was to get someone to laugh.  To start each turn the person would recite this poem:  "Here comes an old man with a stick and a staff and you must neither smile nor laugh."  It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed being silly and getting us all to laugh, I have to admit it wasn't hard.

Anthony participated in his last Battle of the Books competition.  Since last Summer Anthony has been reading and re-reading 10 chapter books.  In October he took a test and made it on the team, only 6 people can make the team.  Since the test they have practice twice a week leading up until competition. I have lost count of how many times he read the books.  Anthony loves Battle of the Books and really enjoys the competition, it is highlight for school.  Out of 21 schools, Anthony's team came 4th place!  The team consists of 6 primary team members and 6 intermediate.  There are three levels of competition, Primary, Intermediate, and mixed.  After the competition everyone gets a medal and a trip to CiCi's pizza place for lunch.  This was my first year to go to the competition, usually Grant goes.  Madeline really wanted to go and cheer her brother on, she was so excited for him.  Later on we all went out for ice cream to celebrate as a family.  We try to go out for ice cream each time someone in our family accomplishes something great!  Anthony has expressed an interest in band, so now that we are headed off to middle school we will trade Battle of the Books for a trumpet and band practice.  Fun times!

That wraps up January.  Madeline is doing great in school, her stress level is done and with that we no longer have fevers or sickness.  In fact Madeline is the only one that has not gotten sick (knock on wood).  Madeline has now been able to get off one of her heart meds and one of her asthma meds.  Her asthma is now considered mild which is huge accomplishment from the severe level we started with.  Spencer is loving school and is making great progress in learning how to read and be independent.  Grant is getting ready to transfer jobs within Bell and move into a department that he has always wanted to explore.  Life is really good for us!