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Leah has taken up soccer this winter. Since outdoor soccer in the cold/snow/ice is a poor plan, this is of course indoors. Here she is knocking over cones as she pretends to be the Joker (the other team was Batman, who had to pick up the cones to fix the city broken by Joker).

When Leah picked soccer, she said she wanted to do it with “the people who talk funny”. This meant she wanted soccer with UK Elite, where all the teachers are from the UK. She loved soccer with them this past summer, and it’s just as much fun indoors in the winter. Here she is trying to hit Syndrome (played by Coach Ian) with a fireball to stop his evil antics.

Leah’s moving as fast as Dash. Too fast for any camera.

Leah scores a goal!

This week, Leah’s choir sang in church. And not only did they sing, they also played choir chimes.

Yesterday, Jen posted pictures of the hoodies she had made. I thought I might follow up with a few extras and outtakes from that photoshoot. First, a few close-ups.

And here are a couple extras of Leah looking cute with her hood up and down.

No surprise, after I made a Hangout Hoodie dress for Leah, Molly requested one too.

For Dad’s Day at preschool. Leah requested that Chad wear his new hoodie shirt to match her hoodie dress. Molly got in on the hoodie action and wore her new dress to school too.

Now, I just need to make a Hampton Hoodie for me and we'll have a family of Mom-made hoodies!

I joined Leah at preschool for Dad’s Day yesterday. Since school’s out for Father’s Day, they celebrate in January. All the dads are invited to come to class for the day and share in the fun. Here’s Leah learning about keeping her teeth healthy.

Leah’s drawing her favorite food (Neapolitan ice cream). I guess she likes the strawberry the best, since that scoop is much larger than the vanilla or chocolate.

We made our own snacks - fruit kabobs.

Leah and Norah had a good time working the cash register at the grocery store.

Here’s the whole class. Items of note - Leah’s a bit bored waiting on me to take this picture. While most kids are focused on tasks, there are a couple of kids chasing each other over the theft of the cash register money. And, of course, a couple of girls are wearing dress-up dresses (though, surprisingly, not Leah).

Gotta love snack time. I’m ready to go back to preschool.

Despite a storm that was not as bad as the forecast, we have had two snow days already this week (Monday and Tuesday). Tuesday, the girls headed outside to have some fun. Here they are making snow angels in the little bit of snow we got.

Mommy even got involved in the fun. Here she and Leah are zooming ahead of Molly on the sled.

Now it’s Molly’s turn to ride with Mommy.

Leah’s really skidding to the side here.

Made it to the bottom. Lots of fun.

Who needs a sled? Leah’s happy to slide down the hill in our back yard without one.

She made it to the bottom. She wins!

This year, our church participated in the day of service on MLK day. They had a bunch of service opportunities, both at the church and around the community. We opted to stay at the church, as they had a bunch of kid-friendly activities to participate in there.

Molly and Jen helped package meals for Kids Against Hunger. Molly’s job was to measure and pour the mixed vegetables. Our church packaged a total of 15,606 meals for those in need in the DC Metro area.

Leah wasn’t keen on the hair net, so she and I made cards to cheer up those away from home.

Once they were done packaging meals, Molly and Jen joined us in the card making room.

If you give our girls a choice of service opportunities, they’ll generally choose the creative ones if they exist. So, after making cards, we moved on to making bookmarks for Operation Christmas Child.

While Jen and the girls may excel at drawing, coloring, cutting, and the like, I do not share that talent. I mostly let them make these sorts of things, but I did contribute a single bookmark. Rather than putting a simple ribbon bow on it like the others, I gave it some curly hair.

It was a great day of service. Thanks to all who helped organize and put it on.

Hoodies are all the rage in our house right now. After I made Chad's new hoodie, Leah requested one too. Though for this "dresses and skirts only" girl, it couldn't be just a regular hoodie. So, I made her a Hangout Hoodie dress. Leah picked the fabric and was so excited to wear her new dress to school on Friday.

She was also kind enough to model a few Blue Ribbon dresses recently. The first dress was a birthday gift for Leah's friend, Matilda.

It's a perfect dress for spinning!

She had to show off the back.

You can't have a photo shoot without at least one silly shot.

And maybe a scary one too!

A week later, I made the same style dress for Emmie's birthday. Leah was again willing to model.

Happy 6th birthday to you, Emmie and Matilda!

I won’t spend time on how crazy it was for Jen to get home from her trip, since she’s already talked about that. However, after she did get back (and got a little sleep), Leah had something to show her.

While Jen was away, Leah built her new Lego Dolphin Cruiser. Leah wanted to surprise Jen with it, so we covered it with a blanket until she could reveal it. After a busy day, she finally found time to do just that.

Leah had to show Jen all the details. Note that the upper deck is even removable to allow access to the main level.

Here’s Leah with her complete ship (and jet ski towing a skier). It took her 3 days to build the 612 piece craft.

Note that maintenance is sometimes required.

And Leah wasn’t the only one with a surprise. Jen surprised the girls with a king cake from Nonna Randazzo’s. They knew she had an edible surprise, and kept guessing what it might be throughout the weekend. Once they finally found out what it was, they were not disappointed.

While Jen was out of town, the girls and I headed to the local bowling alley for some cosmic bowling fun. Molly’s pretty good now. With a bit more practice, she won’t even need the bumpers.

Leah started out bowling granny style, but had trouble getting much speed on the ball. Twice we had to get someone to retrieve her ball that had stopped midway down. Shortly thereafter, I had two independent strangers come up and suggest she try a bowling ramp. So, an employee brought one out for her to try. She loved it. I thought it felt like cheating, but if she loves it then I’m not going to take it away.

She got quite a few strikes once she had the help of the ramp.

The girls had lots of fun. We bowled 3 complete games each over the course of 2 hours, and they might have gone for even longer if I had let them.