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Molly’s school had a Bingo night for both kids and adults to participate in. Here’s a lineup of six first grade girls, and Leah at the end. They're all paying close attention to make sure they don't miss a number.

There were lots of people at the Bingo night. In fact, there were so many that they had to hold it at a nearby high school instead of Molly's school as we needed more space. There was also a duck, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to learn more about that.

We have a winner! OK, she didn’t get Bingo. But, in between the Bingo cards they had raffle prizes, and Molly won a Target gift card. She was so excited she couldn’t stay on the ground, or stay still enough to be captured by a camera.

She’s still running around in excitement from the raffle win. She'd better zoom back to the table before they start the next round of Bingo.

Jen got Bingo! Unfortunately, so did two other people. In the Bingo-off, she sadly came up short of winning the scooter.

Who would have thought Bingo night would be such an emotional roller coaster?

We were given a break from our extremely cold winter this weekend. Sunday it got up to the upper 50s, and Molly wasn’t about to let that go to waste. She finally got to ride her new scooter outside. Just ignore the remnants of snow on the grass and salt on the sidewalk.

Jen and Molly also took advantage of the warm weather to wash Jen’s car. Since it lives in the garage (mine does not), it doesn’t even get rinsed off when there’s rain, so it’s been covered in salt and disgusting from the winter. But now it shiny clean.

Who knew washing a car was such fun?

Yes, Molly’s wearing shiny silver shoes and a skirt to scrub the tires. What else would you wear?

Working so hard her tongue can’t stay in her mouth.

Warm winter weather cannot last long. We ended the day under a Winter Storm Warning, and were told to expect 3-6 inches of snow the next morning. The snow never actually happened, but we were back into the 20s by the end of the next day.

Leah is finally old enough to join the Cherub Choir at church, which means Molly and Leah get to be in choir together until next year when Molly moves up. Today was their first time singing together, and they did great. Leah was a great singer and did great staying focused on what she was supposed to be doing.

Here's the whole performance, including two very well sung songs. I think this is the best they've ever done. Must be Leah's influence.

OK, Leah might have briefly acted a bit crazy once or twice.

Tuesday we were hit hard by Winter Storm Janus. It was a teacher work day, so Molly already had no school. She planned to go over to a nearby friend’s house to play. Little did we know she and Jen would be walking through so much falling snow.

A few hours later I walked down to walk Molly home. We decided to walk back through the back yards (that’s our porch down on the right). The snow had gotten up to 5 or 6 inches at this point.

I chose to walk on the relatively flat ground, but Molly instead chose to walk along the top of the hill. This meant that when she got to our house, she got to run down the hill through the snow. What could be more fun?

The snow kept falling into the night, which meant the following day was the fourth day off school due to snow in this school year. First task - make a snow angel. Looks like we got a lot of snow this time.

Leah made a snowman ruler at school to measure the snow. Looks like we got 8 inches, which is conveniently the maximum length this ruler can measure.

Then it was time for some sledding. For some odd reason, Leah decided she was scared of sledding (despite having done it many times before). She did sled down twice with me, and admitted that it was really fun and only a little bit scary, but still refused to sled any more. Molly, on the other hand, was happy to sled over and over again.

Later that day, Molly headed back out to sled with some other kids while Leah was sleeping. She was happy to find her friend Ariana to play with.

There were lots of other kids there as well. This is the back yard a few houses down from us.

Despite not looking very fancy, these sleds can really move.

She’s moving too fast for my camera here as she starts to stop at the bottom of the hill.

Unfortunately the fun had to end. Thursday sent Molly and Leah back to school (though after a 2 hour delay), which meant no more playing in the snow. The snow's not going anywhere right now, though, as it's been incredibly cold with temperatures starting the day around 5° and rarely getting above 15°. We're forecasted for a bit more snow tomorrow, so there may be more fun winter play to come.

It’s much warmer today, but it’s been raining all day. I figure that means it’s a good day to stay inside, but Molly had other ideas. Time to play in the rain. When playing in the rain, don’t forget the importance of getting a taste.

Playing in the rain wouldn’t be complete without jumping in puddles (or in this case, the stream of water running down the hill). She's ready to lift off.

Nice jump, Molly. Always important to bend the knees on the landing.

There wasn’t enough splash on the first jump. This is much better.

When the water’s really flowing, there’s no need to jump. Just stand there and let the water rush over your feet.

She stayed out for quite a while and had a great time. By the time she came back in, she was pretty soaked.

After a quiet New Year, Molly headed back to school on Thursday January 2nd for a short two day week. That short week was cut in half when it snowed all Thursday afternoon and night, giving her a snow day on Friday. The girls were excited to get out and play in it.

This is the first snow day since Jen got the girls some snow pants. They were very excited to be able to play in the snow and not have soaking wet pants within minutes. Here they are ready for some fun.

I didn’t get to play in the snow since this was a work day, but Jen went with them. Unlike the girls, she does not have any fancy snow pants. So, one of the little boys (Zane) down the street asked her:

Zane: "Are you wearing jeans?"
Jen: "Yes."
Zane: "Why aren't you wearing snow pants?"
Jen: "Because I don't have any yet."
Zane: Looks confused.

I guess Jen and I need some snow pants.

I peeked out the window a bit later to see how they were doing, and found them on their way home from a few doors down after some fun sledding and playing with other kids.

The next day, after a morning of ballet, Molly was eager to get out in the snow again. Leah went down for a nap, and Molly wandered to a friend’s house to see if she wanted to play. She wasn’t able to, but Molly was undeterred and joined in with some other kids a few doors down.

She stayed out playing in the snow for several hours. There were a couple girls early on, but by the end it was just Molly and 5 boys. It was the first time we’ve let her sled without one of us around (though we peeked our head out the back door every few minutes). She did great, though, and kept going until she had completely turned into an icicle.

Three snow days off school already. If things keep up like this, they're going to be in school until July. In the mean time, the girls have been making the most of all the snow in our very hilly neighborhood.

Today, Molly's starting an art class after school. Molly loves art, and goes through paints, colored pencils, and crayons like they're going out of style. And Leah loves art as well.

So, after returning home from Birmingham with some brand new paints, the girls were ready to get to it. After a bit, Molly decided to paint a picture of Leah. So, Leah posed as the model for Molly to paint. She did a good job posing for a long tie while Molly painted her. After Molly was done, they reversed roles.

Merry Christmas one and all! We had a fun and exciting Christmas, including presents and family fun. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The girls waited patiently until the decided time to go downstairs (7:30), then promptly got us up. After a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday to Jesus, we found full stockings and presents to open.

Santa brought Molly some roller skates, and Leah a pogo stick (yes, that’s what she wanted) in addition to hats, headbands, scarfs, and more. After stockings, we opened some presents. Here’s Leah opening a huge number of princesses.

Jen always has project presents for people, but this year I joined in as well. I built the girls this dress-up closet for them to hang their dress-up clothes.

Here’s my project loaded with dresses, skirts, tutus, and fairy wings. They’ve also got crowns up on the top shelf, and shoes and other accoutrements in the bottom. The girls were fans.

After opening everything at our house, Molly tried out her roller skates in the front hall. They seem great!

You may have noticed a lot of matching attire between the girls and their dolls. Jen again made the girls and their dolls matching nightgowns for Christmas Eve.

After some breakfast at Grams’s house, we moved on to opening presents there. Leah was excited as soon as she saw the Disney logo on the box.

Aunt EA was very glad to get this lovely LSU robe from Uncle Scott. Of course, it would have looked better in orange and blue…

Pajamas were a popular gift this year.

Jen made Grammy a purse customized to her individual needs.

Here it is up close. It includes a cross-body long strap, and is Jen’s most structured creation yet.

Leah loves nightgowns.

Uncle Scott is quite tall, so most of his pajama pants look more like capris on him. So, we gave him some extra tall pajama pants to keep his ankles warm.

We gave Grams a lovely serving plate.

Aunt EA and Uncle Scott gave Grammy a card that sang Feliz Navidad. Molly is entertained, and Leah thinks it is hilarious.

Leah was happy to be Grammy’s opening helper.

Oooh, a serving plate for the Lanfords. I’m sensing a trend, here.

Aunt EA and Scott gave Grammy a photobook from their wedding, which she loved.

There was some traditional Christmas video game play.

Jen surprised the girls with these two corduroy dresses that she’d been making in secret. Leah’s included so many ruffles that she ends up twice as big around as normal. As usual, they were happy to pose with sweet simple smiles to model them.

Can’t keep these two apart.

It was then time to move onto Christmas dinner. The food and the company were great. As usual, we had Christmas crackers, which is where the crowns came from. Note that Caroline was indeed here, but she’s behind the camera.

Some of the Christmas crackers included paratroopers. The girls and Uncle Scott had fun with them on the stairs.

These girls love their aunts. Leah’s been captured, and can’t escape Aunt EA’s kiss.

After an action-packed day, we played some Heads Up!. Molly loved to be the one guessing. Thanks to Aunt Caroline for being her assistant.

Generally when Leah would give an answer, she would say it as if she was just guessing. “Ummm… elephants?”.

Christmas day was a great time of celebration. Sad that we have to wait an entire year for another celebration. What's that? We're immediately flying out to keep celebrating with more family? Well, that post will have to wait a day or two.

It's Christmas Eve. Celebrating with family, Santa, opening presents and more are all on the immediate horizon. Despite the excitement, Leah remains serene.

Here we are ready to head out to Christmas Eve service at church. Nice smile Molly.

Molly and her choir sang twice at the Christmas Eve service. This first song went well, other than the worship leader getting confused and asking us to stand at the beginning of the song. The second song did not go so well, with most of the kids getting distracted. So, I'll just give you the first performance.

Per tradition, the girls opened one gift from Grammy on Christmas Eve. They were both very excited about their new jammies. In fact, Leah was so excited about her jammies that she spent a large portion of her evening prayer thanking God for them.

The girls put out cookies, milk, and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. The girls insisted on 9 carrots, since there are 9 reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh according to the Rudolph song.

After they headed to bed, we were busy finishing up wrapping presents. I also had to set up my project that I'd built for them, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to hear about that.

In addition to her newer activities, Molly’s still taking and very much enjoying ballet. We were excited to go to her class’ visitors day to see what she’s learned.

They do a lot of barre work in the beginning.

We need a ballet dictionary (or at least this Wikipedia page) to understand all the movements she’s doing. I believe this is a Chassé.

Molly’s not the only one taking ballet. Leah still very much enjoys it. Her class does not use the French names for things, and instead opts for little-kid-friendly terms. Here’s her “mermaid stretch.”

Here she is galloping. They even get props to help them understand what to do.

And, of course, we got a lot of waves. Note that Leah is still walking on her toes most of the time. Ballet is the one place where she isn’t constantly told to walk on her flat feet :).