First Class Scout

At the quarterly Court of Honor, Lukas was awarded the rank of First Class Scout. We already knew he was and is a first class kid!

Lukas and Noah were also recognized for their pop corn sales - the second highest sales in the troop. To all who bought and support Lukas and Noah, thank you!

Happy Birthday, Bob!

We continued our celebration back home after a delicious meal.  Although we had stuffed ourselves with sushi, tasty Chinese dishes and crab legs, nobody declined a tiny slice of birthday cake. Bob managed to blow out his five candles, one for each decade, in one breath, so he is still going strong! It was certainly a quite but heartfelt celebration as the most amazing husband and incredible Dad joined me on the right side.

Wrapping

Lukas and Noah happily wrapped Bob's gifts in preparation for the birthday celebration.

Noah is taking his job seriously :-)

Birthday dinner

We celebrated Bob's birthday a bit early to take advantage of our slow Sunday evening. Bob wanted to eat dinner at the Fuji Buffet. The only picture we took at the dinner was of Noah as he tackled his crab legs...  but we were all well satiated when we left to head back home.

Who says exercise doesn't pay off?

On Sunday afternoon, the temperature finally climbed into double digits again. We have three weeks to get in shape for our fun run in middle of March so it certainly seemed appropriate to take advantage of the 'balmy' weather and head out for a walk. The boys could think of many more interesting things to do than to walk with their parents but yielded to our request and off we went. We had not sooner turned the corner on our little street and we see someone wheeling a monster size TV to the curb. The boys eyes quickly brightened as they looked pleadingly at their dad ... and within minutes the three Severinghaus' guys were chatting casually with the TV owner. Yes, it was working, yes it was free, and yes the boys could have it! Their exercise walk quickly turned into a quest to wheel this large box around the corner on icy, snowy streets. It arrived safely back at the house, the only casualty one wheel that succumbed to one of the many potholes on our street.
We finally put the myth that exercise does not pay off to rest!

Taking it downstairs to the basement will almost certainly count as strength training :-)

Frosty Outside

When the windows look like this, there is no better place to be than under a soft cozy blanket.

Rhythm

Noah, despite being sick, is moving to the rhythm of the music, by moving his eye brows! He was able to move them with the beat of the Calypso music that played during our Valentine's Dinner cooked by Bob and then easily switched to a slower pace to match the classical music that followed..  Is this a marketable talent????

Fixer

One of our faithful IKEA folding chairs finally succumbed to the incessant use of it, while Mama was sewing. It may be an indication that Mama needs to cut down on the sweets shipped in lovely packages from MO....
Lukas happily set out to fix the chair, only to discover the freezing point of wood glue - somewhere around 10 degrees.. So now we are waiting for the glue to thaw.

Basketball

On Friday evening, we attended a Pistons game at the local sports arena. It was 'home school night' so we were given a tour of the Palace, hot dogs and sodas as well as Pistons Hats. It was the boys first professional basketball game and it was memorable as the Pistons won!

Robotics

The best kind of Saturday night - a robotics Saturday night, at least if you are Lukas or Noah. They are continuing their quest to design, build and program a robot that can handle the challenge at hand - bowling using a tennis ball for the ball and water bottles as pins. The work keeps on and 'weary' boys convinced their Mama they needed cookies to sustain themselves. I am off to take this vital support out of the oven and bring it downstairs - robotics takes a lot of energy.

Digging

For those who follow our blog, and know our boys, their affinity for digging is well documented and equally well known. Ever since they were little, they would dig either in sand, snow,  or even dirt.  Noah could always be counted on to dig a deep hole and disappear, and Lukas would continue to dig tunnels and more tunnels to connect the various holes.

This weekend, the boys headed outside for some vitamin D. The piles of snow are pretty tall, and rather dense, and it did not take long before they had planned out a new set of tunnels and holes. They have since spent hours digging, carving, shoring up and hollowing out the piles of snow in our front yard - wonder when they are tackling the ones in the back?

Noah invited Mama and Dad to come out and experience the serenity and peacefulness inside his snow tunnel cave, it is it really soothing and such a good stress reliever he told us. Has he stumbled on the latest in stress relief?

There are no snow days at Sill Academy

Since we do our work at the kitchen table, there is really no reason to stop the work because the snow piled up outside. We rather work through these cold, icy days and have some leeway once the sun comes out again and the temperatures allow us to go outside without spending 15 minutes getting dressed.
However, even Sill Academy can have shortened days and today was one of those, and the boys 'disappeared' to their shop programming and creating - Lukas was even inspired to do a bit of cleaning up in his electronics shop.

Proper learning position

Here is yet one more example of how different our two amazing sons are - each fully involved in his school work..

Amazing flakes

The wonders of snow flakes, each unique, yet formed from the same matter, much like us humans, each uniquely made in God's image. God's wonders never cease to amaze me. 

Breakfast

Everyone getting ready for the day- breakfast for Champions and an electronic device. I am guesing Noah is not reading the news....

What a difference a day make

Well, we thought we were going to escape most of the big storms this year.. but not so.. We do not need Punxsutawney Phil to tell us it is still winter and will remain so for a bit. February brought the 'big' one to us.