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When we pulled up from St. George, the boys begged to put on their snow clothes and played outside for a couple hours.

New week, back to cleaning, chores, workbook, etc.  The boys love it when we sweep and mop because they can play in chair mazes and chair caves.

While we were in St. George, Pace's cough and cold quickly developed one morning into writhing in pain and screaming and crying that his ear hurt.  We did an ER visit and got antibiotics for his ear infection.  When we got home, Max, who had the same cough and cold, did the exact same thing--started crying, holding his ear, and writhing in pain.  Thankfully the pharmacy over dispensed the antibiotic, and I divided up the bottles between the two boys.  This was when Max told me he needed the "Orange medicine like Pace" to feel better, and then fell asleep for a few hours.

So...finally checked some things off my to-do list:  

1. Hanging the boys' coat hooks (from Papa Jay).

2. Updating our measuring thing (transferring the boys' heights from a piece of cardboard to this) and hanging it at the correct height on the wall).  Oh--the new ornaments we have hanging on the Christmas Advent Calendar from Mom Mom are from a 25 Days of Christ Kit.  I found this kit online that comes with a book with scriptures about Christ's life and quotes from the LDS Church officials/Prophets.  You read one a day and paint an ornament.  We had this as one of our projects this Christmas, too.  Instead of reading our normal "scripture can" in the morning, we read one of these and decorated an ornament.  I'll give an honest review:  the ornaments held the boys' attention for 2-3 days only, but I made them sit and listen to the rest of the scriptures and quotes for our morning foundations.  I ended up doing all the ornament painting, and we didn't make it all the way through, so when I packed Christmas this week, I packed the kit with a handful of unpainted/unmade ornaments.  That just means we'll have one project ready to go for next peak, right?!  I loved the quotes and decided to go online and print out the full talks and am reading them this month.

3. Finally hanging framed photos on the walls (I'm hoping to get to book shelves in the next week or two, so I cleared the boxes of books out of the front room).

4. Creating updated nursery song packets.

Feeling better the next day, we hit Max's workbook.  He was working on the pre-writing exercises and was so excited that making "Criss-cross X's" were just like the X's in his name!  And then he said, "I have a A, too, and M.  But I not have a round-about in my name!"  He thought that was a pretty good joke.  (Max writes his name very well, now with the letters in order, side by side!  Just a few months ago he'd randomly write M, A, X all over the paper.)

He loved writing his G's--after the practice letters, I make 2-3 dots for him to connect and practice writing on his own.  He loved the lowercase g's (I'd tell him to make a little roundabout then scoop it up); he kept asking me to "Do More!"