Amber's hair is getting long. She likes to refer to herself as having Rapunzel hair, thank you Disney. I enjoy creating pretty hairdos, but she doesn't let me do it very often, so I was lucky to capture this fleeting moment.
Jared with his Ninja training center Lego creation. Much cooler close up, but he's too cute to leave out of the pic.
On a whim, Jared decided to build the London Bridge out of K'Nex. Any guesses as to what profession he is most likely to choose. By the way, I should be getting paid for all this name brand advertising.
A friend of ours was collecting blankets for birth mothers of adopted babies so we decided to make it a family service project to make a couple and donate them. Jared wanted to do a fleece tie blanket like the one his Aunt Michelle gave him years ago (in the background on the chair). He picked out the fleece and did it all by himself, including adding ties to the middle. I didn't get a picture of the one the girls made. They picked out some coordinating flannel and Clarissa sewed it together on the sewing machine. They both came out really good.
A friend taught me how to make these hair bows and a couple nights later, the girls and I made a bunch more. They enjoyed picking out the fabric and embellishments and even did some of the twisting.
Here's Krystal wearing one of the hairbows on a headband.
I have been working on printing many of our photos to decorate the house with. I got this collage frame on sale and couldn't wait to fill it with family pictures of famous or interesting places we have visited. It is hanging in our hallway.
This is a one-of-a-kind creation by Amber. She collected scrap wood from Chris's workshop and glued a broken necklace and beads to it. I love how she came up with this idea all by herself. What a budding artist, modern art, that is.
We decided to get away from the cold Virginia weather for a day and headed south to S. Carolina for a family trip to the temple in Columbia, to visit some friends, and for a field trip to the Congaree National Park.
Clarissa and Krystal can't contain their excitement about our boardwalk adventure.
Congaree is most known for being one of the largest old-growth flood plain forests in the U.S. It is full of trees like the tupelo and cypress that are flood tolerant. The cypress trees are among the largest in deciduous forests and their bases can be as wide as 6 feet. This tree shows the cypress "knees" that are part of the root system, but stick up out of the forest floor. It is not known if they are only acting as anchors or if they also function as snorkels for the tree.
This pictures shows how silly Chris can be, as well as how high the flooding can get, see the line of dark coloring on the trees in the background? That is how high the flood waters rise, about 6 feet or so from the ground.
The trees in the Congaree are deciduous, losing their leaves in the winter. Although the trees look mostly dead near the base, they are teeming with the life of spanish moss growing in the tops of the trees. 
This part of the forest reminded us of all the movies with swamps in them that we've seen like The Princess and the Frog or The Rescuers. We were glad that we chose to visit this swamp in the winter when the Skeeter Meter was at it's lowest. We enjoyed our visit so much that it prompted a unit study at home on the different types of forests and the life that lives in them.
