It's WARM!

Can you believe it? We had two weekend days of above 70 here - the first time that's happened in seven months.

SEVEN. months.

To celebrate, the girls and I went to the park right away. They were beside themselves with joy and kept asking where the snow was. They truly don't remember a time without snow.

Zahra was so excited to be in short sleeves. The girls kept gleefully chanting, "no mittens. no hat. no coat. no boots"

Also, to celebrate spring finally arriving, we got the girls their very own scooters. There are "big-kid" scooters (2-wheels) littered around the whole neighborhood, but the girls still need 3-wheels at this point. So, they got matching bright pink ones.

Truthfully, their favorite part about getting the scooters was helping moin put them together.

When he was done, Zahra kept asking him to take hers apart so she could put it together again.

Poor Moin is too tall for bending over like this - the girls need to learn how to ride their scooters quickly, which I don't doubt that they will.

Skills

The Syed kids have been working on a variety of skills these last few weeks.

First up, Quinn had his first piano recital. At this point, he's been taking for about 8 months.

He did a great job, and wasn't nervous at all. I was!
You can see a video of the performance, here

A few more pictures from the big day
Quinn outside the Quaker church, where the recital took place

And sitting like a big kid waiting for the performances to start

The girls also went back to gymnastics class this week, after a few months off

Can you sense their energy? Gymnastics is a good place for these two spitfires to be!

Happy "Spring"

Happy "Spring" to one and all. Here in Minnesota, spring must be in quotations as it is snowing outside as I write this.

It's been a LONG winter.

The kids took part in the neighborhood easter egg hunt last week. There was snow on the ground, but many of the kids were in t-shirts!

The adults took advantage of the snow, though.

This was the girls' first year taking part in the egg hunt and they caught on right away.

The neighborhood egg hunt is very organized, and the kids are divided into groups by age. Quinn won the coveted "golden egg" for his age group, which was a very proud moment for him.

Todd sent me some more pictures from when he, Kelly, and the kids visited. This one of Todd with the girls makes me laugh - don't they look like they're about to cause lots of trouble!

In other news, we've decided to send Quinn to a new school next year. It's called Capitol Hill, and is a gifted and talented magnet run through the public school system. When Moin and I took the tour I asked Quinn if there was anything we should keep an eye out for. He said to be sure the school had books and maps, so I took pictures of each for him!

Some of the books in the 1st grade classroom

And a map from a 1st grade classroom, on which the ancestry of each child is marked with string

Quinn is excited to go there next year.

Finally, a few pictures of the girls being silly

They're sick of being stuck inside, but aren't we all. Real spring can't come soon enough!