February

This February post will mostly be photo updates.

The kids have been continuing their activities. Here are the girls' new gymnastics photos. Could they be any cuter and funnier?

I love how they are holding hands in the group photo.

And here are Quinn and Moin patiently waiting for them to be done, on the hard high school floor.

We finally got Quinn to wear goggles for swim class and it has resulted in a huge improvement in his swimming!

The girls went ice skating for the first time and did a fantastic job. We took them to the pond at the local rec center. The good part is that you can borrow skates there for free. The bad part is that they didn't have skates in Moin's size. Since I don't know how to skate, that meant that the girls went out on the ice alone. They were so brave and are on their way to being great skaters.

Here is some new artwork/schoolwork from the kids

Quinn's "I am the color of popcorn" portrait from school

And his venn diagram comparing two different types of polygons

This is a love poem he wrote me for Valentine's day. It says, "You are the marshmallows in my cocoa, you are the jewels in my necklace, you are the pepperoni in my pizza"

Here is Quinn while he was giving his presentation on his culture. I love this picture, because it is exactly what I would imagine Quinn giving a presentation would look like. Sorry, this post is making it very obvious that I don't know how to rotate photos in blogger.

Zahra is in the "community helper" small group in school, which has sort of morphed into the "firefighter" group. They got a visit from a real-life firefighter and fire truck last week. I didn't get any photos of that, but Zahra got sent home with a fire-safety workbook to complete.

Look closely at the tool/toy picture. Zahra still has some learning to do with that one!

Z also drew this wonderful picture of "Penelope as an adult"

Speaking of Penelope, her small group is the "Penguin" group this semester. To continue their learning, she and her group were able to go see the Penguins at Como Zoo, and Moin was able to chaperone.

She was very proud of this trip, and even prouder that she got to go with her dad by herself!

Also, here is Penelope posing "just like Anna in my fancy dress"

Whenever you ask Penelope who her favorite person is, she says "My cousin Anna"

And here is Zahra with her baby. After I took this photo, I asked her to smile for the next one. She said, "That is my smile"

Here is Quinn helping me at work - trying to operate the video equipment in the observation room.

And here he is making breakfast for Penelope, which he does most weekday mornings. She wakes up starving! She likes it when he makes her breakfast because he is quite liberal with the butter.

And you can see Quinn's latest piano tune, here

And finally, here are the pictures we got the kids to hang in their rooms for valentines day. Happy February everyone!