A few pictures....
Recently a climbing boulder was put in at one of our favorite neighborhood parks.  It was warm enough to give it a shot, so Jbird, JB and I set out.....
Of course Jbird scaled it in no time.  This gives you an idea of the size.  That is their new elementary school in the background.

JB was very scared to try it.  I always watch it when older brothers lovingly come behind him and encourage
him.  Jbird was telling him where to put his hands and feet.

 
And they both conquered!

• Over the Christmas break we had the privilege of taking care of the stick bugs from JB's preschool class.  Very interesting creatures.  I guess I was a little surprised to see how much they really looked like sticks.  There are probably 8 of them in the aquarium.  Every other day we would feed them a piece of lettuce.  There was a flood light that stayed on top of them and then we had to spritz them with water several times a day.  Pretty low key.  Well, one day I asked JB to give them a piece of lettuce.  Did not think anything of it.  About 5 minutes later Jbird happened to go upstairs (where the bugs were) and announced that the carpet was smoking.  Yes, when JB fed the bugs, instead of just lifting up a corner of the lid and dropping lettuce in, he took the flood light off and place it, bulb down, on the carpet.  It burned all the way down past the carpet pad.  Within probably 5 more minutes my guess the smoke alarms would be going off and we would have been calling 911.

At one point during their stay I was certain that we had killed several of them.  They would not move for long, very long periods of time.  They liked to hang upside on the top, like this little dude.


One more picture....just liked the colors and the mountains.  We have been 45 all week and very little snow predicted for the next week.  Really warm for January.