Visit to the Temple and COSI

We decided to take a trip to the Columbus temple in the middle of January. It's always tricky going to the temple with the kids, but we made it work. I did initiatories at 9 while Jeremy and the kids sat in the waiting room for a bit, went on a walk around the temple, and played in the church building next door. Then I came out and Jeremy drove us over to COSI (Center of Science and Industry). He dropped us off and then headed back to the temple for the 11:00 endwoment session. After he finished, he joined us at the museum for another couple hours and then we drove the 1.5 hrs home. It was a busy but great day!

With our Cincinnati Museum Center passes we also get into a lot of other museums around the country for free, including COSI, which is awesome because it's a lot bigger and nicer museum than ours! :) We're planning on going one more time in February before baby comes since it worked out so well with the temple swap. We'll switch the order next time though so I can do an endowment and Jeremy can have more time at the museum. :)

This was the gadgets section - definitely everyone's favorite. They had gears and robots and all sorts of fun things. I think we'll spend more time here next time!

 Back in time - 60s town.

 They had a lego exhibit where you could make a car and race it down a track. Obviously this was a hit.

 And the "under the sea" area. We didn't find this until the very end, so we'll have to check it out more next time too. It's a big museum!

First Snow!

We have had the most mild winter this year! It is crazy when we compare it to last year in Chicago, or even last year here. Every time we came to look for houses last January/February there was at least a foot of snow everywhere and very cold temperatures. This year, November and December were super warm without a single snow and January hasn't been all that colder. The kids have been disappointed because they love the snow!

Finally on January 10th, we got our first snow. Unfortunately, we only got an inch or two, but it's better than nothing! I keep thinking we're going to get a big storm sometime, but now we're into February and we still have never gotten more than that. The kids enjoyed playing in it anyway though and we've really enjoyed playing outside on the warm days too!

This was a few days later, when it warmed up and was mostly melting, but Connor and Anna still had fun with what was left.

 They were launching snowballs on to the trampoline, trying to get them all the way across.

Post-Christmas fun

The day after Christmas we busted out the puzzles! Eli, Anna, and Jeremy all got puzzles for Christmas so we all worked on them together. It was great! After Jeremy finished the one he got, we decided to start a crazy one he got before we were even married. We've always been afraid to do it, and for good reason. It is black and white and a picture mosaic so it was pretty much impossible. We spent WAY too much time on it, but we finally finished it! And then we glued it down because we are never ever doing it again!

We also got 5 games for Christmas this year, three of them kid games, so we spent a lot of time playing games together, which was really fun.

Here are all the finished puzzles! On the left is the crazy one, the portrait of Abe Lincoln. Wow, it was hard. And sadly, Eli got the United States one and it was missing some pieces! Alaska and Hawaii got left out. I need to contact the company and see if I can get them.

The week in between Christmas and New Years was spent playing some more! Jeremy didn't have to go in to work at all, he just had to do a few things at home, so we got super spoiled having him around. One day we decided to check out the Cincinnati Museum Center. There are 3 museums all in the same complex - History, Natural History & Science, and a Children's Museum. They were having a special over the break where you could get a year family membership for $99 so we decided to go for it. It also gets us in to lots of other Children's and Science Museums around the country, so it's pretty awesome.

This was at the History Museum. We didn't check out the Children's Museum this time because it looked super crowded, so we'll have to do that during a non-holiday time.

They had a big lego and train Christmas display at the History Museum so that was fun too.

And they had free train rides. Anna was the only one who wanted to do it. Cutie pie!

Then on the 30th we went up to West Lafayette to visit my parents and the Weavers. I didn't take any pictures sadly! But we had fun spending New Years with them. We stayed with my parents one night and with the Weavers the other two nights. The kids all had a great time playing together as usual!