Love and Snow

February has been a busy month around the Sowa household!  Corey and I have tried to continue our 2014 commitment to a date-night at least one time each month.  This is from our night at the Brett Dennen concert in Boulder this month:

The kids are growing up so fast!  Porter continues to wow us as his height continues to increase, but more, it's been so fun to watch him learn to read and write in his first year of kindergarten.  He is picking up sounds so quickly, and reads each night.  We love it when he reads books to his sister! Here is a cute little piece that he brought home about the month of December:

Since Porter has homework every night, Emma Rose has to busy herself with her own "homework," which usually consists of coloring, writing the few letters that she knows (E and i...), or pretending to teach the class.  Here she is pretending to teach her students - in her pink apron and pink pony tail:

Here is a picture Emma Rose brought home from her preschool Western Day:

This month has been filled with home projects as the kids have gotten Valentines ready for their classmates, a 100-days-of school project, and lots of volunteer baking hours for their charter school, but one of the most fun all-family project was preparing Porter's first pinewood derby car for AWANA. He wanted to make his into an angry bird:

I think my favorite part of this time with the kids is watching them play together.  More often than not, they play a "game" where Emma Rose makes up scenarios while the toys in action are Porter's trucks.  Funniest story - the other night they were playing "Corey and Reagan" with Porter's snow city lego set. Emma Rose announced to Porter, "Hey honey, my dog sled wrecked so I'm going to need you to give me a ride to book club right now so won't be late.  I have the wine all ready to go."

Of course we love skiing together as a family.  The kids are always so excited to get going in the morning, and Porter is always so cute, telling Emma Rose what a good job she is doing on the slopes:

Emma Rose enjoys the gondola at Breckenridge:

Sharing some hot chocolate at Keystone:

They're getting better at skiing (and sharing) all the time!  Here are a few videos of them skiing:

This was Emma Rose's first day skiing without the harness (or as she calls it, her "leash"):

(I love the last couple seconds of this one, where Emma Rose is singing, "My God is So Big!") People are always stopping and smiling at the songs she sings as she skis down.

And here's a little footage of Porter skiing:

We took BT up on Valentine's Day.  The kids were so impressed that their Papa knew how to ski - and that he could keep up.  What a fun day!

And only because we love him and he's so good to the kids, I had to include this picture of Duke.  We love you, crazy cat!