We're Alive!!!!!!!

Santa brought the kids a tent for Christmas so this is the tent set up and a little campfire we had.

In all my spare time I had made a bag for Haley and Brianna for thier birthdays...late of course ;)

Maddi very impatiently waiting for her valentines day party!

Kenni's VERY ORANGE birthday cake and him getting his tool box!

James and all his glory with his 4 medals for the Science Olympiad Competition.

The past few months in the Ozbirn Household have been very busy to say the least. The day care I work at has been super slow so they decided to close down permanently coming up in March. Since that decision was made the day care has been booming with business. The decision to still close has stayed the same but the kids just keep coming. The extra kids has granted me extra hours. Many extra hours. On top of working pretty much full time I have been taking a course in Early Childhood Education. I signed up for the course (for work purposes) before the decision was made to close. Since I had already signed up I decided to go ahead and take the course.Laura has had an ongoing science project she is doing for school. That has taken up a lot of our weekend time. James Jr has been in the Science Olympiad Program at school so we have been busy with his practices for the competition. He competed this past saturday and did an outstanding job! He was in 4 different categories of the competition, Pentathalon, Cool It, Reflection Relay, and Compounds Mixtures and Solids. In the Pentathalon there were 4 boys that had to go through a series of obstacles. They could only move forward after they answered a science question and got it right. The boys did not place in this category but they all did a great job. The next category he competed in was Cool It. James and his partner had to come up with a container that would insulate an ice cube for an hour and 45 minutes. The winner was the group that had the ice cube that melted the least. James and his partner were not eligible to place in this category becuase his coach was the judge. Their ice cube gave off 4.7 mm of water and the coach said the least she had seen before theirs was 5 mm so they did really well! Next was Reflection Relay. James and two other boys had to make the light from a flashlight bounce off of 3 mirrors in the least amount of time. They earned 2nd place in this category. Compunds, Mixtures, and Solids was a test that James and a partner had to take. They had to tell if the answer to each question was a compund, mixture, or solid. James was actually an alternate for this category. He wasn't going to go but a good 'ol Greg Huffman speech gave him the courage to go....even though he wasn't happy about it. James and his partner won 1st place!!!!!!!! Over all the whole Legacy Team won 1st place in the whole competition too! We often call James the World of Knowledge because he is always correcting us and just stating random facts. We do tease him alot but really we are so proud of him!!!!!!!!Kenni started Drama club in January. He originally wanted to be in it because the teacher of Drama club is his teacher from last year whom he absolutely adores. I'm not sure when the play is yet but he did get his script a couple of weeks ago. Kenni's role is one of the leading roles in the play! Kenni's 8th birthday was in February. He wanted a white cake dyed what else but ORANGE, white frosting dyed ORANGE, and oreo pudding in the middle. He wanted shrimp for dinner and thanks to Laurel he and the rest of us got his fill of shrimp. James Sr and Grandad thought it was time that Kenni got his very own tool box so that is what he got for his birthday. Kenni is James' little mechanic's assistant. James had a set of screw drivers he bought when he was 18 and he had been saving them to give to one of his children. Since Kenni is always right there whenever James is working on something James thought they would be put to best use with Kenni. Maddi has been busy working with me at the day care. She loves being there and playing with her friends. She has even been taking naps there with the other kids which for those who know Maddi that is huge for her! She had her very 1st Valentine's party and she just had to wear a dress that day. She was up at the crack of dawn and rearing to get to that party!In the last couple of weeks we have had a lot doctor and hospital visits. James Sr has messed up his back quite bad and it turns out it's his sciatic nerve. He's VERY SLOWING getting somewhat better. He can now actually sit up for a short amount of time. James Jr pushed Kenni off an old dog house in our backyard they play on so that got us a visit to the ER. Everything was fine but he had us pretty scared. Maddi and I have had a terrible cold/cough for a while now so we've been to the dr a couple of times with that. We now have some antibiotics and will hopefully be over it soon! My last day of work is March 9th so things should slow down a little bit here. Maybe then I will be able to do a better job at keeping my blog updated!