Winter Break is Fun!

My new haircut

I was a little worried about school ending for winter break. I was sure I was going to miss my teachers and friends. And what would I do all day? Well, I shouldn't have worried. We have had an amazing break so far!

As school was ending, I was having a little trouble focusing and listening. So, Mom and Dad decided to help provide me with some positive incentives. They made star charts for Hazel and me, where we can earn stars for good things that we do, like being nice to each other and Mom and Dad, cleaning our toys, putting on our seat belts in the car without being asked, and even bonus categories. When we get enough stars, we get prizes. Hazel and I are really excited about the stars, and it has definitely encouraged us to behave better. 

Hazel said she has duck feet

Winter break started off with Mom taking me to get a hair cut. I look pretty sharp with my new 'do. More importantly, I was really good while I was getting my haircut (I earned a star for that). One funny thing that happened while I was getting my hair cut was the barber wished me a Merry Christmas. I said Happy Chanukah to him right back. Mom and Dad thought it was sweet and very funny.

We've had lots of time during winter break to play with all of our toys that we got during Chanukah. We've been playing the new board games we got a lot. Hello Kitty, Feed the Woozle, Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel, and Bunny Hop are pretty popular with us right now.

 On Christmas Eve, we went to our synagogue for a Chinese food and game night. Hazel, Turner, and I weren't crazy about the Chinese food, but Mom brought along all of our games, so we got to play them all night. That, plus delicious rice krispie treats, made it a really fun night.

Yup - 300 pieces

When I'm not playing games, I've been continuing to work on puzzles. I finished a 300 piece puzzle with Mom and Dad's help.

Dad and Hazel dress up for
the warm weather.  That's
a little ridiculous Dad!

We've also been enjoying Christmas lights. Last weekend, we went to 37th Street, which is the best street in Austin for Christmas lights. They even had a stuffed animal petting zoo. We loved looking at all of the pretty lights, but our favorite part was the house with the trampoline that we could jump on. Turner liked that a lot. Dad was pretty surprised that the neighbors were so nice to have a trampoline and light show at their house. Later, on Christmas night, we walked around our neighborhood to look at lights. A cold front had just come in, so we had to dress really warm. Mom thought Dad dressed a little too warmly!

One of the things I've been very helpful with is cleaning. That's nothing new - I've always been really into cleaning. But lately I've had a renewed interest in cooking. Hazel and I made lemon cookies with Mom the other day. It was really fun. Mom was impressed at how good I did at rolling out the dough and making cookies of different shapes. We had dinosaurs, bunnies, and sharks.

I also helped Mom make creme brulee french toast casserole and chicken black bean tacos.

Since I've been so into cooking, Mom gave me a kids cookbook for one of my star prizes. When she gave it to me, I grabbed it and immediately ran up to my room to read it. Mom thought that was pretty funny. Last night we made "hidden hotdogs" from one of the recipes. Mom called them cows in a blanket. They came out great and we all had them for dinner. I can't wait to cook more things from my new cook-book.

Raise your hand if you like ice cream!

Dad's been home a lot from work over winter break, and it's been really nice having him around. He's taken us to the park a bunch of times, where we've pretending to cook using our beach toys and the park's gravel. We are very good at pretending.

Yesterday, Dad had the day off work so we drove to Brenham, TX, to go on a tour of the Blue Bell Ice Cream Factory. Dad has been wanting to do this with us for a while, but they only do tours Monday through Friday, which is when Dad usually works. So, winter break gave us the chance to all go see how they make ice cream. We were pretty good on the hour and a half drive down there. I helped Dad with directions and the speed limit, while Hazel played games on her iPod. It was a rainy, drizzly day, so it was a great day for a road trip. Hazel said it was soggy.

We got to Brenham just around lunch time, but we were too excited to eat lunch, so we went straight into the Blue Bell factory for the tour. The tour was pretty fun. We got to see how they move all of the ingredients from boxes into the big mixing machines. The Blue Bell factory uses milk from 60,000 cows every single day! Then we got to watch them actually making the ice cream. It came out of big tubes into containers, and there were people loading up the containers so they could be sent on to grocery stores. We even got to see them adding the Oreos for cookies and cream ice cream.

Let's see if Hazel can figure out what
I want here...

YESSS!!

We were all very patient through the tour, and were rewarding at the end with tons and tons of ice cream. They had 32 different flavors for us to try. Hazel and I started off with strawberry, finished that and got mint chocolate chip. We shared with each other, Turner, and Mom and Dad too.

Too full for more ice cream?

No way -   Pretty soon we were
ready for more.

After we finished, I felt pretty full. I told Mom I was all "ice creamed out." But before too long, Hazel and I were going back up to get more ice cream - samples this time. We ate way too much ice cream, but it sure was fun. Hazel said we should go on a tour of the ice cream factory every day.

Winter break has been awesome so far, and it should be even better next week. We can't wait to see what we're doing for New Years!

Here are pictures from our winter break so far.