Thanksgiving at the Uhlenkott's

We had this year's Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Robin and Uncle Dan's house, with cousin Tierney and Grannie and Papa Woodruff. There was lots of traditional foods, followed with pies in the evening.

Turkey Cookies

The kids spent Thanksgiving morning decorating the annual turkey cookies.

Back to Remote

Unfortunately, the virus numbers got to the point that the Longview schools are going back to distance learning ... sad news for Bridget and Tor who enjoyed getting out and away from the computer, but nothing new for Jillian who has been in remote the whole time.

Here's Bridget working hard on proper finger placement for her 1-minute typing test -- she scored 14 wpm!

Jillian seems to finish by noon every day. Here she is in Orchestra class.

Torion had show-and-tell during his morning Zoom meeting -- he showed off his Jack Sparrow standee.

Projects

Jillian, Bridget, and Tor came Friday after school to finally see some sun . It was fun to go to their tree forts again. Then Saturday morning the twins visited. Of course, they first paired up with two working on their rock fashion dolls and the other two downstairs playing cards.

After pairing up for awhile, they soon all got working on the rock people, except this time they didn't use tiny rocks-the were big! They are now waiting in a box for the twins to return to finish dressing them.

They did take a rock break to make some turkeys out of the leaves that Bridget collected last week so they could be dried. They turned out cute!

Later, Bridget got to have her second sewing lesson. Here she is cutting out the material to make a pencil holder.

She is learning on the sewing machine too and she did finish her project which turned out nicely.

While the girls are doing their dolls, Tor keeps busy petting Bella, his adopted dog. Bella comes down specifically to see Tor and Tor obliges by giving her a lot of attention. They all ended their stay by watching the Huskies whallop Arizona! 

 

Braces

Jillian got her braces put on today!

She went with Mommy to Draper Orthodontic in Woodland for her morning appointment. Here's how it went, in Sweetie Pie's own words:

First they took impressions of my teeth (I didn't gag!). Then they started drying out my mouth so they could put on brackets, and for the next hour and a half I laid down with my mouth jacked open while they put on the brackets. Finally I had to pick my color (I picked light blue) and get the wires put on. It was the longest two hours of my life!

Mommy said that Jillian did really well. She also received quite the "swag bag" full of stuff to take care of her teeth: special toothpaste, a normal toothbrush, a special toothbrush for braces, 3 packs of flossers with floss, a floss threader, and a mouthguard. It also included a t-shirt and water bottle.

In the evening, she struggled to eat her dinner, saying her teeth hurt. It took her a while to finish. But, she seems to be doing fine now. Just have to get through this first week.

Hidden Treasures

One of the kids' favorite activities at the beach is to visit Jack's Country Store to look for unusual items. Here they are in the toy section, but they'll wander all over. Tor even brought some of his own money to pick something - today, it was a small, yellow "water snake".

Rainy Days

It's a wet one here at the beach. Our day so far is college football games on TV, and card games under the kids' blanket fort.