I took Maggie to get a new library card on Saturday.

She was thrilled and ended up checking out six books – three books for herself, two to read to Annie, and one for me to read to her at bedtime.

It was a very successful trip.

For your viewing pleasure, here is Maggie reciting her February poem. She does all her own choreography – and does it well.

“I sewed this amazing reading pillow with a little help from my mom. The dots are super fun. They keep me busy and are super duper soft. And I love the llamas on it.”

Here’s Luke’s new (and improved) 4th grade photo.

Maggie’s teacher has a grown-up daughter named Margaret. So it took the teacher a few weeks to get used to calling Maggie “Maggie” and not Margaret. Right around the time she got the hang of it, Maggie decided she really wanted to be called Margaret at school (I told her that probably wasn’t going to happen at home).

She’s been going back and forth between Margaret and Maggie and told her teacher either name is okay with her. So when it was time for cursive practice, Maggie’s worksheet had Maggie AND Margaret on it.

Maggie told me that the lowercase cursive “r” makes her think of a dress with only one sleeve. Handwriting – but make it fashion.

Lately though, she’s been signing all of her papers “Mags.”

She’s also been making her Ms into mountains because they’ve been studying landforms. I’m not sure what will be next – Margaret has a lot of nickname options.

Luke’s had some pretty involved science experiments to tackle during his at home learning days. My mom helped him with the first one and Dave was in charge of the last two. Today’s involved some marbles and a paper rollercoaster.

It’s been snowing pretty much nonstop here today. It’s like we’re living inside a snow globe. This incredibly cinematic footage is of our picnic table on our back deck.

Yesterday, Luke and I ran a few errands and he was super impressed by the “giant” snow banks we saw.

Maggie is easily our biggest winter weather lover. She is constantly asking to play outside.

The other night the deer were hanging out in our backyard. I didn’t get a picture of all of them, but we counted seven.

My mom adopted Harris after one of her students found the cat outside and in rough shape. The girl’s other pets didn’t get along with Harris (who they were calling Pancake). If they couldn’t find a home for the cat, they were going to have to take her to a shelter. The student convinced my mom that she should take Harris in. Luke immediately fell in love with Harris. He would call my mom to check in on her and always went to find Harris first, whenever we visited.

So about a year before we actually moved back to New York, my mom and Luke struck up a deal. After we were settled in our new house, Harris would come live with us and be Luke’s cat. Luke is an amazing pet owner. He never complains about cleaning up after her or having to feed her. Because of her time as a stray, if Harris gets all of her food for the day at once, she gobbles it up and gets sick. So Harris gets fed four times a day (she came with an automatic feeder that Luke can set up on days he’s in school or if we’re going to miss a feeding).

He wanted to use all of his Christmas money to buy her a new bed. She had two already, and I convinced him we could just relocate one of the ones she already had. Not to mention half of the time we find her sleeping in ridiculous not-cat-bed places. We got her a new brush instead.

In that last picture Luke told me he was trying to read Harris’s mind. I told him she was probably thinking how much she loves you. Luke said, “That’s funny, I was thinking the same thing.”

Harris really hit the jackpot with Luke.

Maggie and Luke wanted to make valentines for their classmates. They came up with fun ideas and we placed an order for supplies online. Everything was going according to plan, until our order got stuck in New Jersey, thanks to all the snow they got.

The kids’ school asked that all valentines be in by today, in order to quarantine them prior to their parties. So we couldn’t wait and the kids both had to come up with Plan Bs. They handled it like champs and decided to go with some favorites from years past – a new school means they can get away with repeating ideas.

Luke decided to go with mini foam fingers and smarties.

While Maggie opted for googly eye rings and candy.

Annie helped by taste testing the candies. She wasn’t a fan of the smarties, but everything else got a thumbs up from her.

Maggie had fun coloring all the monsters and picking out what color ring each friend would get. She has been really into homophones lately and was super excited with the “eye/I” wordplay she came up with.

Overall, Maggie and Luke were pretty happy with how their valentines turned out. Our missing package did show up and so we’re all set with their ideas for next year already too.

Luke brought this masterpiece home from school today.

He worked on it during his past couple of art classes.

I think he did a fantastic job and it’s one of the cutest art projects I’ve seen. I sort of want him to make me a whole little family of snowpeople.