The kids are 8 and 9

It was recently an important holiday: Aviva's birthday. She's been talking about it for months, and then the last two weeks has been discussion of exactly how many more days until she'll be 8. The night before, she said good night to 7-year-old Aviva. We were collecting mailed packages from family members (there are actually 7 there, and three more have come in the mail since then): 

On Monday, her actual birthday, we went to Strawberry Creek Park and played in the water, in the grass, and on the swings and then we brought a pizza to eat at Indian Rock. Noah made a path up to the top by rock climbing and weaseling around, and then he guided each of us up, being a very encouraging coach. At some point, Noah got reprimanded for something, and he tried to get out of it by reminding us it was supposed to be Aviva's birthday, a special day. The whole day was a good day for Aviva, and she said a few times that she didn't want the day to end.

She has been doing a lot of drawing and making cards for people. She gets into cranky moods where she's yelling and mean, and then she goes to do some coloring on her own. It calms her to draw hearts and frilly curlicues and smiling hearts. It's funny to see her go from angry to loving so quickly; I'll get love notes from her 20 minutes after we have a loud disagreement.

Aviva has also been punching the air and making invisible explosions. "Pow!!!! Pow pow pow!!!!!!" and "Bam!!!!" 

I saw a note she wrote to a teacher telling him that her birthday is "januwawe 17"

She lost a front tooth:

She loves her new room and she's been decorating: 

Aviva loves drawing for other people, but once in a while there's something for herself

Both kids have been skiing. Noah's on a ski team that meets every week. Aviva hasn't been going every single week but she does like to go also, and ski with Josh. We've been going to Truckee, north Lake Tahoe, which is about 3 hours from here. 

They are also both playing soccer once a week and they like that a lot.

Noah has been interested in warping photos with phones, using different programs. He made a whole slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-aLeXtYh4R-PgS9qjZEWx7rwWDTQNb4tBQKOwCW__SE/edit?usp=sharing

Here are a couple. 

Weird Noah

A couple weeks ago Noah and Josh had covid. For a few nights, Aviva and I stayed at a hotel, and after that we kept our distance, and we didn't get it. Noah took two weeks off school but now they're both back and their school tests them twice a week. 

One last picture from Hanukkah:

We went to a ninja gym, which is kind of like gymnastics and an obstacle course with different physical feats. They both really liked it. I think it's kind of like parkour but inside (?)

We out