Here are all the pics from the second half of January.  Andrew was the mystery guest in Blaine’s class one day!

Sarah had been asking for weeks to get her own bank account, so we finally went one day.

We had a little bit of snow and finally managed to build a snow man, and have some post-snow hot cocoa.

We played with all our Christmas gifts…

… and monitored the progress of our paperwhites and the amaryllis.

Sarah made this robot in her classroom’s “box collage” area (and pointed out that it needed more tape).

One weekend we went to the AMNH to see the T-Rex exhibit again (this time with Andrew).  We also stopped to see this stuffed panda, a disgusting giant model of a mosquito, the blue whale, and the dinosaurs (of course).

Shake Shack was closed for renovation so we ended up at this nice restaurant nearby that was a big hit!

Sarah loves crispy cauliflower!

Another weekend we went to see Dog Man: The Musical!

Sarah has been bringing home reading books from school and is doing a great job with her snap words!

Blaine’s class worked on building towers that could hold up books, and then he built one at home for homework.

Here are all the photos from the first half of January.  We played with all our new Christmas presents, including this Sculpey clay from Gram and Grand-dad and two puzzles from Uncle Fran.

On Friday we planned a trip into the city to visit the newly reopened Museum of Modern Art.  We took the train in and followed Andrew’s detailed directions to go through all the secret underground passages out of Grand Central.

We had a plan for the museum and stuck with it!  First stop, Starry Night.  Second stop, Monet’s Water Lilies.

Third stop, lunch.  The museum cafe was great, a nice break from the art.  They even had kids meals of pizza or pasta, plus your choice of a cookie or fruit.

After lunch we checked out the kids art lab and got to play with light tables, make wire sculptures, as well as draw and make paper collages.

Then it was back to the art for our final two stops — Jackson Pollock (Sarah’s fave), and then the sculpture by Yayoi Kusama (who the kids had just learned about in school).

We also enjoyed this interactive sculpture/soundscape by David Tudor called Rainforest V.

And the kids watched the entirety of this video artwork by Nancy Holt, called Underscan.

Back at home with puzzle #2.  Thanks, Uncle Fran!

We finally said goodbye to our Christmas tree and packed away all the decorations and lights for another year.

We also planted these narcissus bulbs from Gram (below) and the amaryllis bulb we received from Aunt Jill and Uncle Jack!  Hopefully we’ll end up with some beautiful blooms to brighten these dark winter days.

On New Year’s Eve this year we invited a few friends over for an afternoon celebration complete with ball(oon) drop.

We’d aimed to celebrate alongside Dubai at 3pm ET, but we had a little mishap with the balloons coming down too early, so the photos above were actually from balloon drop #2 at about 3:20pm.  Blaine did enjoy seeing the fireworks going off from the Burj Khalifa livestreaming on youtube, though!

Blaine attempted to stay up until midnight that night, didn’t quite make it, and then was tired and grumpy for the next two days.  On New Year’s Day, Andrew made his traditional collard greens and black-eye pea ham hock soup to bring us good fortune in 2020!