L-M-N-O-P

Letter L was a fun day, because it involved lots of time playing Legos.  I even went out on a limb and completed my first Lego set (the police vehicle below).  And I had to FIND all the pieces from the thousands of pieces scattered in the Lego room!  (Yes, we have a Lego room.)  

 We picked a few lemons off of our tree and made some lemonade.  It was "delicious"!

For the M&M's, they were supposed to sort them by color.  Savie did it for a little bit, and then she ate them all.  Weston was really into counting his M&M's.  He only ate ONE.  He didn't want any more than that.  
Surprisingly, Weston colored on this day, because it was Max from "Max & Ruby."  I haven't had much luck with getting him to color anything.

I guess milk tastes better with a straw under the table!

I thought they would enjoy playing with spaghetti noodles, but they really wanted to just eat them.  They just shoveled them into their mouths and put them on their nose.  

This was a good fine motor activity.  Weston did pretty well.  Maybe those little Legos are helping out with fine motor skills.

                                                                                  (We couldn't do letter O without Oreos!)

Weston also colored the orc picture.  I guess it just has to be something he really likes.  

Weston has a stuffed pig that he carries around.  He is really into pigs right now.  So pigs was perfect for letter P.  The pigs in the "mud" (brown paint) was probably his favorite activity so far.  He was calling the little plastic pig "evil Dr. Porkchop" (from "Toy Story" movie).  

Look at the pure joy on his face!

Piggy pancakes and popcorn were perfect too.  

character building

Nathan's basketball team didn't have much luck this season, as far as being able to win games.  They played 10 games and lost them all.  But they played hard, never gave up, and built a lot of character.  Nathan had a good coach and some good buddies on his team too, so he still enjoyed playing.  Not winning any games was particularly hard on his competitive nature though.  

Better luck next year!

Nathan, although not really one of the tall ones, ended up playing high post or forward most of the season.  He ended up guarding some boys that were quite a bit taller than him, but did well at it.  He still has a pretty shot too.  I was only able to catch one shot and a couple free throws on video.   

H-I-J-K

Letter H is a little sparse, because we spent most of the time playing hide and seek.  

Letter I igloos, ice cream game, and I-Spy books - Weston was really into the books.

This catch-the-balloon-in-the-cone was a nice idea, but a little hard.  It kept him entertained for a little bit.  Eating ice cream was the highlight - letter I is the best letter ever!

In this match game, he wasn't really recognizing letters, but it was good for working on colors.  I made the scoops all different colors.    

Dinosaur excavation from ice - took too long for his attention span, but fun once the dinos were out of the ice.

Not too bad on the counting... although he was taking 2 at a time.  :) 

Weston liked playing with the jello jigglers, but he wouldn't eat them.  

"Delicious!"

We made king crowns, but Weston refused to wear it.  He insisted on being a knight.  (At least that starts with letter K too.)

haircuts for Weston and Owen - finally

Cub Scout Blue & Gold

This year's theme for the blue & gold dinner was superheroes, so this was the cake I came up with for the cake contest.  

with the cake topper super heroes... pictures of the boys from previous Halloweens.

(The frosting had melted by the time I got there.  Why??)

twinkle, twinkle little star

I helped a couple of other ladies do a baby shower in February.  I did the invites (the top is shown below), the diaper cake, and sugar cookies.  It was a nice evening!

You're a great catch... and I've got my eye on you!

We made origami fish valentines for Jared's class, which turned out cute.  We printed off some paper airplane valentines for Nathan's class.  Owen did a similar version of last year's one-eyed monsters, except this year it was minions.  

Jared and I had a good laugh attempting to follow some of the on-line origami instructions.  We tried to put together some flowers for the teachers, but we couldn't get any of them to look good.  I wish I had taken a picture of the flower bouquet mush...  We resorted to origami pocket hearts, with a mini chocolate bar in them.  I forgot to take a picture of those.  

Just hanging out with a couple of my little valentines...

Owen's first jog-a-thon

Owen participated in the school jog-a-thon in February.  He did 19 mini laps in 30 minutes.  Good job Owen!  

Nathan also ran later in the day, but unfortunately I didn't get to see him because Jared was sick that day.  Alex stayed home with the kids during Owen's running, but then had to go to work.  Nathan ran 31 laps - the second highest in the 5th grade, with the winner running 32.  Poor Jared was really looking forward to running, but woke up sick to his stomach.  

Jared and Nathan have both been doing a "marathon mile" running club at school during lunchtime.  The idea is to run 1 mile on Wednesday and Thursdays during lunch until they all finally do the 26th mile at the high school track.  I think it's designed where they can complete the "marathon" by doing 2 miles per week for 13 weeks.  They can do more though if they want to (but everyone will run one mile together at the completion.)  Jared has really gone the extra mile, literally... :)   He has been doing sometimes 3 miles each time.  He has completed 6.5 cards, with each card representing 5 miles.  So Jared has already done 32.5 miles, and I think there's about 7 weeks left.  Jared completes more like 5 miles per week.  

I have been proud of all of them.  Nathan, Jared, and Owen are still getting up in the morning 2-3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday to run 1 to 1.5 miles.  They were complaining about it for a while, but lately have been less resistant.  There were a couple of mornings recently where Nathan took off and I couldn't ever catch up to him.  He's getting fast!

D-E-F-G

Dino popper, dog, dirt, dough, ducks, dump truck, dwarf

Weston likes to watch "Max and Ruby" - he picked up the phrase, "Delicious!" from Max.  (This week he said, "Delicious!" after taking the sacrament bread.)  Funny kid.

I love his little laugh here.  I could keep watching it over and over.

egg hunt, eyes (and faces), pretzel E's

I can see a bit of perfectionism here...

We needed to actually go see real elephants (and giraffes) - especially since elephants are MY favorite zoo animal.

fox, firetruck (puzzle), fly (chase the fly game). finger painting (and with a brush), fishing

"I caught a bath toy!"

french fries and hamburger for lunch

giraffe, Gobblet game, grapes (painting with milk lid)

grilled cheese for lunch

Jared got out his guitar for a little bit.

Jim's January visit

We enjoyed a quick visit from Jim one weekend in January.  I think Jim has been here to visit us about 4 times, and 3 have been in January.  We'll start planning on Jim's January visit every year.  :)  We didn't do much, besides hanging out at the beach, playing games, and eating out for lunch.  

The highlight for the boys (and maybe for Jim) was learning how to play Global Mogul, a finance game.  I have only played it once so far, and it was pretty complicated.  I need to play it a few more times to figure it out.  But the boys had fun with it.  

Owen also made Jim play Sum Swamp... they actually had fun with that game too.  

We had another beach outing the morning that Jim left.  Owen was so sad that Jim was leaving.  A picture with Uncle Jim was a little bit of a consolation for Owen.  

Looking forward to Jim's next January visit!