More Fun with Grandma

Grandma

As always, the boys were very happy to see Grandma today! (And Grandma was happy that it was slightly warmer here than the 18 degrees at Cousin Daniel's!)

Joy of Discovery

So when the boys were playing with their Scooby dominoes  last night, we realized that they'd never seen dominoes lined up for a chain reaction fall-down.  :)  They were appropriately delighted to see it!

Jamesie read his first book by himself today (a Scooby "sight words" book, Carnival Mystery.  Mike helped him with the words "magic" and "another.")  Go, James!  We're pretty impressed!  (We're not that impressed with those particular Scooby books, though -- it's a set designed to be simple and repetitive to help kids learn a few words at a time, but some of them don't even resolve the mystery at the end.  Come on, people, it's not that hard to keep a simple plot!)

Who Needs Paper?

James would rather paint his hand!

SS Matthew

When we went into the grocery store the other night, Matthew announced, "I hope they have examples!"  (We soon figured out he meant the free samples!)

Mattie and James made paper boats, paper planes, and paper rockets with Daddy today.  Matthew cheerfully agreed to take a picture with his boat; James didn't want to pick up his, but gleefully jumped in front of Matthew as soon as I went to take the picture!

Jamesie can read simple sentences now.  When he's playing with his letters, he's also quite taken with the "silent E" (featured in one of his videos), and occasionally will add a "silent E" to the beginning or middle of a word just for fun.  :)

Back

I've been away on a work trip for a few days, and Mike was also away yesterday and today for a trip to see friends -- so the boys got a special weekend with N! 

I missed the sprinkling of snow that we had on Thursday night/Friday -- by today it was nice enough for the boys to play outside without heavy coats. 

Apropos

James spelling "Run Fast."

Winter?

 It's a little crazy to be having 70 degree days in January, but we'll take it!  These pictures are from yesterday, but it's warm today, too.  We were out with the boys in the cul de sac, and all the neighbors were out and about, too. 

P.S.  Thanks to E for lending us the helmet!

Water Art

The boys love their watercolors -- but they don't care about making actual pictures with the paints, they just like creating different color water and seeing how the colors mix (and then dumping that water for fresh water, and repeating over and over again.) Ah, the transience of art!  :)

Still Here

Too many deadlines this week, so blog posting suffered!  :)

The boys have been enjoying the new Scooby Doo holiday video they got for Christmas (thanks, Grandma!), and the last couple of days they've been dressing up in their Scooby costumes.  Mattie is Scooby and James is Scrappy.  (I was surprised to hear this, because normally James insists on being the "big" or "Daddy" of whatever they're pretending to be, and for those of you who haven't seen Scooby in a while, Scrappy is a little dog.  But he's tough.)

You probably can't tell from the picture, but James is sporting half of a black eye (currently greenish).  Last Sunday he was leaping off the couch onto the beanbag, and Mattie leaned forward onto the beanbag at that moment, and they bonked heads.  Ouch!  (Also that day, he fell off the high part of the couch onto a toy school bus, and later managed to bump his head on the corner of the entertainment center.  Poor kid!!  With all that, I'm very glad he didn't concuss himself!)

Third Christmas

 The boys had another round of presents to open when we returned home, thanks to Grandma and Grandpa B. They were very excited about their gifts -- Matthew especially loved his Hot Wheels cars, and James was excited to get a new set of markers!  (In fact, he just wanted to go draw with markers rather than opening any more gifts.)  The boys liked their space shuttle, too, but I think Daddy was even more excited about it.  :)

Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa!

(Mattie was so cute today -- he asked if James wanted to play Hot Wheels with him, and said, "I have enough cars for everybody!")

A Few More

 ...photos from Florida. We're back home now!

Happy Zoo Year

Happy New Year!

A few days ago, we took the boys to the zoo. It's a nice little zoo (even though they didn't have any tigers, to Matthew's disappointment), but the boys enjoyed the playground area the most.