Spring, Slowly

 It's nice that the boys are finally able to play outside again!  These pictures are from Thursday (and they even got to play on the playground at school that day!)  They especially enjoyed trying to melt the remaining ice with buckets of hot water.  :)  We had another partially warm-ish day today, so even more of the snow and ice is gone.  (Mud?  We've still got plenty of that.)

Stanley had his first appointment with a new vet today.  We wanted to go in because we were concerned that he's not hearing very well.  Turns out there's not a hearing test for dogs.  The vet didn't see anything that seemed to be a problem, but Stanley didn't make it easy for her to look.  So, maybe just his age catching up with him.  (They also did some blood work, and they had to try three times to get the blood, poor little guy!  We now have a sedative prescription for next time they have to do that.)

I finally downloaded Minecraft for the boys today.  (It's a game that's apparently quite addictive, but also allows for a lot of creativity.)  We'll see how that goes! They were quite cooperative with writing in their spring journals, reading their books, and helping clean up in order to "earn" a new game!

James has been picking up books to read them to himself, which is great to see.  And Matthew did really well with his reading today, too.  
Mattie is especially excited about mystery stories these days (he is always thinking about why people do what they do), and they both liked Encyclopedia Brown. James especially likes funny or silly stories.