Adam's Birthday

Adam also had a birthday in March. It's really, really official. I no longer have a baby. (We sold all the baby stuff so this is it.) This is Adam enjoying the cold, hard cash from Grandma Beverly. He also got cash from Grandma and Grandpa Bagwell so we got to go shopping a few days later. I don't really remember what he bought. It's been over 3 months, but it may have involved some construction vehicles and Lightning McQueen.

Adam has some issues with opening presents. He wouldn't do it at Christmas, and he wouldn't do it on his birthday. Luckily he has a big brother who LOVES to open presents even if they are not his.

Imagine a whole backpack full of wooden blocks. I bought them right in front of him at the thrift store one day. Fortunately he was distracted by other things, huh? Don't think I'll ever pull that off again. He even took them to bed for ages. Now he builds race tracks out of them.

In honor of my monkey boy (well actually 2 monkey boys) we had some fun monkey cupcakes to celebrate.

Yes, some look a little alienish. (I had some help decorating.) I unfortunately tried a new frosting recipe that wasn't all that sticky, but they turned out pretty cute anyway.

Odyssey of the Mind

Last school year our school started participating in Odyssey of the Mind (similar to Destination Imagination I believe). Anyhoo... basically the kids get in a group and have some sort of project they take on. They have an adult supervisor, but the kids really have to come up with the ideas how to do the project.

We decided to let Mary and Alex give it a whirl... At first it was just an occasional meeting, no big deal.

Then it turned into meetings once a week, then twice a week, and at the end I think 3 times a week...

Alex wasn't exactly a great team player for a lot of the time. He'd daydream or wander around the classroom. His group met in the kindergarten classroom so Adam and I would wait there so Adam could play with the toys. Unfortunately, that made Alex also want to come play with the toys. His team had to do the "Money Maker" project. It was a skit about someone trying to come up with an invention. The first 3 would fail and then the last one would be great. They came up with things like an airplane that would shrink when you took off and get big when it landed, which failed. There was a candy and toy maker, but it got jammed. Then there was some sort of remote control, but I don't remember what it did. Alex and some other excited potential buyer got to break that by fighting over it. The last one was a robot that would do ANYTHING!! Some poor kid had to wear a cardboard box wrapped in foil. Despite all Alex's reluctance to participate, he learned his lines very well and had great stage presence. The judges commented on his enthusiasm, and you certainly didn't have trouble hearing him like some other kids, even middle school kids I saw perform.

Mary's group had to make up a tour. Theirs frankly got out of control because they were touring Disneyland, Bikini Bottom, and a few other places. Mary originally was supposed to be a gingerbread girl, then Cleopatra, and someone else. Fortunately, they did a bit of a rewrite towards the end and she only had to be a gingerbread girl. Costume changes were impossible so I was glad about that. She probably would have preferred to be Cleopatra or something though since being a gingerbread girl just means you get to wear a lot of brown... BORING! Unfortunately, Mary got a horrid case of stage fright and wouldn't say a word.

Each group also had to do some sort of spontaneous project too that the parents and adult leaders couldn't even go into. They were even sworn to secrecy. I thought I'd get the kids to fess up after we got home, but they didn't.

The kindergarten and first grade kids got medals and little rubber ducks. Older gets were not so lucky, although Mary also got a little pink pig for being a sibling of a kindergartener. Adam got something too but promptly lost it.

It was a very long day in a town an hour or so away from here, but it was fun. I'm not sure if the kids want to do it again, but it was a good experience for them.

Alex Turns 6

Alex turned 6 in March. (Yes, I know that was 4 months ago...)

For his birthday we requested a swimming pool cake. I've made them for Mary in the past and can probably make them for years to come since the cocktail umbrellas came in a package of 300. This year I went for a figure 8 instead of the standard rectangle.

He invited a friend from Primary over. We went to a little arcade place called Nickel-A-Play (with an entry fee we didn't know about). A lot of the games were free, but we did take along nickels for the skee-ball (is that spelled right?) and little basketball and stuff. We had a good time, though you'd have to practically live there to get enough tickets to really get a good prize, which seemed to be the strategy of several people there. By the time we divided the tickets between 4 kids we came home with a few cheapo army men that have all lost at least 1 limb and/or their guns, about 3 of the teeniest Tootsie Rolls you've ever seen, and a small Chinese fan that has subsequently been lost. Oh well. We had a blast, and I'm even somewhat good at skee-ball. (Not as good as Doug, but we won't dwell on that. I can beat him at air hockey.)

After that we got some pizza and came home for cake and possibly ice cream. I don't remember.

So my cheapo camera (ViviCam X016 so you can avoid this if at all possible) made Alex look drugged in most of the pictures... So just trust me when I say he enjoyed his presents, which included a Spiderman T-shirt, some more army men, a little monster truck, and money, which turned into Transformers and Bakugans (little robot thingies squished into spheres, cubes, etc.).

And as a side note. I'm now going to bed. I'll have to catch up another time, and hopefully Blogger will cooperate better when I'm trying to upload my photos. We also got a better camera today. Did you know if you buy the ugly green cameras on Amazon they're cheaper than the silver or red??? I'll take ugly green if it saves me money.

This is what happens

When you're feeling under the weather and Mom and Dad forget about you while they're visiting with the home teachers.

Keeping My Boy Busy

Alex did morning kindergarten last year. In the afternoon while Adam was napping and I was working Alex frequently just watched some TV... So I decided to put his love of tools of all kinds (even tools at the dentist's office) to good use one afternoon.

Our DVD player went kaput a little before Christmas last year. For a while we nursed it along by taking the case off so you could start the DVD spinning with your finger to get things moving. Once it got replaced at Christmas (Thanks Grandma, Grandpa, and Santa) I decided to see what Alex could do with it.

He only had one rule... No total destruction, just take it apart. Here's what we got.

I'm not sure what the tape measure is for, but isn't that face just the cutest??

 Doug got into the act too... I guess boys of all ages love taking things apart.

Adam also enjoyed the fun after his nap.

So in conclusion... If you want to be the "cool" mom, let your boys take things apart. As soon as the toaster stops working he's gonna get to take that apart too.

The Bright Side

In an attempt to make today's shopping trip with 3 kids (two are crazy boys) I'm going to look at the positive side of the shopping trip. I may or may not be sarcastic. You decide...

I'm grateful:

• for road construction. It's nice that someone is willing to work in 90+ degrees to make new roads. It's also nice that they decided to start the road construction right where I need to turn onto the  major street outside my neighborhood and that they stopped the line of cars beginning with the car in front of me instead of the car behind me.
• for whoever sings about wanting to kiss a girl. It was the first tolerable song I heard on the radio. We're talking multiple channels. Too bad it was on the way home from all the shopping so I spent the other parts of the trip channel surfing.
• that Walmart had another LARGE pile of 20 cent notebooks hidden at the back of the store. I thought I was going to have to take the 4 I found in the school supply section right inside the door, two black, one dirty yellow, and one yellow that needed the wire at the bottom bent back in. (We left the scrunched up green one for others.)
• for Sun Chips. When my children decided the samples in the deli and bakery wouldn't be enough lunch I didn't feel too horrible for buying them chips in the checkout lane because Sun Chips have 30% less fat... (Feel free to nominate me for Mom of the Year.)
• for Target's clearance shelf I ran into by mistake. This matched with my coupon got me very cheap Hershey's syrup that will pair nicely with the bucket of vanilla ice cream I already have.
• for Alex's healthy ankle that didn't break when I ran him over with the cart at Walmart.
• for UPS. It's always nice to find a package inside your screen door when you come home.
• that my garage door and the back door of the van separated nicely when Mary tried to close the garage door prematurely.

Let's hope for more school supply sales next week so we can repeat this all over again.

Summer!

(Yep, I'm the little blonde cutie in the back sucking on a squirt bottle.)

So just to prove we haven't died I thought I'd do another blog post.

Just to shake things up we thought we'd start summer off with a bang, well really more of cough with a headache, sore throat, and a fever...

Yep, we're all sick over here. Except Doug. He somehow escaped all that. Lucky him.

Mary got us off to a good start and was sick twice her last week of school.

Then it was me.

Then Alex was nice enough to get all croupy on me this morning. The doc gave us dexamethasone to use this afternoon so he'll sleep great, at least I hope that's how a steroid pans out for him...

Adam's just a beastly grouch. Good thing he's cute when he's angry, right?

So I hope the rest of you had a great Memorial Day! We celebrated with monkey bread for dinner and a quiet game of Dora Memory. Mary beat the pants off of all of us. (My head was foggy...)

Let's hope the rest of the summer goes much more smoothly and that the weeds with the little purple flowers don't take over our entire front lawn...