Concert

Last week's concert was incredible. Those with Facebook have seen the photos, but here's the videos and a few photos to keep the history accurate.

Cub Scouts

I might not be the right person to blog this, but someone has to.  Liz's cooperating Den Leader had some things come up that prevented her from being at Cub Scouts tonight, so I got to be the other half of "two deep leadership" for the activity tonight.  I don't want to brag too strongly, but she planned a stellar activity that involved a beautiful sunshiney day, a nature area, a gravel path, a long walk, a scavenger hunt, and trail mix.  They made the trail mix as part of a cooking requirement last week, then bagged in preparation for this week and hit the trail to experience some nature!  I spent most of my time with Jacob, Michael, and the stroller while Joshua opted to run with the bigger boys and Mom.  Here are some photos of our little adventure.  It was an amazing activity, a wonderful afternoon of exercise, beautiful weather, and a whole gang of boys who love the outdoors and cub scouting.  Here are some photos of our part of the adventure.  I love my camera phone.

Random funny boy stories

During the day things always happen and I think . . . 'I should blog that' but I usually forget, so I thought I would put a few of them together in one post.

Jacob has decided it is his life's ambition to be a pillow.  He LOVES to get in all of our pillow cases and jump around!  He will even get in one and put another on his head!  James always gets to bed at night and has to ask where his pillow case is!

Michael has a great friend in the neighborhood who is home-schooled as well, so they can play together during the day--which I love!  Their favorite things to do involve digging in mud, building houses, digging in mud, sharpening sticks and digging in mud.  I am very glad that he now has some new crocks to play in because they are ultra easy to clean!

Jacob has learned to climb into my lap undetected--that is until he bounces, jumps, kicks and plays with my face.  Kids are just so sneaky!

Tickle time--Joshua has turned this into an art.  He has decided that he loves being tickled and wants to have tickle time after every meal.  He is crazy, but if it makes him happy I'm all for it!

When I go to eat something the boys now ask 'do you need that?'  We have trained them well to help us eat healthy and meet our weight goals.  Kids are great!  Though, sometimes I tell them no and eat it anyway.  Oops.  :)

Potty training take 2

After completely messing this up the first time, we took a nice break and invested in some pullups.  We stopped cold turkey and enjoyed the holidays with many visitors and no extra potty stress.  Well, now it is time to fix my mistakes and finish this up for good.  :)

So, Wednesday of last week we started over.  Given that this was a start over and not an initial try I planned to do things a little differently.  I really wanted him excited about it, so I bought some Disney panties--these worked out better than expected--and we grabbed some starbursts for rewards.  I like these because I can keep them in my pockets and they take time to eat!

We bought the panties on Monday and he was very excited to get to use them.  So, Wednesday morning we began.  The themed underwear became our greatest tool because what child would want to make Lightning McQueen dirty.  We must keep him clean!  It is amazing how much that really means to him.  He does of course like the starbursts but i really think he stays dry to protect his friends.  :)

It has been a pretty smooth transition so far--one week in.  We only had one real poopy accident--YIPPEE!  It just doesn't get better than that and a couple wet accidents.  He doesn't run and go on his own but randomly declares that he is dry or he still gets a starburst which I have learned means he needs to go, so we go.  Or he declares that he does not have poopy in his panties quite emphatically which is another cue that it is time to go.  He is so excited he held it and stayed clean.  Now we need to make the next connection which is, of course, to go to the bathroom.  We have also employed the reading of a story when we know poopy is coming because what kid really wants to just sit there until it comes.  Stories are fun and one book usually does the trick.  But for me as long as he gives me those cues we are good to go as far as I am concerned!  Yea for Nemo, Buzz, Cars and his other friends!  They are now my friends too!

OATMEAL!

This is Liz and the giant bowl of oatmeal. She says she uses a serving bowl so that it doesn't overflow in the microwave, but it's too much like Dad and the graham crackers to be that innocent methinks.


-- Post From My iPhone

Monopoly

So, Liz, Joshua, and Michael just finished a two hour game of Monopoly.  Michael carefully chose it as his gift for his mother's birthday, and they played it for the first time today.  I'm just grateful they chose to play using the "shorter game" rules.  The boys especially loved working with the money, their favorite being making change.  It was exciting to pay money and then get money back, of course!

I'm not a big game player, and I wanted to let the boys play with Mom, so I ran to the store to get stuff for dinner, browsed the Chinese Market after I realized they had no fresh basil, drove home, checked email, made lunch, smelled Jacob's very poopy self, ignored said poopy, ate my lunch in a chair far from Jacob, read the pooper a hilarious, yet strangely political story about a baby duckbill marooned in a family of blood-thirsty Tyrannosaurus (I do good voices), checked email again (I'm waiting for a coupon) and did general chat and clean up things.  It's amazing how much one can accomplish when one doesn't like to play board games!

Michael still likes to pronounce the game [mo-no-PO-ly] just to get a rise out of me.  He giggles every time I shoot him the "look of mispronunciation . . ."

Joshua

He was adamant that I blog his shirt. I think it's better to blog the time out he's on instead. He does that quite a bit lately.


-- Post From My iPhone

Field Trip

On Friday we went on a great field trip!  One of the other mom's in our group planned a trip to the Prairie Fork Conservation.  Her sister works there and planned some fun activities for the kids.  First, they pretended to be birds looking for worms to eat (rotini).  They discussed which color rotini were easiest and hardest to find.  We did it in two different areas to see that with different backgrounds different colors were easier and harder to find--camouflage!  

Then, we went on a safari in search of animal life.  We found animals as well as found traces of animals.  Michael took great notes on our paper while Joshua took charge of the magnifying glass to see what he could find.

We took the muddy trail for our exploration and I was surprised by how clean we stayed.  The joy of the mud, though, was that you could see animal tracks much more easily.  We saw some doe tracks and even learned the difference between doe and buck tracks.    I was most impressed.   

Then, after lunch we headed down to the pond with nets to go 'fishing.'  It is still early in the season but we still found some fish and plenty of moss!   Michael even found a really cool bug . . . see if you can determine what it is? 

We had great helpers working with the kids to help them figure out what they caught!

Here are several snails the boys were very excited to find.  We decided to leave them in their habitat instead of taking them home!  We figured they would be happiest there.

Overall it was a great day with lots of fun with our friends and each other as we explored the great outdoors!

Learning to Use Money

The week before our trip we let the boys earn some money for the trip.  This had a two-fold mission.  One was to get some things done at home without complaining and the other was to teach them how to use money since we don't want money to be some mysterious object to them.  So, on our trip we let them go to the gift shops at each museum.  It was great fun to watch them look at the price of each item and state that some items were not a good deal while other were.  They actually did a great job finding nice things to remember their trip that they would also be able to enjoy.  I was very impressed by their choices and hope they enjoy their new toys.   Michael found a toy space shuttle that moves and formed a Cheetah family (two adults and one baby).  Joshua found some wooden planes that are propelled with rubber bands and later found a baby tiger and a tiger pen.  Jacob got an airplane and a giraffe pen. 

I also thought it was great when we were heading back to the subway that the boys saw someone selling ice cream and wanted some.  We told them we didn't think it was the best use of our money, so they asked if they could use their money.  They did a good job discussing with us that they really wanted the ice cream and it was worth it to them to use their money to but it.  If nothing else we learned that they really wanted that ice cream and I was glad they had a little money to get something little that they wanted.

More pics from our trip!

I just couldn't help myself but add more photos, I hope you enjoy!

The National Mall

As I mentioned before the boys love the game Geo Challenge.  In the game there is one part where they learn about landmarks including the National Mall, so they were very excited to actually get to go and visit one of the places on their game.   Our day began on the Subway where the boys learned to read the maps and use the subway with Grandpa!

We began our trip at the Museum of American History which the boys kindly tolerated while they waited to go to the Museum of Natural History which they loved!  They got to see dinosaurs and animals of all kinds.  They even had a chance to visit the Discovery Room where they were able to handle some artifacts and look at specimens under a microscope.

Then, we ate lunch and headed up to the Washington Monument.  The boys liked trying to see how tall they were compared to the Monument.  Jacob was getting tired so we used the Monument as a place to look at the Lincoln Memorial, Capital Building and White House.  It was a great trip and all had tons of fun!  

Air and Space Museum

During Spring Break this year we decided to go play in D.C while visiting family.  For one of our trips we went to the Air and Space Museum and had a blast!  We got to see a space shuttle, war planes, helicopters and much more.  The boys even got to sit in a small commuter plane and learn how to make it fly.  It was a great day and everyone had tons of fun. Here are some fun pics from our trip!

Michael's Testimony

Michael bore his first testimony in the Front Royal, Virginia Ward on 29 March 2009.  He wanted to write it down so he wouldn't forget what he wanted to say.  He even went to the podium without Dad next to him.  He's so big!