Throwback Thursday

Little Shawnie and his dad...

February 21, 2015

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

Hard at work...

Question of the Week

What is your favorite game to play on the iPad?

Jack: I like to play Temple Run. I collect coins. Monkeys chase me. I jump over a bridge and turn to miss the cliff.

Jason: I like to play Asphalt 8. It's a racing game. It's a good game because it allows me to do some things I wouldn't able to use in real life like drive on the wrong side of the road.

Shawn: I like to play Snail Bob because he always gets squished.

Mom. Take a Picture

So I did. Granted, it isn't the best picture of good ole' mom, but they can't all be perfection. Life isn't like that! lol

Here we are. Me and my boy.

Jokester

Last night...

Shawn: (making a bunch of farting noises with his mouth in a little tune) Mom. Know that that is?

Me: No, what is it?

Shawn: That's Moz-fart!

LOL!

District Practice Bee

Jason had his District wide/practice spelling bee today. He was one of about 20 spellers today.

Waiting for the bee to begin.

Spelling his first word "eliminate."
Nailed it!

Jason made it to the third round. "Extricate" got him. The girl right before him got the word "martyr," a word Jason totally knew, so I think he was disappointed that he got out on his word. The whole situation again highlighted the fact that how far you get sometimes boils down to the luck of the word you draw.

In any event, the county bee is coming up soon. I'm so excited for him!

Friday Five

Tomorrow, Jason has his district spelling bee. It will be a nice practice for the big shebang that will be in March. Send him some good thoughts tomorrow at about 9 am. ❤️

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Jack is doing well on his chapter book challenge in school. He has read 10 chapter books to date! Um, that sure does beat our 3 chapter book goal. LOL

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It got so cold in our area this week. It even snowed and hailed all around us. It's crazy to know that they had snow on the ground only twenty minutes from here.

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Shawn's voice is in full change mode. OMG. I don't know how to take it when his voice gets high and cracks. How can this be?! He is my teeny, tiny bay-bee!

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Despite the cold weather, Shawn has been begging to go on a bike ride. We may have to try that out this weekend. I may become a human icicle, but I suppose that is the price I'll have to pay to make my boy happy. ;)

Throwback Thursday

This day in 2016. It's crazy to see how much they've changed in three short years!

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

So exciting!

Question of the Week

What makes you so awesome?

Jason: "Me. I make me awesome. My smarts and my wits also make me awesome."

Jack: "Doing my homework (makes me awesome). I did very good work."

Shawn: "My laugh...and my funny faces."

😍I never know what I'm going to get in their answers. I love that part!

What They're Reading

This crew of ours have been reading like crazy, and we're seeing a lot of growth for each of them. I thought it might be fun to snapshot what each of them are currently reading:

Jack - his 2nd grade class is doing a chapter book challenge this month. Jack prefers nonfiction books right now, so fictional chapter books haven't exactly been his favorite thing. With that in mind, when he had to make a chapter book goal for himself this month, we went conservative and settled on three chapter books. He is well on his way toward meeting and exceeding that goal. Right now, he's reading a chapter book at school about Little Bear. At home he is currently reading a Magic Tree House book called Lions at Lunchtime by Mary Pope Osborne.

Jason - he's been splitting his time at home between reading and studying for the spelling bee, so he's slowed down a bit on his books this month. Still, he's 128 pages into his 597 page book, which is pretty amazing when you consider this is slowing down! lol. He's on book four of The Hero of Olympus series called, The House of Hades by Rick Riordan.

Shawn - it has been a process of getting Shawn, who for so long struggled for access to books and for people to understand how to best help him at school, to enjoy the idea of reading again. He still has a bit of initial anxiety at the thought of starting our reading time each day, which I know is some old feelings we're still working through (poor guy). That said, I've found that humor is the way to go with this guy. We started several months back, reading our way through the My Weird School series by Dan Gutman. He has over a half a dozen of those books under his belt now. We read a few other biographies by Gutman, just to shake things up a bit. Now, we're trying Frindle by Andrew Clements. We're about a quarter of the way through, and he seems to like this story, too. Fingers crossed!

The nice thing about being a teacher and working at a school, I can often shop our school's library for titles I think the boys might like to read. It's been fun!

Victory

Jack just came over and asked to play a game of Fruit Ninja with me on the iPad. Apparently I did better than he expected and after trying unsuccessfully to hold my hand off the screen so I couldn’t play (I was scoring too much), he declared I was “cheating my way to victory.” He then left in a huff. #sorelosermuch?

P.S. Somehow I won anyway! lol

Cute Big Boy Saturday

Spelling word studying...only two weeks until the big bee!

Friday Five...Four...Nope, It's a Friday Three Kind of Day!

It has been a rainy week. We're glad that we got to spend this rainy day at home because of our 4 day weekend. Yay President's Day!

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Speaking of rainy day at home...rainy day = lazy day around these parts. Although I tried to lobby the boys to stay in bed until 10:30 this morning, they were still up nice and early. Still, it's so nice to be able to just be quiet so we all can recharge our batteries some.

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I had to get Shawn some warmer long sleeved shirts this week. He has totally outgrown the shirts I bought him in August, yet isn't quite big enough to fit into Jason's shirts. He is pretty solidly in size 12 shirts. He can also do size 14, but the length of the arms is just a tiny bit too cumbersome. Jason is up to 14-16. Jack is wearing 8-10s now.

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So...being the lazy day that it is, my brain is mush. It looks like today is more of a Friday Three kind of day. lol!

Valentine's Day!

The boys were all super excited to make their Valentines last night. Shawn's Valentines had a bookmark and said, "You're number one in my book." Jason gave out pencils with a card that said, "You're just the write friend for me." Jack gave out ring pops with a card that said, "You're a GEM of a friend." I forgot to take pictures, but let the record show that they were all cute. lol

They had a great time today, despite the rainy weather. They gave out their Valentines and received many more. They promptly devoured much of their loot as soon as they walked in the door this afternoon, too. So fun!

Wordy Wednesday

Jack wrote his rough draft for his project! I think he did a pretty great job, too!

My animal is a red eyed tree frog
he is green white orange blue and red.
It has red eyes. It lives in the rainforest
They hatch out of their eggs like tadpoles
They eat four flys and isects.
They are smaller than a flower
They sleep during the day
They can live to be five years old.

STEAMED

Jason was a student leader at his school's STEAM night. He got to lead his "clients" through the baking soda/vinegar/balloon experiment table.

Rain Forest!

Jack finished his habitat and it looks pretty great!

Cutting some leaves for his forest.

His frog is hanging out on a leaf.

White eggs on a leaf hanging over the pond.

He came back later and added some more leaves and some bugs to eat.
(The white papers are flies for his frog.)

So proud of his hard work!

Look At That

He's working on his habitat!

Jack is working on a rain forest habitat that he is making for his red eyed tree frog. We are just starting it--can't wait to see how it comes out!

painting the inside of the box green for the habitat

making a play doh frog

super cute!

the finished frog

Next up is putting his plants in his box and making leaves for his frog's habitat.

Cute Big Boy Saturday

This guy was my space invading snuggle buddy this morning. He had approximately 99.8% of the bed on his side while I got the rest. lol.

Friday Five

The boys had minimum days on Thursday and Friday. It's amazing how much longer the day feels (in a good way) when the boys get out at 12:30. I could seriously get used to it.

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On Wednesday was the boys' 100th day of school. 2nd and 5th grades are more than half over. It's going so fast!

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Jason either pulled a muscle in his leg or is experiencing growing pains. Either way, he's hurting. Poor guy.

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Shawn woke up SUPER early this morning--sometime around 5 am. He had no idea why. I think today was a little harder for him that the norm. I can only imagine it was because he was tired! (We've agreed that tomorrow is a late wake-up day to make up for the early wake-up day. LOL)

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Mr. Jack informed us that it was time for him to get his stuffed babies back. They've been in the garage since Thanksgiving when we quarantined them. I don't know what made him think about them, but he's pretty determined it seems.

Celebration Face

After his celebration ice cream last night...

Um, Jay? You have a little something on your face. LOL

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

This kid was celebrated tonight at the district office for reading 1,000,000 words this year. The exact number he read was just shy of 1.7 million words this year! Awesome job!

We're so proud of you, Jason!

Question of the Week

Question: If you could make up a new holiday, what would it be?

Shawn - My holiday would be every Wednesday. It would be called "My Day." We would celebrate by blowing out candles on a chocolate cake.

Jason - My holiday would be "The Day of the Cat" on December 1. We would make a cat shaped cake and then pet cats all day. It would be every 5 years.

Jackson - I would make up Valentine's Day. We would make cards. We would put candy in boxes. We would "delivery" them. We'd give a big hug. And a kiss and a snuggle. We're done. (His holiday sounds eerily familiar. LOL)

Happy Homecoming Day, Jason!

On this day, 11 years ago, our Jason finally came home after 100 days in the hospital! 

It's a day that is very important to us, and we will continue to celebrate for as long as the boys will let us!

Jason woke up to some decorations on the wall.

He got the Xbox all to himself this afternoon, and he took full advantage of this little Homecoming Day perk.

He got to pick what we had for dinner (hamburgers).

Then we sang "Happy Homecoming Day to You!" and watched as he blew out his candles. 

Jason wanted 5 candles...he even put them on his cake himself!

He blew his candles out so quickly, I didn't
even get a picture of his pucker! lol

He was excited to get some presents. :)

 Happy Homecoming Day, Jason! Hope you had a fantastic day!

Triple chocolate cake. fudge icing, and chocolate ice cream.
YUM!