My Lone April Post. . .

I guess I forgot to post this month. I was driving home this evening and suddenly realized I never had any posts in April, and this is the last day. I turned around to see what the boys were up to, and this is what Henry was doing.

I feel just like Henry--ready for a nice, long nap. There was a lot going on in April, between administering the state exam for three different grade levels, teaching two different graduate school classes for two different universities, working on my school's garden, and tutoring both online and in person. Wow, I guess I didn't realize how busy I was until I wrote that sentence. Since I only have one post to make for April, I guess I'll write about one 24 hour period--the one ending with Henry snoozing in his fuzzy jacket and cool-guy shades.

Last night I was at my school until 6:45 getting ready for next week, and Henry drew this amazing picture. It reminds me vaguely of Picasso. You'll notice he's also stapled a piece of paper to the bottom with his name written backwards.

This morning Nick had his music lesson, and he got to play guitar. He prefers drums but I guess he liked playing The Ramones' version of "What I Like About You" on guitar. While he was at his lesson, Henry and I walked in the rain and had a burger at Sovereign. It was beef brisket mixed with bacon meat (yum!). I always try to snap Henry-and-mommy-selfie on Saturdays when we have our hour together.

After picking up Nick, we headed to Grandpa Ray's birthday party. On the way, we stopped for balloons. They boys found these cool $1 sunglasses that they wore all day, despite the fact that there wasn't any sun. They borrowed Grandpa's walkie-talkies and pretended to be spies. Henry said, "We are being secret agent mans!"

Apparently secret agent mans don't like to button their pants.

My mom took out the Wii, but Nick didn't play for long and wouldn't let me take his picture. Henry? He played for a long, long time.

As to how well Henry played, well, it was his first time. I don't think he quite understood what to do with this game--it's a balance game where you're supposed to hit soccer balls (but not shoes) with your head.

I think the sunglasses make Henry's soccer ball dance even cooler.

We ended our day with a trip to Target, where I let my sons convince me to drive them around in the giant cart. The thing handled like a semi-truck, and I may or may not have had to pretend it was a roller coaster car, swerving back and forth down the aisles.

Fun in the Water

Despite the cool temperatures outside, we managed to have a warm, splash-filled three days at Timber Ridge Lodge. Henry had a thing for the lazy river. 

The waterslides alone gave us all a workout, between the stairs and the speed. 

See those slides behind us? We came down the green one.

I had forgotten how fast the green tube slide goes, and I was genuinely shrieking the first time we plunged down. 

Somehow Greg and Nick don't look scared at all after coming down. 

Grandma Toni didn't do any of the big slides, though she did try the little white one with Henry, just once. That was enough for her--never again, she said. 

 Last year at Spring Break, neither boy could swim, at least not much. This year, both of the boys are decent swimmers, so they were less intimidated by the water in the big pool. See? Here's Henry mid-jump.

Henry giggled and slide down this slide countless times.

Nick was more independent this year, and he made friends who were over 48", so that he didn't have to go down the waterslides with an adult. Going down the slides with daddy and mommy was fun, but he preferred hanging with his new friends.

That's it for another spring break trip!

A Surprise?

Last year, for spring break, we surprised the boys with a two night getaway to Timber Ridge Lodge, a waterpark hotel in Lake Geneva. The kids had no clue until we drove there, and they loved it. This year, we decided to repeat the trip. We deliberated about making it a surprise, and figured at least Nick would figure it out. Nope.

Here we are at the Brat Stop in Kenosha. They were still blissfully ignorant of where we were going at that point. Greg and I both had Cheddar Brats, by the way, and they were really delicious.

Henry and Nick totally bought our tale that we were taking Grandma Toni for lunch and then to a park for her birthday. "This seems like a long drive for hot dogs," Nick commented. But even Nick didn't figure it out until we were in the parking lot of Timber Ridge. "Why are we here?" he said.

We actually didn't lie--Timber Ridge is a park. A waterpark, that is. In addition to the waterpark, you can also swim in the bathtub in our hotel suite--if you're under eight years old, that is.

Oh, and we certainly did celebrate Grandma Toni's birthday!

This year, the boys picked out a necklace and an adult coloring book and markers for Grandma. They all colored together in our hotel room.

More tomorrow about the water park. I still can't believe they were surprised again, when we went exactly one year later, to the exact same hotel we'd gone to previously. Something tells me, though, that I won't be fooling these two again.

Easter 2015

We had quite the busy Easter yesterday. This morning, I found this very same chocolate bunny, sans ears, lurking in our freezer. I think Henry had an early morning snack.

Nick was really excited to get this Harry Potter Coloring Book.

Though the temperatures were chilly, we did get in an Easter Egg hunt before the rain started. I think Henry ate from two main food groups yesterday: the Peeps group and the chocolate group.

The egg hunt was over more quickly this year, too. I suppose they're getting better at figuring out the hiding places.

Some of the eggs had cold, hard cash inside. Henry really, really liked the money. In fact, he counted to twelve (correctly) for the first time today while counting money. Perhaps he'll be an accountant some day. (Or not. He wanted to spend all his money on the game machines at the Brat Stop today.)

Nick played us "Ode to Joy" about seventeen times. He's quite persistant on that nice big piano.

Henry played the piano too, although we couldn't quite recognize the tune he was trying to pick out.

Despite the rainy weather, it turned out to be a pretty good Easter.

Happy Easter!

Easter Eggs and an Instructional Video

I bought three dozen eggs today, thinking that would be enough. Seeing as my sons and I somehow ate eight hard-boiled eggs in one evening, perhaps I should've gone with four dozen. Ahh, well.

Nick and Henry thought that the best part was watching the little tablets dissolve in the vinegar. Our colors worked pretty well this year, and we added some stickers in addition to the usual white crayon designs.

Henry was quite into the whole coloring process, though I had to keep stopping him from dumping all the colors together.

He has tried that with Play Doh, and only gets an ugly brown. But he wanted to try it with our egg dying colors, just to see if the result would be the same.



The boys probably would've been happy to color four or five dozen eggs. They were sad when we were all done. Nick had some interesting questions about fertilized vs. unfertilized chicken eggs. He wanted to know why there was no baby chickens inside the eggs. Let's just say that was quite the interesting conversation.

Henry's been really into these "how-to" videos on YouTube. He likes the ones where they show you how to make "jellies," basically gelatin molds of various things. Henry decided he was going to do his own "how-to" movie about how to decorate eggs. Here's what he came up with. https://youtu.be/TqEX8IyP4Pc



Henry says he wants to come out with a whole bunch of these "how-to videos." After all, in his nearly five years he has learned a lot.

Popcorn and Birdseed and Binoculars

One thing that's nice about being a teacher and a parent is having built-in guinea pigs at home to try new ideas out on. Sometimes Henry and Nick like my ulterior motives for our "activities" and sometimes they don't. They were pretty pleased when I bought the binoculars and promised to return them after my lessons this week.

Children's binoculars for $0.99 at Goodwill? Yes, please. 

This week I'm working on nonfiction text features with some of my students through a book called Look Up! Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard. That's what the binoculars were for, and I'd highly recommend the book. Sunday morning, we laid out a ton of birdseed for the mourning doves who hang out in our backyard.

To attract some birds, I wanted to have my students string popcorn and lay it on some bushes near our windows. I figured that if Nick and Henry could make a popcorn string, my students would have no problem with it. Nick caught on right away.

Henry had a harder time, but he still managed pretty well.

It remains to be seen whether the popcorn strings will attract any birds, but Nick and Henry sure got a kick out of trying out the hands-on portion of my lessons.

A Pretty Typical Sunday

Today was not an exciting day, but it was a pretty typical Sunday. Greg and I like to sit around and drink coffee leisurely on Sunday mornings. For the boys, there was lots of gear-building. Nick remembered from the movie "Hugo" that there was an automaton, and he wanted to use his gears to make his own.

The clean floor is thanks to Nick, who spent an hour scrubbing Friday night.  :)

Nick also helped his daddy out today. Our washing machine seems to get a sock stuck in the drainage pipe nearly every week. It's not even tiny little boy socks, necessarily. Today it ate one of Greg's socks. Nick's tiny hands were quite useful.

I took the boys to see Kung-Fu Panda 3 so that Greg could work on cleaning the boys' bedroom. Ahh, the excitement of a giant vat of popcorn and a cheesy cartoon movie.

They loved the movie, and Henry and Nick can't wait to see Zootopia, which apparently is coming out next week. The movie theatre even had this photo op set up in the lobby.

 

The boys both really wanted me to buy them these "Harry Potter glasses." I had to tell them no because they're reading glasses, but now I'll be on the lookout for clear ones. Henry was quite distraught that I said no.  It's funny how they both want glasses but don't need them, and I used to refuse to wear mine as a kid.

 Henry is really proud of his new sneakers. They have Snoopy wearing sunglasses on them, and they light up when he stomps his feet. (Which he does. . . frequently.) I found them, brand new with the original tags still on, at the Goodwill for $2.99.

Before dinner, they decided to use their newly clean room and pretend to be astronauts. The top bunk, you see, was the space ship, and they blasted off by jumping off of the stairs headfirst.