A Sweet Start

We've begun our adventure of homeschooling Jake for second grade! To celebrate our first day we went out for ice cream after Jake finished his classes at a local church. He will be going every Tuesday, and this fall will study Lego construction, multi-media art, and cooking.

Politics we can ALL agree on:

At least we're not electing Jake to any positions of authority today.

We've been studying the ancient Babylonians and have been discussing the Code of Hammurabi (first set of written laws). I asked Jake and Zane to make up and illustrate some laws of their own. It started off innocently enough:










but then swiftly progressed to something much more extreme:






Sheesh, kid! I guess we should get him some Birkenstocks?!?

Drew's First Haircut

Ok, so I've been busy. For a month and a half. :-) I'm going to just wade back into this blogging business slowly...

Cute little Drew had his first haircut last week. His moptop has been transformed into an orderly big boy hair-do!! He looks so much older.

















However, it seems that controlling hair in one area just means that it's going to crop up someplace else! Eeek!











Oh no.



And now it's an epidemic!

Forsooth, a tooth!

Jake lost his first tooth today at camp. As you can see, the permanent tooth is already on its way!














To celebrate - and also to mark the end of a great week at camp - we all went out for ice cream after we picked Jake up. Everybody loves ice cream, even Drew - who got his very own cone.



Jake has been so excited about the tooth fairy. All day at camp people told him how lucky he was - that the tooth fairy would bring him money. Tonight before bed we read some stories about teeth, and then Jake put his tooth into his pillow and set it next to his bed. Good luck, kid! Hope she's generous!

Edited to add this video: Sorry - just had to add this one. I just noticed that Drew licks the air above his cone SIX TIMES without ever getting any ice cream. Still he's happy as a clam. Too funny!

Hurry up and wait

Well, it seems that teeth take longer to come out than I anticipated. It's still tenaciously holding on in there, despite our best efforts to dislodge it! He's at camp this week during the day, so I'm actually just hoping that if he does lose it he doesn't lose it. You know?

The little ones and I have had a pretty boring two days of errand-running. The highlight of the morning was pushing the red-faced screaming infant in a cart through Walmart trying to do school supply shopping while preventing Zane from touching everything in the store (seemed to be his goal). I guess it was better than having TWO people trying to touch everything. Ugh, but at least we're done with THAT.

Yesterday Zane showed me some of his rodeo stunts. I asked him a silly question and he actually rolled his eyes at me!!! Already! He's three! Sheesh. Anyway - hopefully I can get him to nap some this week (to lose both the 'tude and the undereye circles). We'll hit some storytimes and free movies later in the week to make sure we have some fun.

Monsoon and an Imminent Visit

It's pouring rain here! Yay! Hopefully this will do a little to assuage the drought. We need it! It's been storming here in the afternoons and evenings all week. Crazy severe scary lightning! Other than that, it's been nice to listen to it coming down. We've spent several storms out on the porch - I love the mist coming off the pounding rain and the thunder that vibrates through your whole body. Reminds me again of the power and wonder of nature.


The boys LOVE the rain. Here they are enjoying a non-booming drenching. On Tuesday Zane left the lid off the sandbox - it's filled up and now has a couple of inches of standing water! Jake thinks it's like being back at the beach! So this is what they mean by Redneck Riviera!





In other exciting news, an imminent visit from the Tooth Fairy! The wiggly tooth has finally become a flopper and I fear it's only days - maybe hours - from jumping ship entirely. I'm racing against the clock to finish the pillow in time. I am trying to be crafty and embroidered a drawing Jake made of the Tooth Fairy and now need to stitch it into a pillow. We'll keep you updated on any exciting developments in this story. :)

Help!

Hey someone's got hold of me finger!

For those of you not in the know, the minivan is actually a stage on wheels for the world's hottest air-rock band. We rarely drive anywhere without a virtual concert from the back seat. Unfortunately the band broke up today on our way home.

Fisticuffs erupted when Jake decided that he would be Paul and Zane would be John. Zane was already Ringo and took great offense at this. Did Jake/Paul NOT SEE the crayola ring on Zane/Ringo's finger!?! Jake/Paul took great offense at Zane/Ringo's great offense. It ended with Macca slugging Ringo, stealing the ring and then Ringo chasing Macca down on the front porch. Crying by all. It was like our favorite bad sixties musical farce all over again.