Isaac and His Men

Isaac has his "men".  Some of them are Lego men and some of them are superhero men and some are miscellaneous men who come from who knows where.  What they have in common is that they are little and many are choking hazards for his age.  AND when he gets his little hands on them, he holds them with a death grip in the fear that someone will forcibly remove them from his itty, bitty hands.

I gave up on that a while back.  I do take anything (read: lego man helmets) if I catch them in his mouth.  Otherwise, I let it go.  There was pretty much a 0% chance that as the fourth child he was going to play with age appropriate toys anyway.

Giving into the inevitable, I figured I'd better join 'em and try to encourage him to play with the safer ones.  I lined some of them up facing the room and he decided to make some changes.

Much more fun if they stand in line.  He spent quite a bit of time getting it all just right.

He really seemed to enjoy the process.

Right up until he crawled through the line and they all went flying.  And he just started chucking them when he made it to the end of the line.  Just in case I was concerned that he had somehow given up on his days of destruction and mayhem.

Happy Spring Celebration!

Below are some pictures from our Spring Celebration yesterday.  I know it's a day early, but weekdays get pretty crazy around here lately.  Also, the sun was scheduled to make an appearance and we couldn't let that sort of day pass us by.  After Isaac's nap, we packed up our four square balls and some kites and went to the park.  Interestingly enough, all of Olympia had the exact same idea.  Okay, not about kites, but all the rest.  These people are serious about getting outside when there is the slightest promise of sunshine.

That's okay.  We found parking on the far end of the park by a sizable field to fly kites.  And Isaac had enough space so he could walk around with a death grip on his ball.

We brought two kites with us: Michael's superman kite, which went up and flew easily.

And a dragon kite, which really seemed to want to fly, but instead kept dive bombing.  We spent much of our time coaxing this flying lizard into the air.

Our resident (almost) teenager really just wanted to be over the basketball courts.  Family activities are no longer his favorite kind.

While Michael happily flew his kite, Jason and Ben took on the dragon kite.

Ben was convinced that this was going to work.

And, eventually, it did.  With the modification of the kite poles and a running start, it flew!

Look!

Hooray!  At which point, the other kids at the park wanted in on the cool kite action and we got to see a lot of really happy kids get this kite in the air.

Time was running down for evening stuff, so we headed home for the Spring baskets.  Everyone had to close their eyes while Jason brought them in the room.

This year Ben got a geode kit, Girl Scout cookies, peeps, and a certificate to take a friend to play laser tag.

Isaac got a ridiculous amount of cars/trucks (thank you, thrift store!), dinosaurs, books, and blueberry yogurt snacks.

Michael got the watch for which he has been begging for months, Girl Scout cookies, peeps, and a certificate to take a friend to play laser tag.

Josh got a military sighting compass, Girl Scout cookies, peeps, and a certificate to take a friend to play laser tag.

It is always gratifying when everyone loves the gifts I have spent time thinking about and selecting, and this year was great!  Probably the only drawback is that Josh will have to wait for Aunt Rachel to come home before he can understand everything his compass can do.  Michael, in the meantime, discovered just about everything his watch can do.

Ben and Jason decided to crack open the geode right away.

It didn't disappoint.

Our budding geologist was thrilled.

And Isaac, well, Isaac of course enjoyed playing with the bucket just as much as he enjoyed playing with his toys.

It was a very fun day.

A Completely Different Child

Ever make a decision that you regret almost immediately?  Ever look your spouse in the eyes and think, "We made a mistake."?  

Well, Jason and I did something tonight that we both regret and think was probably a mistake.

We chopped Isaac's curls.  

It is a little bit difficult to recognize him without his mop of signature curls.  

At first he was one with the clippers.

And gave it kisses (totally safe, I promise).

So fun!

He even tried to do it himself.

But, he became less certain once the curls began to fall.

"All the boo-boos!"

And then reality came crashing down on him.  Or he didn't like the feeling of the clippers on his head.  Or having hair all over his skin really wigged him out.

Regardless, a lollipop and bath later, he recovered and happily danced around the house.  And Jason and I were just a little bit sad.  Luckily, it's a renewable resource.

Number 93

We're about halfway through Josh's basketball season so I thought I should blog about it before it is over!  Because of when the games are and how crazy it is to take Isaac in public, we hadn't made it to any of his games until this week.  Which is sad, because we missed the game when he scored for the first time.  This week we worked it out so that Jason and I could each make it to one of the games.  Josh is on one of the C teams and this is really his first time playing basketball...pretty much ever.  I truly admire Josh for being willing to try new things and sticking it out to the end.  His team hasn't won at all this season, but the boys definitely gave it all.  Even at the end when it was clear they weren't going to win.  We are pretty proud of #93.

Battle of the Books

Ever watched a movie where it was so suspenseful that you just couldn't even look?  Strangely enough, yes, strangely enough, the school district's Battle of the Book competition was like that for me.  Watching your own kid, I think, is worse than experiencing it yourself!

It didn't help anything that they ended up going into double overtime (no lie, that is a thing in academic competitions).  More about that later.

Our district has four middle schools and each school sent two teams.  Josh and his teammate qualified in an intraschool competition and then got to pick two other kids to join them to make it a team of four for the district competition.

May I proudly present the "4some bookworms"!

And Jason's fez.  It's a Doctor Who thing and Josh wanted me to bring it.  So I did.

The competition consisted of three 20 question rounds.  After the first round, Josh's team was in first place.  After a perfect 20/20 second round, Josh's team was in first place.  After a rather brutal and difficult third round, Josh's team was tied for first place.

Which is where it gets crazy.  The two teams stuck around (they let everyone else go home since it was 8 o'clock and most people hadn't eaten yet) for a fourth round of 20 questions.  During which each team got only one question wrong.

The SUSPENSE!

The final tie-breaking round consisted of three questions one of the librarians made up.

The question that lost the competition for the 4some bookworms was, "Place the following books in order from the least to the most number of pages, not counting the bibliography."

So, at this point, the teams are really just guessing.  Josh's team was only one book off.

Tragic.

Disappointing.

It was sad to lose over a question that didn't have anything to do with the material in the books they were asked to read; however, the teams were clearly so evenly matched that this was probably the only way without keeping us there all night.

But we are so proud of Josh and his team.  They worked great as a team conferring together on the answers and supporting each other.  And they definitely knew their stuff.  To celebrate, we busted out the red vines and coconut milk ice cream for Josh when he got home.

Can't wait for next year!

Ben's Starry Night Period

Ben has this delightful quirk in his personality where he will periodically become inspired by something and then we see it everywhere: paper in the house, papers from school, papers at church, etc.  Usually, and for many months, this has been math.  We see math everywhere.  Multiplying by two was his specialty.  

But for the last couple of weeks he's moved on.  This time to art.  At school they made their own versions of Van Gogh's Starry Night and he hasn't stopped since.  Below are just a few of his masterpieces.

Jason just spent several days on the Queen Mary in L.A. so he brought this back for Ben in honor of his latest obsession.  It was very well received.

Webelos

Tuesday night was a very busy, big night.  It was the night of our pack's Blue and Gold with an Around the World Carnival theme.  Also, Michael earned and was award his Webelos badge.  In our pack, we do some fun face painting with the rank advancements.  The cubmaster reads a script telling the parents what to paint on their scout's face and then tells the pack the meaning of each mark.  Some of the boys opt out, but when you are the son of the cubmaster, you get painted!

And then if you are the parent (usually mom) of an advancing cub scout, you get pinned.  I am so proud of Michael and all of his hard work.  And I love getting new pins to add to my growing collection.

(Photos by Li Jensen)