Legos

I finally get Legos.  They always confused me.  Why would you want a set with such specific pieces?  How can you even find them all again to make the same thing?  Aren’t you just supposed to use your imagination and come up with your own creations?  Well, kind of…

What I finally realized about these sets is that they’re like a puzzle.  The boys must use their spatial reasoning, counting skills, sequencing and a lot of patience and determination to follow the manuals and put them together correctly.  One Lego off by one notch and it won’t quite work. 

Patrick was awesome at it.  He finished a 7-14 year old set over two half-hour sessions.  He could find the pieces he needed among the big pile from just looking at the pictures, and he almost always got their placement correct.  I was really stunned. 

Luke was about as good as I expected a newly-five-year-old to be.  His set was smaller, had fewer steps and took less time, but it was just as difficult.  It took him longer to see that the directions were so exact and that it was important to follow them exactly to get the desired effect.  His second project was much better… maybe he just needed the practice.

I had to watch both of the boys and help with the actual snapping into place of some of the smaller pieces.  Their fingers just don’t quite have the ability.  They’re just learning to write letters, remember.  I also learned that this was a *one kid at a time* project.  When we first opened the box with its hundreds of little pieces, six hands were flying and grabbing, stuff was falling on the floor to get lost in the carpet, it was bad news.  I had to be mean mom to keep everyone away but one.

I can’t explain why, but I just feel like this is another big step for our boys.  Is that crazy?  They’re just toys… but, they’re big kid toys.

The family celebrates

We celebrated on the actual day of their birth by presents in the morning followed by a trip to everyone’s favorite breakfast place, Cracker Barrel

  Discovering their new Pillow Pets!

Patrick especially, was SO excited about his new bee.

The Birthday Boys’ breakfast

Mommy and Joe

Daddy and Luke

  The little bear loving life.

Later, in the gift shop, Andrew discovered a little violin that was just his size.  No matter how you played it, it was never out of tune (thankfully.)  He looked so darling with that little instrument.  He played it so seriously that he won a little audience of on-lookers that clapped every time he paused.  He had so much fun with that toy that he had a major throw-down when it was time to leave.  It’s so awkward carrying a kicking and screaming two-year-old through the rows and rows of breakable knick knacks on the way to the door.  Gotta love toddlers.  The violin playing was cute while it lasted.

Hi – YA!

Happy 5th birthday to Patrick and Luke!  We celebrated with a Ka-wah-tee Potty (or Karate Party in adult pronunciation).  We invited all of the kids from the twins’ class and a few others.  Everyone had a kickin’ good time!  Sitting very still at attention…  What’s that guy’s secret?

They played lots of games.  This one was jumping over the swinging belt.  Make sure it doesn’t hit you, Luke!  He was the last one standing in that game, and was so excited to ‘win.’

 

The obstacle course was a favorite with everyone

 

Patrick and Luke got to pound away with the instructor and his padded blocks.

The boys were presented with the great samurai sword…

with which to cut the cake!

 

They were delighted!  (apparently, so was the overly-excited instructor!)

A pre-sworded shot of the cake. 

Opening gifts went fine except that Scott and I forgot to go over present-receiving etiquette with them.  The first toy was something they already had, and they loudly announced that fact.  A few presents later, they got a book they already owned.  Patrick kept trying to give it back to his little friend that had given it to him.

Happy Birthday, Patrick and Luke!!

The Holy Hill explorers

We took a belated fall trip to Holy Hill… only one weekend too late for the peak fall colors, but beautiful, non-the-less.  Andrew loved putting the frisbee on his head, even for praying the stations.

We all tried to climb the tower to the top, but had some issues along the way.  Daddy is a bit afraid of heights, as is mommy, especially with a wiggly toddler in arms who could fling himself out and over the huge drops over the stairs.  Makes my toes curl to think of it even now.  All of the bigger boys didn’t notice the height until they were all up there.  Luke leaned over to Scott and said, “Can we go now?  I’m scared”  Scott was only too happy to accommodate him.

We had a little picnic snack before we went trekking around in the woods 

The boys found this cool tree that had fallen.

Our family explorers!  They were very proud of themselves for climbing to the ‘top’ of the tree.  It wasn’t very far off the ground, but enough to be a challenge for the little ones.

The best part of the tree was the roots that were sticking up at the base.  They had taken some ground with them when it fell and the result was a hole in the ground.  Patrick was brave enough to go in…  

and come out the other side!

Luke got to try, too.  Luckily, a family of skunks hadn’t found the little cubby hole before our boys did!  Yay, nature!

Pumpkin Patch time

  Daddy and Luke on the hay wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch via the ‘haunted forest.’

Love those eyelashes!  

The boys LOVED playing in the hay pit.

Patrick… and Luke buried themselves in the hay.  In the car on the way home, Luke almost went nuts because he was so itchy!  He couldn’t wait to get those clothes off and shaken out.

Andrew was doing saying “one, two, three… Cannonball!” every time he jumped.  When we got home, I gave him a bath that afternoon.  The next morning, I found some hay in his DIAPER!!  Where was he hiding it that whole time??

Jims Pumpkin Farm has a ‘Corny Trail” kind of like a corn maze, but not meant to get you lost.  It just has characters and cut-outs all along the way to make it fun.  Here, Andrew is hugging the ‘aliens’ that have landed in the patch.  They were just his size.

Three and a half pumpkins tall this year for Patrick…

 

and for Luke! 

Andrew poses for a picture, but we caught him at a bad moment.

Our baby can read!

For all of you parents that let your kids watch the qubo channel, you may know all about things like Bend-a-roos, pillow pets and ‘Your Baby Can Read’  Our boys have been very concerned that we need to get “Your baby can Read” for Andrew.  Even though the twins can’t read yet, they really feel that it’s important that Andrew can.

Yesterday, Joe brought home the book “No, David” by David Shannon.  It’s a cute book of admonitions from David’s mom to David to stop writing on the wall, playing baseball inside, running naked down the street, etc.  Since there are not many words, Andrew has memorized it after only a few hearings.

I will do my best to record this preciousness and post it here so you can all see it.  Check back in a few weeks.

Jack Frosting

We’ve enjoyed lots of flowers this summer, including my Mother’s Day gifts of Mexican Sunflowers and Pansies from the twins and Joe, respectively.  We planted a wild flower mix in a few empty patches (used to be Hostas, but I got SO sick of them all over the place!) and had Zinnias, Stella Doras, pink Rose bushes, Geraniums, Petunias, mini Snap Dragons and Annabelle Hydrangeas.  It really was lovely at it’s peak. 

But… last night, ‘Jack Frosting’ visited and killed most of them.  The boys came home from school talking about Jack and how he brought you stuff.  “Yeah, like frosting!”  me: “You mean frost?”  Luke: “Oh.  Yeah.  Frost.”  It was a sad realization for little boys that must have been expecting an October St. Nick.

So, that was the end of my garden, too.  I had peas early on – they only amounted to 2/3 cup when all was said and done.  That’s a lot of work for something I can easily get at the freezer section for a dollar.  I also had cucumbers that were very plentiful until the massive rain and flooding in July.  They all just rotted on the vine, but before that, they growing up my big sunflowers.  It was fun to harvest them hanging off the flower stems!  I had lovely zucchini and squash plants, but for all of the room they took up in the garden, I got ONE yellow squash out of it.  My biggest successes overall were the lettuce in the early spring, my carrots that just kept growing all summer, cherry and pear tomatoes, and the beans.  For a while there (as in, up to yesterdays last harvest) I could get one meal’s worth of beans every few days.  The boys, surprisingly, loved them just steamed with nothing on them.  yay!  Most of the carrots made their way into lunch boxes and snack bags.  Can I say that there is something very satisfying about feeding your children something you’ve grown yourself?  Have farmers and gardeners throughout history already known this?  I know, I’m late to the show.