Field Trip!

We went on a field trip with some other homeschooling families to the Fire Safety Town in Frisco.

Holy cow!  It’s like a mini town built just for kids with real brick buildings, real (but ‘jeep-sized’) streets with real stop lights and signs.  Patrick, Luke and Andrew had a great time driving around and obeying (sort of) all of the traffic laws.

Joe’s class was on bike safety and he and his pals got to ride around on bicycles once the jeeps were put away.

We are now working hard on memorizing our address and how to dial 911. It’s not as easy as you think for a little kid – they now teach “911 green button” so they can call it on a cordless phone or a cell phone.  I wouldn’t have ever thought of that.  We have to teach “911 TALK button” since it’s not green on our phone.

Fat Tuesday

Joe, Luke and Patrick

Yesterday, the boys all came downstairs for the start of school like this.  I think we need some better Theology classes regarding Fat Tuesday!

We did discuss Lent with the boys and we all agreed on some group goals for prayer and almsgiving (we’re giving up our weekly Sonic happy hour so we can donate the money) and each of the boys decided on an individual fast.  They all picked their bowl of ‘sugar cereal’ (honey nut cheerios or frosted mini-wheats) that they get after their regular bowl of cereal.  This morning, I came into the kitchen to see Joe happily munching on some sugar cereal.  Wow, that lasted a whole seven hours!  (six and a half of which Joe was asleep)

Drool bombs

Today at the doctor, I was holding Peter facing out and he drooled a huge puddle right onto the floor.  We had to mop it up so no one would slip on it!  I guess today is the day the faucet was turned on.  I’ve missed the actual day with the other boys, but there’s always a noticeable increase in the gooey wet stuff.

This picture was taken a mere minute after I took off his shirt.  That’s a lot of drool!

Poor Peter got his first shot today.  He’s been a grouchy mess all day.  In an attempt to cheer him, I played airplane with the little man on my knees while lying on my back.  Of course, all of the other boys gathered around to entertain him and my tummy became the ‘jungle’ where they would drive their cars.  (???)  Out came the drool from the baby, which dropped on my tummy.  Joe laughed hysterically at what he called a ‘drool bomb’ from the ‘fighter plane’ above.

The BEST thing about having baby #5 (besides, of course, having another sweet baby to care for and love) is witnessing the other boys’ reactions to him.  Everyone is SO interested in him.  Okay, maybe that interest is only for a span of a few minutes, but those moments happen many, many times in a day.  They are always introducing him to people wherever we go (eg, Joe to completely disinterested checker at Wal-Mart: “This is our baby Peter.  He just smiled at me 4 times”).  They love trying to get him to smile at them.  It’s like a badge of honor.  They are also obsessed with Peter’s ‘firsts’ (eg, “This is Peter’s first time inside Grammies house!” and “Is this Peter’s first trip to McDonalds?” (sadly, no)).  And everyone wants to be the one to witness developmental firsts like grabbing toys and saying his first word – according to Luke, it’s “hi” (dubious, I know!).

Welcome to the Church, Peter Michael

Last Sunday was Peter’s baptism.  We’ve been so lucky to have priests we know and love baptize our boys at St. Therese.  Fr. Mike was transferred last summer, but the new pastor was our friend from TEC retreats (wow, so many years ago now… eighteen?  Is that even possible?) Fr. Joe Cisetti.

Fr. Joe gave everyone a job to do.  Joe was the ‘server’, holding the book.  Luke got to hold the white garment, and Patrick got to hold the candle until it was time for the Godfather to hold it.

Peter was NOT happy!  The whole baptism, he was fidgety, but when Father poured the water over his head, he got mad!  Look how red his little head is!

Andrew’s job was to blow out the big Easter candle when it was all over.

The peaceful new little child of God.

Peter’s Godparents were our dear friends Anna and Doug.  We’ve been friends for over 17 years!  Anna and I also met on TEC (sheesh, it’s like a mini-hoot in this one picture!)  We’ve been so blessed to have them in our lives.

After the baptism, we celebrated at Pizza Shoppe.  That’s where the worst thing of the day happened: Patrick spent 20 minutes locked in the car outside of the restaurant.  When we were going in, there was a lot of chaos making sure we got everything and taking care of the baby.  Pat was dawdling in the backseat (per usual), and we all walked away.  Scott locked the doors and no one noticed that he was missing amid all of the excitement.  When we finally realized he was gone and found him in the car, he had been crying and was pretty upset.  Poor guy.  Talk about feeling awful as a mother!  What we couldn’t figure out is why he didn’t just unlock the door and come in.  He knows how.  He must have just panicked in the moment.  I hope he doesn’t keep that in his little heart as the main memory of this special day.

Grandpa entertained the kiddos with balloons and a few magic tricks.  He even entertained some of the adults:

Saint Fr. Joe!  (that’s a balloon halo – the picture angle is a bit off)

Yee-Haw

We went to the Fort Worth Stock Show for Mom’s birthday! 

We were too late to get rodeo tickets, but the boys had a blast viewing all of the animals (that were left… we went on the last day).

 

Patrick and Daddy pose with a willing cow.  Pat even gave him a hug good-bye.

They got to try their hand at lassoing a stationary steer.  It was funny/boring to watch them try to get the hang of it.  Hee hee.

Luke tries first…

Look out, Mr. Real Cowboy!

Pat misses.

Pat misses again.

Andrew’s lesson

Um, not quite.  See what I mean about funny/boring?

Pretty sure this was staged…

Joe’s turn.  Leave it to Texas to have this activity.  Joe’s even wearing a Texas Longhorn hat.  Too funny.

Our favorite area was the FFA Farm Babies.  New chicks, duckling, goats, piggies and rabbits.  We even got to see some of them nursing.  The boys noted that it was just like Peter.  Cute.

Just like Magic

Grandpa came back to stay with us last week while Scott was gone.  He brought Joe a few magic tricks including a coloring book.  Joe can magically make drawings appear on the pages, then he can magically color them!  He was pretty excited.  Peter seemed to be interested in it, too.  Joe loved the audience.

Mommy enjoyed the company, the lunches and dinners eating out, the trimmed front bushes, the chance to catch up on laundry and one extra favor.  While Grandpa was here, I ran to the garage freezer to grab something for dinner.  What I grabbed was squishy.  Then it hit me… the smell!  Nothing in there was frozen.  It all smelled rotten.  What happened??

We noticed that the freezer was plugged into a GFCI outlet.  I remembered that there was an electrical storm with a little power blip.  Surely, that’s what tripped the freezer.  That was last Tuesday.  Nasty.  God bless Grandpa for cleaning out that mess for me.  The freezer will stink for a while, but I can manage that.  Grandpa even replaced the outlet with a non-GFCI one. 

The worst part was that we just went to Costco and stocked up on ‘convenience foods’ – turkey burgers, chicken nuggets, frozen fish, turkey meatballs – and the very worst part:  the freezer had some meals my mom and mother-in-law had made for us.  Sad.