I DO BELIEVE IN SUNDAYS

I truly love it when our Sundays are "family days" spent at home, doing some chores and/or projects, but mostly just enjoying each others company (and getting to Skype with Grambot and PawPaw, and FaceTime with Gramma).

She asked me to play "castle" with her. It involved a lot of direction on her part as to who I was allowed to play with and what I was suppose to do with each character. Setting the mermaid sisters up for tea was prescribed, but my placement of her dino-riding princesses and Overworld Steve were not. Luckily she approved of their guarding the castle and I was not kicked out of the game. All other characters were to be put to bed though, no exceptions!

James said "I have a bright idea! Ha ha ha ha ha! I'm so funny!"

As I was (finally) putting away a week+ of clean clothes, I dismantled James' fort temporarily and Cannon scared me by being in an unexpected place... The cats generally aren't allowed in the kids' rooms, and I have no idea how he got up on the top bunk. Did he climb the ladder? Mystery.

Please tell me I'm not the only parent of Lego-loving kids who regularly finds buckets of Lego heads. No matter how many times I dump these buckets back in the abyss of Lego bins, they always resurface. And I find them in weird places too, as though the kids (or at least one of them) is stashing them secretly...

Don't look TOO closely at the below photos. I peeked out our bedroom window when I heard squealing and found Jay literally hosing off the kids before coming in for showers after HOURS of playtime outside in the dirt pile. I'm not sure who liked this activity more: Jay or the kids. I think it's every daddy's dream to be able to hose off their kids (rather than just threaten it).

EMILY'S 6TH BIRTHDAY

Our little friend Emily (from Cora's soccer team) turns 6 this week (we were surprised - we didn't know she was almost a year older than Cora!) and we were invited to celebrate with her at a unicorn themed birthday party that boasted two splashing opportunities: a long slip-n-slide and a tall waterslide. The kids loved it, they ended up seeing a few other buddies there (which sweetened the deal, not that they'd have cared if they knew nobody), and us adults just tried to stay in the shade as much as we could (not an easy task in a wide open field - Emily's daddy is a competitive ATV/Motocross rider and owner of an ATV/Motorbike shop, so they have a LOT of land to ride bikes on, out in Bovina not too far from the soccer fields).

Eventually this end pool filled up enough that the kids didn't look like they were bending their backs impossibly as they dropped in there...

I was SO PROUD of ALL the kids, all day, to be so good about waiting patiently in line and not crowding or cutting. Big bunch of well behaved, sweet kids in this group!

Just part of the giant open space at Meredith and Adam's place. See those dirt hills in the background? They are very steep and part of the track Adam uses to train. Eventually they plan to fill that low area back there with water from the nearby creek though, so they'll have a lake on site. Perhaps they'll rent their property out for birthday parties at that point?...

Cora and Olivia, one of her good dance buddies

There was a huge group of kids at Emily's party (this isn't all of them, though it is most of them). Emily is the cutie front and center with the curly locks.

James and Cora always insert themselves front and center for cake and presents...

Cora and Olivia taking a swing break. I thought it was too hot, but Cora says she was "making wind".

Enough "wind" that she stayed on the swingset for at least 20 minutes. When Olivia got bored (or hot...), her old buddy from Agape, Josie Claire, joined her.

After the party, we went to SnowBiz for snow cones to cool off and I couldn't resist snapping some photos of James "resting" in daddy's lap. My precious boys...

 

FRIDAY CUTIES

First time she let me send her to Kindergarten with pigtails (harder to do with her shorter hair, but those little clips Grambot gave her years ago were perfect with her navy shorts). She thinks they're for "babies", but somehow I convinced her this morning. I miss the pigtails...

I don't know if many other parents of uniformed kids do this, but I seriously just CAN'T send them to school in different colors (i.e. if James is in white and navy, so is Cora - I can't possibly send her in green and khaki or green and navy). Jay could care less, but unless I have a clean clothing shortage, my kiddos will always match for school now that they have to wear uniforms. They're not exactly Irish Twins, but they aren't that far off... (Not so secret fact: I also have a problem with the kids wearing non-matching pajama tops and bottoms - it makes me twitch when they or Jay grab pieces out of their sets! OCD runs in my family, it's not my fault...)

BRUSH 'EM, BRUSH 'EM, BRUSH 'EM

BACK SO SOON?

Mr. Alex had a quick return to Vicksburg this month! Instead of dinner out this time, we opted for dinner in! BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, roasted red potatoes, fruit medley, salad, and Hawaiian rolls! And chips and dip... And cheesecake... And Christina's famous chocolate chip cookies... Yeah, we know how to eat...

 Cora and Lauren's silly faces crack me up!

 After dinner, we let the kids stay up WAY past their bedtime (on a school night!) in order to Skype with Manu and Leo, and it was adorable how happy they were to see each other. James and Manu especially were very focused on the computer screen and showing each other their MineCraft toys (James' introduction to MineCraft stuck, and Manu is as obsessed with the game as James is!) They really do miss each other, and they really do remember each other perfectly. Just like I am with MY best friends, I was happy to see them fall right into their usual banter as though no time had passed (even though they haven't seen each other, Skype or otherwise, in 5 months).

The only bad part of the night was how much James and Cora cried when Alex left. Cora clung to him for extra hugs while James begged him to bring Manu with him next time. Poor little kiddos, they miss their buddies! (And yes, I will call Alex, and Al for that matter, Cora's buddies, because she loves her friends' daddies very much. Always has.)

USING HER IMAGINATION

James wanted to play with this toy after school and homework completion today, but Cora wouldn't let him until I took her picture with her creation. Check. And no, I don't know what it is. She was "using her imagination".

FAKER!

These boys both had good behavior this week (so far!), which allowed them some dual MineCraft Kindle play time while their sisters were in dance class. As if you can't tell by that bottom photo, James loves and idolizes Adler just a little bit (apparently he said something very funny).

 After dance, I made the (horrible) decision to take both kids grocery shopping with me. I bribed them with 15 more minutes of Kindle time once we got home (so they could watch whatever little kid shows they have saved on there that only work with WiFi) IF they could behave at the store. James succeeded with flying colors (I haven't had him behave that well at Kroger in AGES), but Cora was back and forth between trying her hardest and not trying at all... When we got back to the car, she was full-blown hangry and tired, yelling at both James and I, and about halfway home James alerted me that she'd fallen asleep. Long, tough day, I suppose.

 ...or perhaps not. I lovingly carried her inside, tucked her in on the couch, and took James back outside whispering to help me bring in the groceries. No sooner did we walk back in the door and we caught her dancing around in her light-up Princess Sophia shoes (thanks for those Gramma - she really likes them!) She was totally faking her nap, and I fell for it, even though I should know better (she does this pretty often at bedtime). Quite the little actress... we should have put her in commercials years ago and made some money off her dramatics!

OPEN HOUSE

Tonight we attended our first PTO meeting, which included dinner from The Hot Dog Man (James was thrilled to be eating hot dogs 3 days in a row this week - mama didn't plan dinners/leftovers very well...), followed by Open House. Jay and I split the kids, so he went to Kindergarten with Cora and I went to First Grade with James (though we both did briefly get to visit the other class as well). Cora's teacher and teacher's aid are thrilled with her behavior and skills, and had zero complaints or requests. She apparently loves Frozen (duh) and music time (again, duh), but is also wowing them with her reading skills and willingness to help around the classroom. She's a "delight" and that's very nice to hear! James' teacher is SO HAPPY with the progress he's been making behavior-wise (he was on GREEN yesterday and PURPLE today - we didn't even know he could get purple in his class...) and his academics are spot-on. His class does a lot of independent work (putting away their things, completing morning seat work, moving their own clothespin among the behavior colors, etc.) and his teacher says that this week if he gets off track, all she has to do is look at him and say "James" and he gets right back to what he's suppose to be doing. We found out that the kids keep a journal (I meant to look in his, but forgot because I was talking and taking pictures...) where they draw pictures and write their own sentences based on the story the teacher reads at story time. We saw some classwork similar to this come home yesterday and we were really impressed with James' ability to look at a picture and make up a few sentences about it, all on his own. They'll begin their AR exams soon, and are currently finishing up the pre-test STAR exams (which they'll take again at the end of the year to demonstrate how much they've learned). We're anxious to see how James is doing, but not worried, since he tested out at the First Grade 6-month level last March while in Kindergarten. (We already have Cora's scores and she did excellent!) The kids in his class are suppose to be reading and writing creatively and spelling (we started spelling words last week and I had flashbacks to my own Elementary school experiences and my mom quizzing me before bed each night), and while James is doing all these things, apparently more than half the class is not, so they're playing catch-up right now (which makes me wonder if some of his behavior issues lately have also been due to boredom, since they are currently doing work very similar to what he completed last year at Agape). Anyway, I counted desks this time (21 kids total: four groups of 4 desks, one group of 3 desks, and two solo desks in the back of the room...) and was happy to hear that the kids do get some social time during class in the form of small group work (completed with desk-mates). Also, peeking into the adjoining First Grade class, I saw/heard some things that made me really glad we ended up in Ms. Currie's class (and not the class we'd originally hoped for). Finally, we learned during the PTO meeting that SouthPark is gearing up this year to transform the school with The Leader In Me program, which is the program that the "premier" (AKA "Magnet") public schools in our area (e.g. Bowmar and Bovina) are accredited as. This is VERY good news for SouthPark, as it's an excellent program! They're also adding a skin cancer awareness curriculum to this year in order to qualify for an $8000 grant to help them install sun shades over the playgrounds, which makes us very happy! Good things are coming our way!

Cora and some of her classmates. The girl next to her, Elaina, is one of her new best friends

Big brother joined in the circle fun

James at his desk, while Ms. Currie goes through the daily activities for us parents

Showing off his behavior chart and some of his seat work displays

ADDY AND ELI'S FIRST DAYS

I'm posting these cuties here because we miss them so much and I want to record their first days of school for posterity (and share their cuteness with all of you!)

GETTING PUMPED UP FOR SOCCER!