Starfish of the Week

Today, W was Starfish Student of the Week.   Each week this year students have been selected and they give a special presentation of Friday.  Today, T & I went to be W's special guest.  Here's W with his poster all about him.  Along with W is the class mascot, Duke.

Here's W about to start his presentation.  All the kids wanted high fives from him.  I think W was most excited about getting to sit in the big rocking chair (cause that's where all the star students sit)

 After his presentation, W was allowed to go around and show all his friends his "mystery item" up close and personal.  W's mystery item was his red angry bird.  They have to give the class three clues and see if they can figure it out.  His clues were #1:  I got this when I got a stitch.  #2:  It talks  #3 It's red & angry.  One of the kids figured it out by the 3rd clue.

 Along with hearing his presentation, the guest(s) get to eat lunch with their student.  Since I knew it was a special day,  I went by Subway and brought W his favorite sandwich.  T had a blast eating with the big kids.  All the teachers commented on how well-behaved he was too.  Little did they know he had received a long speech beforehand on how to act at the big school.  ha!

 My star student is pretty special regardless of the week!

Easter 2012

Easter - what a wonderful celebration. I hope our boys always remember the reason we celebrate Easter. As T said it "it's when Jesus rose!"

However, when I went into his room that morning, he was standing by window looking out and said "Mom, I saw the Easter bunny. He was running around outside. He was black. He was fast". Oh my.....sounds like we still need to do a little work on what Easter is all about. On a totally different note, we did find out that our boys could literally eat an entire honey baked ham on their own.

My boys - I love all of them!!!
Best shot of the boys with their momma
This pic of T is so funny. He looks like a superhero or a supermodel. Take your pic.
Here's what boys do with Easter baskets. They are too silly.
C was all about finding eggs this year. We let him get a 1 egg head start :)
This picture cracks me up. Truly what it was like seeing two boys run around and try to be the one who found the most. Yes, tears were shed at the end but it all worked out.

Spring Break Part 2: Fun around town

The day after my parents left, this is what I saw a lot of at my house. Today and technology with our kids - it's really great and sad all at the same time.
That's when I decided we needed to do some things around town. So, on we go for our week of adventures. S was home one day for a doctors appt so we took the opportunity to go out for some frozen yogurt.
The next day, I decided to take the boys bowling. Now it's a big feat to take these boys anywhere by myself much less bowling at nap/rest time! But, they did great and had so much fun! AND so did I!
C showing off his muscles. This boy is a brute!
W and his bowling moves. Thank goodness for bumpers!
Ok, here's where it gets funny. This is how T bowled every single time. Think he had fun??

Here's our final score. I'm really a better bowler than this. BUT, in my defense I was making sure 3 boys stayed in place and didn't break anything while I tried to bowl and not hit them with the bowling ball when I swung. It's quite difficult - you try it.
After our bowling day, the next day we did a local farm called Frying Pan Park. I've been wanting to go here but really hadn't had the chance. What a great place! It's a farm that's open to the public to view all kinds of farm animals for FREE! They have picnic areas, playgrounds, carousel and wagon rides. Quite the place. Made us feel like we were back in Pesselville (ok just a little)
We saw all kinds of baby animals. Here's the baby pigs.
Baby chicks....
Sheep and cows were a hit with C
Notice there are no pics of T with animals. He wouldn't go near the fence! I can't get over this boy's fear of animals. Just a phase????

Finally, a picnic to top off the visit. It's was a little cool this day and not the best picnic weather but we still had fun.
Among all this fun, I was able to finish the class project for Tyler's school auction. I found this idea online randomly and decided it would make a great project. Each fish is a child's handprint from his class. I think it turned out so fun!
The week was fun and it was great to be a little lazier and see all the boys playing together. However it made me realize how much I need to prepare for summer. We are going to need some serious structure or I'll go crazy! Looks like another mini-homeschool summer for us again this year! :)

Spring Break Part 1: Texas visits D.C.

We started Spring Break with a visit from the grandparents. This was my parents' first visit here to D.C since we moved here. My mom has(had) a fear of flying and has only flown once in her entire life. So, she faced her fear and finally came to see us. She got through the trip with flying colors and realized it's not so bad. We had a great few days with them.

The boys got plenty of opportunities to get my dad back for all those years of "picking" on us girls. HA!
The first day, S and the big boys took my dad to the Air and Space Museum. Meanwhile my mom and I took C and did a little outlet shopping.
The next day we did the whole DC tour. I knew my mom had never seen D.C. but I never realized my dad, although having been to DC before, had never seen the sites up close and personal. It was a real treat to get to show them all these wonderful monuments. Since seeing DC in a day is hard to do and requires tons of walking, we decided to ride one of these:
Of course we got off at several stop to take a closer look:
And it still required lots of walking. My parents had their hands full! HA!
Turned out to be a beautiful day for taking in the sites.

Spring was definitely in full force - there were tulips everywhere. And so beautiful!
And we were also able to capture the last remaining cherry blossoms. Most have lost their blooms since they came so early this year.
The last day we took it easy and my mom and I got the chance to see this:

Let me tell you I was so pumped to get to see this movie! I'm not a reader but I read all three of these books over Christmas in like 3 weeks. That's a record for me. When I told my mom how good they were, she (not a reader either) started them and couldn't put them down. So it was fun for us to get the chance to see this together. Good - but the book is SO much BETTER!

All in all it was a great visit with the grandparents. We are currently on grandparent de-tox! HA!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Spring Break.....