Chore day, fun day.
Month: March 2022
Chore day, fun day.
Kaitlyn loves board games. She would play all day every day if she could find enough willing participants.
Ben has been attached to this hat for two days. He even slept in it last night.
Ah look. Alex came to hang out with me in my office. (In reality, his charger lives in my office and he was here out of necessity.)
Breakfast routines.
I love getting to see Kaitlyn in a school setting. She and her friends enjoyed every minute of the puppet show!
Ben is going to feel at home in all the elementary schools long before he is old enough to attend. Today he got to see a puppet show while I took pictures for the yearbook. I was glad that he loved every minute and I could do what I needed to without problem.
This actually happened a few weeks ago in church, but it took me a while to get the video. We sent the kids up front for children’s church and Pastor John brought out his puppet. My youngest two would not leave the puppet alone. They were touching it and fiddling with Pastor John’s robes. I’m thinking, why can’t my kids just sit quietly. Then Ben looked towards the back of the church and I saw the exact moment he realized there was a monitor and he was on camera. He took full advantage and treated everyone to his bootie dance. I was no longer embarrassed by the fact that he was messing with Pastor John’s puppet. Now he is forever known as the child that danced in front of church. Pastor John referenced that dance throughout the entire service – long after the kids were escorted downstairs for Sunday school. I also had numerous people I had never met, including the preschool director, come up and introduce themselves and ask about Ben…
Ben and I decided today was the perfect day for a hike. Ben is a very active 4 year old, but he is also pretty much in it for the snacks. He couldn’t wait to pack his backpack full of snacks. He picked the trail – the duck walk. We’ve walked this many times before, but today, we found a part of the trail we’ve always missed and walked much, much farther than before. Ben didn’t complain, didn’t have to stop to eat, and carried his pack then entire way. Obviously a 4 year old is a much improved hiker over a 3 year old!
These kids just love chores. Hanging up their clothes is another favorite. Often I find them shoved under beds or in drawers or sometimes even put in the dirty clothes bin – that does not go over well!
I found a snoozing Teague when I got home today. I think his randomly set early morning alarms are catching up with him. (We sometimes see that he has alarms set as early as 2, 3, 5, etc.)
Ben used his own money to buy the Mickey Funhouse and you have never seen a little boy so excited for the Amazon lady to arrive. She said his excitement made her whole day.
The rule is homework on the Chromebook has to be done in the kitchen. It only happens about 25% of the time, but I’ll take what I can get.
It’s a great day to be outside! These three spent hours racing and running.
It’s a great day to be outside! Kaitlyn hasn’t learned to ride a bike on only two wheels yet, but she will scooter all day long.
It’s a gorgeous day to be outside!
One of Alex’s Christmas gifts was the ability to take one of his own drawings and putting it on a sweatshirt. He was so excited and started work on it immediately. It took a few months, but he had the sweatshirt by his birthday. (I just didn’t get around to posting the story behind it till now!)
How appropriate that Alex is writing a paper on Alexander the Great.
This is Teague trying to convince me it is not actually his day to unload the dishwasher, but the calendar doesn’t lie. Odd days are always Teague.
Puppy eyes.
A favorite hiding place in our house.
Our refrigerator has died for the second time in three years. The first time, Wade took it apart, diagnosed the problem, ordered the part, and was able to fix it. We knew almost immediately that something was still wrong. Either the replacement part was faulty or we had a bigger issue. However, the refrigerator was cooling so we decided to deal with it another day.
This went on for at least a year. Our luck ran out last week. Thankfully it was winter, so we moved most of the food to the basement refrigerator and the unheated sunroom. I deep cleaned the fridge and Wade worked on diagnosing the actual problem. With the help of the internet, he found that our particular refrigerator has a documented problem with its cooling fans. They tend to only last 1-2 years, which is what we have experienced. Thankfully, we can order then online and I have an experienced handyman that installs them for free.
Ben was so excited when KitKat jumped up on his bed as I was reading him a book at nap time. We were both shocked when she stayed even after I left the room. I came back up once to take a picture and wish I had come again when Ben was actually sleeping. KitKat stayed the entire afternoon – even after Ben woke up and came downstairs.
In other news, Alex now wears the headphones to play basketball too.
Teague has varied interests and will often go down a rabbit hole. Recently he asked Wade and I to help him learn the digits of pi. Wade and I told him the number was online to find and we’d be happy to help but we didn’t jump right to it. We just assumed it was another Teague random interest. Today he came home with a mini-pie because he got up in front of the class and recited 22 digits. We had no idea he wanted to learn because it was a contest at school. He never mentioned that part! The all-school winner memorized 142 digits (insane)!
Dolls. Dinosaurs. Cars. She’s versatile.
First day of preschool with no masks!
I had some ladies over for a PTG meeting and they were so impressed Alex had on his button down. I tried to explain that we had been to church and that he had no other clothes because he hadn’t done his laundry… It didn’t matter. They still thought he was amazing.
Just a little fun “baking” with everything Mom owns.
Determined to take care of it himself and not wait for Mom or Dad to finish their projects.
(He did successfully complete the battery switch all on his own.)
I had noticed the last few weeks that the level of chocolate chips and baking M&Ms were dropping much quicker than they should in their containers. I made a general comment at breakfast that whoever was eating them needed to stop. When I came down for breakfast today I saw that someone had left the chair in front of the pantry cabinet. I quietly put it back, but being a really smart mom, I immediately deducted someone was sneaking chocolate before I came down for breakfast. (The chocolate is kept in the upper cabinet and they can’t reach it without the chair for help.) I also knew it had to be either Alex or Teague because the little kids were still asleep. I didn’t say anything at this point.
Later in the morning, I was helping to pack backpacks and found a ziplock bag full of chocolate chips in a boy’s backpack. Big no-no. Not only is chocolate not an approved school snack, but definitely my kids aren’t allowed to help themselves to that much chocolate on non-dessert days. I quietly removed the bag and brought it up later in discussion. The guilty party had the audacity to try and tell me it had been in there for weeks. (He doesn’t know the chair was a dead give away.) Busted.
Electronics night.
Ben found his own special nook for electronics tonight.
Spring sports began this weekend in earnest. Alex and Kaitlyn are both playing lacrosse. That’s multiple practices a week and one game. Until it warms up, they have practice indoor at a facility in Marlborough, which is 30 minutes away. Kaitlyn will also be playing soccer which hasn’t started yet. Kaitlyn and Ben are still taking swimming lessons. Finally, Ben says he wants to try soccer again. We’re all curious to see how that goes…
Game night.
(Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza)
I’m not sure it is here to last, but we finally have some warmer weather. Kaitlyn especially seems to enjoy it and is spending every minute outside that she can.
Cookies coming right up. (Well, in our house, cookie dough coming right up!)
Teague is getting braces today so he packed a lunch he could easily eat in the car beforehand. Ben and Kaitlyn were quite fascinated by the lunch packing. Due to free lunches for this year, lunch packing has not happened a lot in our house.
We had a change of plans last week in terms of orthodontics. Teague has had an appliance in for a while and they were doing a checkup. He’s lost quite a few teeth lately and at this evaluation, they gave us the choice of pulling quite a few permanent teeth down the road or moving straight to braces and using those to create extra space.
I had permanent teeth pulled to make space and decided we would try the braces route. Teague got braces today and should have them for 2-2.5 years, much longer than Alex, but here’s hoping it all goes smoothly and he gets to keep all his permanent teeth!
After dinner electronics time.
Ben came home from school today with a container of bubbles. We both forgot about it till nap time. Then I was able to put him off with “after nap.” After nap, it was cold and getting dark. I couldn’t believe he still wanted to put on all his snow gear and go outside just to blow bubbles. I honestly wasn’t even sure he knew how to blow bubbles. He went outside by himself and proved me wrong. He had an awesome time blowing bubbles all by himself in the cold, semi-darkness.
Some things you might not know about Alex.
1.) He does not shut cabinet doors. (Evidence behind him.)
2.) He often takes a random walk if the weather is decent.
After school will always find Teague just like this, doing his 20 minutes required reading and eating popcorn.
Mickey – is on a morning adventure to the moon.
Dress up clothes are the thing today.
Ben has been begging to do his own experiments. He came to me with his own experiment cards and we managed to do two experiments this morning – determining which liquid cleaned a dirty penny better (lemon juice or water) and trying to mix oil and water. Ben loved using the tools from the boxes most of all!
We are early birds at our house (except for Wade) and can fit a lot in before everyone gets on the bus. These two clowns had a great time racing, sword fighting, and playing “I Spy” before Kaitlyn’s bus came this morning.
Alex is determined to find a certain passage in a book he has read previously. He is having quite a bit of trouble. He even tried the internet for help. At this point I suggested rereading the book might be the easiest solution.