Watercolor Time

The stars aligned a few days ago and I found myself twirling my thumbs and wondering what I should do with Lincoln and Evan (normally I run in circles and never ponder greater questions such as this!) So we pulled out the water colors. I was surprised at how well they handled the color/rinse/blot regime. Quite impressive for their age. I like how they both have distinct styles. Evan is going through a hieroglyph stage, and Lincoln likes bigger swirls of color! These styles remained consistent over two different sessions and multiple pages at each. :)

All in a Day

Never a dull moment! After morning karate Grandma and I took the kids to check out two different playgrounds:

We took a detour by Great Harvest in between our park locales:

The boys were very excited about their new weapons (tonfas) that they just got at karate this very morning!  Lots of weapon practice ensued.

Genevieve pulled out her sewing machine.  She humored her little brother and let him observe.

Love her little wall hanging.  She free stitched the cute house in the middle.  Don't you like the quotes she chose?  Home Sweet Home, and Hugs Not Hits (something I say to Evan on a regular basis!)

Bentley plugging away at his 2000+ pages of library books.  I think he's reading four different series right now. Perhaps he got a little over zealous with putting books on hold at the library?  I showed him how to put a book on hold a few months back and he's been having quite a bit of fun with the hold feature ever since!

Jake has been drawing this week.  Love this one he did today:

 

What else?  Meals, Popular Mechanics for Kids, Lego building, bath time, etc... never ever EVER a dull moment.  :)  We are blessed!

Kitchen Helper

Isn't she cute?  As the self reliant type, Genevieve is big on learning new skills.  Lately she's been using the vegetable peeler and is quite taken with peeling potatoes.  I let her brown the hamburger meat a few weeks back and when she saw I was browning more today she begged me to let her do it.   I certainly won't object!

We Love Grammar!

I have waited decades to finally have a student who loves grammar as much as I do! Bentley and Jake are joys to work with and Viva is slowing coming around, but I don't know that she will ever reach the point where she loves to identify parts of speech like the boys and I do. (Her mother hasn't yet learned to love grammar.) I am going to research sentence diagramming apps. What fun!

Lincoln has been ill (again) the past few days, so he didn't join the fun.

Beanie Baby Bonanza

Last month I went to the thrift store to find some shirts to make a scrap quilt. At the thrift store were three large laundry baskets filled with Beanie Babies in like new condition. I picked out a few for the children and then remembered my friend Mary who donates hundreds of blankets to different organizations that serve children in crisis. She makes a quick quilt and adds a stuffed animal. I called her to see if Beanie Babies were something she wanted. She did. I bought them all. I let the children pick out one each. They had a hard time choosing, but eventually they settled on:

Bentley: a snake 

Jake: a monkey

Lincoln: a parrot

Viva: a lynx

Evan: wouldn't choose (we kept a kitty for him)

Me: a dragon

I passed the remaining 169 on to Mary. She and I split the cost.

Ukulele Night

The boys took a month long break from ukulele night to prepare for the karate tournament. (Kara will be posting on the tournament soon.) Now they are back to their regular Friday night date with Opa. They took their karate medals to show their ukulele group. It's cool for the boys to be part of a community group comprised mostly of adults. They are the only kids who regularly attend.

New Swords!!

Last Christmas I purchased too many gifts for the children, so I saved the swords for later gifting. Today seemed like a good day to pull them out. The children have all been sick for weeks. We had a brief respite while the boys were attending their karate tournament (yeah!), but then the children (and opa) fell sick again. Jake skipped karate for a week when he came back. Bentley missed some days at karate, too. When they went back this week, they both said their muscles really ached holding the kata stances. Viva has been sick, but since she is switching gyms, her down time was easy to fit in. Evan has run a fever for days. Lincoln has been ill, but so far no croup!! (Last month we called the EMTs out one night because Lincoln had a severe croup attack unlike any we'd seen, but by the time they got here he was doing better.) We are so sick of being sick.

We needed an injection of fun into our house of illness. Lincoln and Evan (and Viva--as if she cares) received light-up, noise-making swords (the older boys have something similar already--see first photo below). Bentley and Jake received new, foam pirate swords (see second photo below). B was quite excited to get a new pirate sword. Jake stepped on his a few months ago and it broke. Bentley even changed out of his pajamas today, so he could dress as a pirate!

Evan played with his brothers, but then he wanted to show his sword off to his mom. Bentley went downstairs to show great-grandma his new pirate sword (and to get his pirate bandana and spyglass). He discovered his little brother had shown up there before him. Evan likes to visit great-grandma!

We know how to have fun on a Friday!

(PS It's only been two hours and Kara has banned the swords from the main floor. She says they are too noisy. Lincoln and Evan are back upstairs playing in my closet where it's dark.)

Photo Ode to L & E

Opa has taken a few photos of Lincoln and Evan over the past month. Here are some of them:

 

Boy Play

Lately the older and younger boys have been enjoying the same types of play. Bentley has been building forts downstairs and the younger boys play in them until they are banned for destroying the forts (mostly Evan). The older boys built a marble run that everyone has been using. It's still up in the living room. We cleared the Legos off the train table in the main floor family room and the boys battle with toy vibrating bugs. (It is not clear to me how you win a bug battle.)

And, of course, all four boys have a strong interest in iPad games!

Viva once in a while joins the boys in play, but she has her own interests. She made duct tape collars and leashes for two of Lincoln's dogs (at his request).

B's Pogo Stick

Grandma Vicki gave Bentley a pogo stick for his birthday. (I think he asked her for it.) Since his birthday is in January, there was too much snow and ice on the driveway to use it. Bummer! However, by mid-March the driveway was looking good, but...he had a big karate tournament he was training for. You can't injure yourself trying out new sports just before a tournament. It wasn't until after he returned from Las Vegas that pogo stick was used.

Last week, Bentley got his stick out and he quickly mastered it. Friday afternoon he set his first record: 15 jumps. I was texting Grandma Vicki about his progress. He hit 100 jumps next and was at 110 when he quit for the day. Saturday he was back outside working to set new records. His final record was 423 consecutive jumps. He admitted his legs were getting a little tired! Grandma Vicki and I were quite amazed. She pointed out that it must all those karate exercises--it takes strong thighs to hold kata stances. He has shared his pogo stick with his siblings, but they haven't had enough time with it to set their own records.

Happy Easter!

Easter was a week ago. Jake, Bentley, and Matt were out of town. Great-grandma went to Mark and Cynde's for dinner. We had Grandma Vicki and Marjory join us here for ham. We had three egg hunts this year. First we had two egg hunts the day before Easter--one put on by the Easter Bunny's assistant and one for the Easter Bunny's assistant. A week later when the older boys returned from their trip we had another egg hunt because they requested one. Everyone helped fill the eggs for the third egg hunt.

We did not dye eggs this year. We cannot do it all, but we try to do some of it!