Parties

I said earlier that this was going to be a busy week, I think I may have understated it. It's been a CRAZY week!!! Nothing like having a birthday on a holiday to make things that way. ;-) Well, today were the Valentine's Day class parties. Plus, with it being Noah's birthday tomorrow, we made it a little of both. I went in early with armloads of party supplies, treats, games, etc... as well as Noah's scrapbook, so he could show his class what he made this week.



I got there a little late, but I think that was ok. They were still busy passing out their v-day cards to each other, as well as some papers they were to take home. It was a bit chaotic. And, since I live in a constant state of chaos, I felt right at home. ;-)

After things were all finished up, the class gathered around me, Noah, and Olivia to talk about his scrapbook. He went through and showed them all the pictures, while I narrarated a bit on when they were taken and what they were about. He was kind of being shy, which was so odd for me, since I've never seen a shy bone in his body. Afterwards they asked him some questions. Most of them were about army stuff and who they knew that was in the army, since he did a page all about the army. Then we got out his MarioKart placemats and he showed them to all the kids. He's having a Mariokart birthday, so we bought enough placemats and cups for all the kids, so they could celebrate his birthday during that time. There were puzzles and word searches on the back and the kids loved them!!

Here he is after he passed out all his treats and juice and party supplies. He doesn't actually like juice, so he opted for water, but he downed those white cakes like they were nothing! ;-) Here he is with Olivia and his friend Cristian. And, yes, that's a cheek full of white cakes.

After they had finished eating, we played some V-day picture BINGO aka JINGO. We have a set of this bingo for all of the holidays they celebrate. All the kids love playing and actually asked me the minute I walked in the classroom if we were playing that and if I had lots of good prizes. :-) And, yes, I did!! Again, not easy carting all the snacks, drinks, supplies, bingo cards, and prizes not only to Noah's classroom, but also the bingo cards and prizes to Madie's as well!! But, as I was saying.... the kids voted on whether they wanted to cover the whole card or just play regular bingo. They voted in favor for the whole card!! I didn't quite bring enough marshmallows for them to use as markers for the whole card, but it ended up working by using a couple blocks from the toy pile as fill-ins. :-)

After JINGO was over, they decided to do a conga line in Noah's class, so I took the opportunity to sneak down to Madie's classroom where Pete was knee-deep in his own game of JINGO. They weren't looking to cover their whole card, so they were doing just fine. 20+ 2nd graders makes for a much louder and crazier class, but a lot of those kids I've known since kindergarten, so it's always fun to stop in and say hi to them. Olivia basically helped Madie eat her marshmallows, drink her juice, and hug Pete long enough to distract him from calling out the clues. Our time there was probably more of a disruption than a benefit, but it was still a fun little stop to make.

Here's one of the rare minutes I actually found Livie sitting still. She quite the social butterfly and had to make her rounds with Madie's friends. :-)

This is Madie's very best friend in the world, Michael. He's an absolute sweetie and he has a brother in kindergarten as well. So, Madie, Michael, Noah, and Andrew play together a lot. Madie informed me today that Michael said when they get married she's supposed to have one boy and one girl - though the names haven't been worked out yet. Told her to wait for at least another dozen years or so, then they can consider it. But, hey, his dad's the pastor at the First Baptist Church here in town, so at least we know he's a baptist!! :-) hehe

Anyway, they all had a great time at their parties. There is a giant basket FULL of candy in my kitchen now, that I'm sure will last them until Halloween. Well, at least until Pete and I get a hold of it anyway. And, I'll be on here tomorrow to tell you all about Noah's super-awesome 6th birthday!! Can't wait!

Noah's Scrapbook

I mentioned the other day that Noah and I have been working on making a small scrapbook for him to take in during his special week this week. We started a couple weeks ago and have been working on it here and there. Well, we finally finished it today. :-) He's so proud of it. So, I thought I'd share a bit of it here.




Here he is working on it the first day. Madie was very interested in helping, but I told her it was Noah's project, so she could give her ideas, but Noah was in charge. She didn't like that much, but still enjoyed helping. :-) Livie was interested for a few minutes, but had more fun just coloring the paper instead of designing the pages and picking out the pictures.

Here's Noah looking at a couple of the pages we did. On the Daddy page, he drew a little picture of the two of them holding arrows like on Zelda. He thought that was cool.

And, this is his favorite page. The very last page he did. Mostly because I let him do whatever he wanted to it, instead of directing him to do this or that. He picked out any special page he wanted (an army page) and used whatever stickers he wanted (army stickers) and then I put "The End" at the bottom and let him go to town. It was his favorite part. He tried to put an entire 12x12" page of stickers on a little 6x8" page, but he finally had to leave a few off, because he ran out of room. But, he got most of them on. Plus, he added a tank to the top, which made him very happy. He's all about the army and wants to join someday, he tells me. So, there's Noah's scrapbook. He'll take it to school on Friday and show it to all his friends then. So, Jude, what do you think? Are we professional scrapbookers yet? ;-)

Student Of The Week

Every child in Mrs. Newberry's class (and perhaps in all of kindergarten at Marseilles) is given a week when they are "Student of the Week". Typically they try and make the child the SotW the week of their birthday. I remember when Madie did it. It was fun! Now, it's Noah's turn. His birthday is on Saturday, Valentine's Day to be exact - something he's reminded everyone in his class anytime V-Day is mentioned apparently. ;-) Anyway, one of the things they do when it is their week is color and fill in this giant poster page about themselves. So, last night after supper, we worked on it together.



Noah's not one to color for long periods of time, so the fact that he nearly colored the whole thing in was quite something for him.

This was his finished product. He was so pleased with himself. The questions were as follows...

1. What is your favorite thing to do? PLAY WII

2. What is your favorite food? CRESCENT ROLLS

3. When is your birthday? FEB. 14th

4. Where is your favorite place to go? THE POOL

Then there is a space for a picture of his family and of him. We put pictures on of everything we have. I didn't have any of him playing Wii or eating crescent rolls though, so we just put pictures of that on there. He's get to show it to his class today and then later in the week he'll take in the scrapbook we've been working on that's all about him. Just have a few pages left to finish tonight and it'll be ready. I'll blog about that when it's done. Then on Friday, during the V-Day party, we'll celebrate his birthday with the kids. Going to be a busy week, but I'm sure he's going to love every minute of it!!

Family Fun Day

On Sunday we had what we like to call "Family Fun Day". Family Fun Day started last January after Pete spent 3 out of 5 weeks in Toronto and the kids were really taking it hard. We were trying to think of a way to do something special with them without having to travel somewhere, since Pete had just finished up all that travelling. We thought we could just get a few things for the kids that we could do as a family. Hence .... Family Fun Day! We've done puzzles together, paintings, games, etc.. And, the only rule for that day is NO TV. Just time together. Well, Pete had been in Toronto again and the kids were sad about that, so we decided another FFD was in order. We have them 3-4 times a year.



We made the kids close their eyes, so they would be surprised to see what we got to do that day as their FFD activities.

This is their reaction when Pete showed them one of the things we got them for that day.

When we were out on our date on Sat night, we went to the clearance section in Walmart and they had this gigantic 1000 pc lego set for $30. It was half off! Pretty cool! So, this was their major surprise. They were super excited!!

Since it was a castle, it came with a bunch of knights and archers and a king as well. The bad guys were skeletons (not sure why). Then the good guys had a horse and the bad skeleton guys had a dragon. They played with those all day and night long. This is Livie with her favorite archer and the dragon (also her fav).

This is Noah's knight being attacked by Livie's dragon.

This is Madie's evil skeleton king fighting the knight.

Madie helped us build a couple sections, but Livie and Noah mostly just played with the figures until we'd get a section done, then they'd play with those. Pete built the most of it. I was in charge of giving him the pieces he needed.

Pete had to take a break, because he was hunched over so long, his back was hurting, so I took over for the last tower.

This was the completed castle. Cool, huh?!! :-) It has a drawbridge, a secret entry way, a treasure chest, and cannons. They just loved it!!!

The other gift we gave them was a large Star Wars Clone Wars coloring pad. So, they each took a break from the legos and did some coloring. Livie's favorite is R2D2.

Madie's favorite is Anakin. There were several pictures with Anakin, but she chose this one with Asoka. She likes her too. :-) I actually broke the NO TV rule while they were coloring and playing with the castle later that afternoon, because I have a cold and was fighting a headache and the general blah feeling you get with those. So, I layed down for a while around suppertime, but after that we sat around the table and Madie worked on her valentines, while Noah worked on his schoolwork. It was a fun day and another successfull FFD. Whether it's staying in the house and building lego towers or going to the park and looking for leaves, it's always great to spend that time together and let our kids know that we love them and love every minute we spend with them. :-)

Our First Date :-)

OK, the title of this might be fairly misleading. Our first date was 15 yrs ago, but last night WAS a first date of sorts. It was our first date with a hired non-family babysitter where we weren't in the next room, but actually in the next town!! Very exciting for us. :-) A sweet young girl from our church watched our kids. We picked her up and brought her here, showed her around, and then took off. The kids didn't even say goodbye. So, any fears we had about them hanging on us and crying as we left were completely unfounded. Livie didn't even come out of her room to see us off. You'd think I'd be sad about that, but I wasn't. That just reassured me that she was going to be fine and have a great time. Pete and I did a little more couch shopping, before heading out to dinner. Our bank a few months ago double charged us for our house payment, which caused a domino effect with all our other bills. They corrected it and gave us a gift certificate for $50 to this place in Ottawa called Monte's. I had never really been there, so I was excited to go. It's really unassuming from the outside, but inside it's really dark, candlelit, and romantic. AND, it seriously had the best food I have ever had EVER!!! I got a chicken parmisan that was literally on a plate 2' long and the chicken was like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of chicken. It was gigantic. I maybe ate a corner of it. There was so much. Even Pete gasped when he saw it! But, not only was it of epic proportions, it was sooooo delicious! Pete got a prime rib, but couldn't resist my chicken. So yummy! After that, we were running late, so we called Anna and she said she could stay as long as we needed her - told ya she was sweet! So, we headed over to the store and did Noah's birthday shopping. It was so fun getting a chance to get out, have some peace and quiet, and get a meal in without worrying about cutting up the food or saying "keep eating!" as the kids got distracted. And, we even got to hold hands. Usually we have a couple kids between us when we do that. :-) I don't have pictures from last night to post, because Pete thought that would be dorky. I wanted to take pictures of us at the furniture store, the restaurant, Walmart, etc... chronicling our date, but it was probably better that we just enjoyed it instead of keeping track of it for the blog. Now that we know how well they do without us, I hope this will be the first of many dates in our future. After almost 8 years of having children and only maye 8 dates to speak of during those years, I think it's about time we took a little break once in a while for ourselves, don't ya think? :-)

Gimme An "A"

Tonight was Madie's pom-pom performance and she did a terrific job!!! She was so cute and you can tell she's a dance girl, because she really followed the dance moves. Nana and Papa Trolinger stopped by on their way up to Pete's sister's house and we went out to dinner, then headed over to watch Madie's half-time show.


Here is Nana T with Olivia in the stands while we were waiting for Madie to come out. :-)

Here's her group performing. This was the K-2nd grade class. There were a LOT of girls that came to the camp this year. There were 4 classes total and all of them were about this size.

Madie's there in the middle - the short one with skinny little legs.

Here she is when we picked her up afterwards. I made her do a dance move for me. I'm a dork. I know. But, she's still a cutie!!

This was all of us (minus me who was taking the picture) after she was done. Great performance Madie!!! Now, on to the recital in May!!

**Can you tell how thrilled Pete was that I made them take a picture. ;-) hehe