Let me sleep on it

Sometimes I struggle with whether I've taken 'the sleep nazi's' book *

too seriously, then we go to a late lunch and .....

so what do we do??

we are not the most mature of parents ;-)

Harry wanted to get in on the silly, and Dean is always happy to oblige

*there is no chapter on tormenting your child in the book, that's all our doing

Meatloaf's Paradise By The Dashboard Light

Just another night

Dean is home and all is right with our world tonite.
The boys enjoying their 'working dinner'. It seems like they come home with a whole new vocabulary of working types of phrases from school like this and 'finish-up folder' and a whole lotta others I can't remember at the moment. One of Harry's favorite is 'working ___' - he will seem to do just about anything if I phrase it just right ;-)

You may remember these Valentine's mailboxes that the boys made a few years ago. Jack came up with a brilliant, sweet idea this year. He and Harry put special notes and pictures in the mailboxes for us, and we do the same for them. You always know there's a little bit of love in the box when the flag is up....
......looks like a little sweet for our sweeties!

I try to keep things picked up, but I can't complain too much when the 'mess' is stacks of books they are enjoying. It's been a mix of fiction and non-fiction lately, and they are really enjoying their reading club at school. It's the first time they have been in a real learning environment together - we'll see how it goes. My hopes go out to their teachers that it goes well!

Jack has had a real struggle this week with being too talkative and interrupting. If have no idea where he gets that :blush:, let alone the fact that he gets a double dose! It's been quite a while since he's had a 'yellow day' which means his teacher had to warn him about his behavior....he's had TWO this week, so he wrote his teacher this email:

Let's hope the self-control kicks back in soon! He's awfully sweet, so I have faith
Cat Stevens

Welcome Christmas, come this way!

Well, it's finally December and guess who's excited!?
I found the Santa hats, and they had at it

They both won their class spelling bees this week, so a little Grinchly trophies seemed in order. They will compete against each other and the entire school 12/16....that should be fun!

They were a little bit happy :-)

Jack doing his best Grinch impersonation...

....and our gappy-toothed Harry with his very own Max!

The (original) Grinch Movie

Oh oh oh oh, give em everything

'Tis the season, and the boys' school is having a book drive as well as providing canned goods for a local holiday program. I'm always so proud of their giving spirits, and they didn't disappoint today :-)

Books have always been an central part of our lives, and they really wanted to share some favorite books and make the holidays special....we debated long and hard about giving some abridged books but decided the stories were still good and they were much better than no stories at all. It was also a nice walk down memory lane to look at some of their old favs....

After the book look, we headed to the grocery story to get a bag of goodies for Harry to take to his class (Jack's flyer came home first and we'd sent in things the other day). He was happy to fill up a bag

I've been volunteering at the local food pantry and Food Lion is donating all boxes given between 12-2 on Saturday - please give what you can, the boxes are only $4.99 (and pretty heavy, judging by Jack's face ) and include emergency foods that would get a person through a couple of days.

JB's Jolly Mon

Say the word I'm thinking of

The boys have started 'word study' activities each week; they sort and categorize a series of words thruout the week and have tests on Fridays. They also have 'words of the week' - so far, 5 site words that also test on Fridays. It's kind of cool to have two different classes so that they have more exposure and see different ways to work with words.

Harry is working on consonant blends: sk, sm, sp. He found out that those are harder to find in story books - he went thru three on Wednesday nite before finding examples of all of them, but he did learn that sh and st are REALLY common in kids' books ;-)


He thinks he's ready for both test today, as well as his first reading test on The Mixed-Up Chameleon (and, no, I didn't find this in time for him to watch it, but think he'd dig that!).

********************

Jack's word study this week focused on long vs. short vowel sounds. His final word study activity last nite was sorting and gluing the pictured words.

His practice test was a big success because he only misspelled 'vowls' once and mixed up the date a bit....he did, however, remember to put his whole name and student number at the top along with the crazy date ;-)

He finished his practice test and was waiting for Harry, so he asked if he could turn the page over to write his sentence like in class...sure. Nice sentence(s), sweet boy! We love you, too! Thanx for the reminder about all the good things in life ~

Jack was a little enthusiastic about writing, and I dug out this old book (30+ years). I had this book as a kid but somehow lost it. A co-worker gave hers to me when I joked about toting it around as a kid. (Funny how I remember these things as I'm typing - thank you, blog.) Jack thinks he hit the jackpot and can't wait to 'read all those words - she is so smart to know 35,000 words!' I think 'she' is my friend, who wrote her name in the front - thanx, Doris, for setting another generation along the road to loving words :-)

The Beatles' The Word

Oh Jealousy, look what you've done...

Jealousy is the topic for this week's Spin Cycle, and it reminded me of this cool book that I found at a book fair while in those angsty, deep thinking days of grad school.

I think she captured it pretty well - it's one of the most corrosive emotions, IMHO. It can be silly or tragic, and I've come a long way in terms of letting things go...there's still work to be done, but being blessed and content eases a lot of those negative feelings for me. I've hopefully found more healthy ways to strive for things, relationships, etc. that I want than to let the green man rule - May the green stay far from us all!

Good Charlotte's Jealousy

Every one's a secret nerd

Oh, the joys of reading! Harry has particularly loved this series of books that I had in my work library - he was a fan of Look Inside Your Body first, especially when it was time to PT, then he fell in love with Look Inside The Earth, which is currently on his must-read list .... the coolest thing is that now he can read most of it - yay!

We have about 4 from this series, and I just found 3 more - some of the politics aren't exactly ours, but the boys really enjoy reading the books, especially the spiral-bound ones.



You may remember that Harry loves to find things within things, and he's still into roads, so his attention has been on the names of roads that we pass, practicing with the abbreviations RD, DR, LN, etc. Dr. has thrown him for a loop when it stands for doctor rather than drive, but he really seems to be enjoying learning all the tricks these days. Tonite, Jack was kind enough to share his Nerds with Harry, who promptly informed me that: "if you take the N, and E, and S away, you have the abbreviation for ROAD, Mommy!" (that *is* a capital R)
It's so cool watching his personality, interests and all the past lessons clicking into place :-)

The Ramones' Mama's Boy

And I love to live so pleasantly

These days sure are sweet! I sent them ahead to do their chores and walked in on Jack having 'A Conversation With Ducks', which seems like a good title for a work of art of some sort, right?

Harry decided he wanted a buzz cut....
but I couldn't go all the way with it - this was our compromise ;-)

Then I went to find Jack....

...and he had found a new favorite place to read

Speaking of reading,

Parent's Magazine Summer Reading List for toddlers and up - two of the books on the 4-8 list, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and Where The Wild Things Are ,are also movies coming out this summer ;-)

We went to see Up this weekend, and it was pretty cute. There were a few tense moments involving a pack of dogs, but they both seemed to like it. Can't wait to summer movies to start!


They were goofing around in the tub while I did a few chores, the laughing brought me in to find "we're two Mary's!"
The sillies continued, but I did catch them giving 'noggins' ala Crush from Nemo

Hope you're having a sweet day!

Cathy Dennis' Sunny Afternoon

Sweet dreams, little manS!

Sweet Dream Kisses are something we wish each other every nite, and when I found this book of adapted classics, it seemed perfect....we read Tom Sawyer and The Boy Who Cried Wolf tonite. It was definitely time to move up to more 'real' stories. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to read a whole story to them since we've been alternating a lot lately or they've read alone or with help. It was fun - great collection of stories with sweet pix!
And 'best friends' have been a major topic of convesation around here lately....well, Harry asked me today if I'd be his 'best mommy!' In context, it was about the sweetest thing :wub:

Dixie Chicks' Godspeed (sweet dreams)

Nobody No's Me Like My Baby

Monday was gorgeous, and we had the added bonus of our favorite man working from home...once his workday was done, we headed to the park and ran a few errands

Harry is very proud of his prize-box sunglasses
and took his first solo flight...

...with a little landing help from Daddy

Jack can find a tic-tac-toe game just about anywhere these days

(and thanx Ms. Correne for teaching him to play table tic-tac-toe today!)

Hi-Ya!

Four friends watching the paint dry on some road repairs after lunch...life in the big city ;-)
Thanx for introducing them to Chinese Ms. Keisha, Darius, Spencer and Ms. Correne

My friend Jackie gave me a gift certificate for my birthday, and I ended up getting a few things, including this book - it may be preaching to the choir a bit, if you think I'm strict, or a good thing if you think my kids are out of control ;-) So far, I'm really liking it, and happily lifting lots of tricks. I'm reading about the effects of our Yes culture...scary stuff.

Do you have any favorite ways to say no to your teenies?

Lyle Lovett's Nobody Knows Me Like My Baby

The Night Before Christmas

I bought this book from Hallmark forever ago, and somehow it's become our Christmas Eve tradition to read it together before settling in for our long winter's nap. The pop-ups and the moving parts still work, tho they test it every year and one of the strings to tie it closed was lost many moons ago....

Harry 2006

Christmas Eve 2007


Jack 2007

Harry moves in 2008

Gene Autry