England day 5

When I pick Christopher up from school, he usually wants to go see the fish in his school's main office. Right now there are also polar bears and penguins...
Out in the hallway there are pictures on the wall. Christopher likes to stop and see his picture from pajama day...

England day 2

The Penna Men

While Juliet is in England, the boys and I are fending for ourselves. The adventure began with a birthday party for one of Christopher's friends at a gymnastics center in Easley...





For dinner that night we had hot dogs, mac & cheese, and corn on the cob...

Oh, and I caught John splaying a two-player wii game using both remotes.  He won.

Later, we listened to some music and danced before the bath...

Breakthrough!

Yesterday John went from reading as a chore to "I love reading!"
He has a series of small books (10 pages or so with just four words on each page) called "Bob Books." (Not Bob the Builder). We have been forcing him to read those to us occasionally during our nightly reading sessions, which he did begrudgingly. But last night he started reading them on his own, and he enjoyed it a lot more! Now he is blazing through the books, and tonight he read "Hop on Pop" to Christopher.

Hurray!

Typical Toddler Talk

Christopher is firmly in the toddler camp, and talking up a storm.

Here is what we hear most frequently:
"Mine"
"I need that."
"I do it."
"Come over here."
"Oh my."
"Oh my goodness."
"Where's John?" "Where's Daddy?" "Where's Mommy?"
"I see?"
"Here go, John." (Here you go, John)

Merry Christmas, so here is Christopher's birthday

Better late than never, right? Right?!
Anyway, here are some pictures from Christopher's birthday party back in November. It was just him and Ever, his friend from school. She's very cute and her mom and dad are very nice. We know that because they were impressed with our large collection of light sabers, and encouraged Ever to wield them along with our two JIT (Jedi in Training).

The big hit at the party was John's hanging bar. Ever impressed all of us by hanging on for a long time.

I think this was her very first time!



Look at that smile!




She could hang a long time, she was very strong! I think her mom and dad were surprised at how well she did and how much she liked it!







John showed off his tricks.





Christopher tried too, but he hasn't quite got the holding on part yet.



The next activity was decorating re-purposed Halloween Happy Meal buckets with stickers in preparation for a scavenger hunt. Miss Kerri reintroduced me to the joys of scavenger hunts for kids and we had one for Christopher. I took pictures of locations around the house. Christopher would go to the location and then Ever would pick up the toys. They were a great team.

After that we had fruit, chicken nuggets, and cupcakes!







Then the kids just played a little bit. It was a really good party.

John and Christopher later watched TV.



I actually had a 5K that morning before the party. I received the prestigious "first in age group because I'm the only one still there" award! It was really cold, and so only newbies stayed for the awards. Basically the race director read down the list of names to find people who were still there! Our friend Mark got best overall!




And I can't even remember how this evolved...





Happy Birthday Christopher! I can't believe how many smiles you've given us in two years!

A walk through the woods

On Thanksgiving day we went for a hike at the ironically named Mountain View Park. The boys took walkie talkies so they could stay in touch. We stopped by the lake to crawl through the mud and throw rocks in the water. We saw a train go by (daddy likes his new lens)...And got lots of exercise...