Happy Valentine's Day 2010!

Ben's card to me (made at school). He gave it to me, and then said, 'Are you gonna eat that lollipop on the front, Mom? I don't think you really like lollipops. How 'bout I just eat it for you?"

This has nothing to do with Valentines day, but its sort of cute, so here it is. This is Ben's grass plant. He has named him "Billy". We water Billy every day, and take notice of his longer hair. I keep asking Bennett if he wants to give him a haircut, but he always refuses, saying, "Billy doesn't want his hair cut, just like I don't want mine cut."

Here are some of the Valentine's Day projects o' love that came home with the boys this year.

Bennett's most recent spelling test (Feb 12th)!

Here's the back of the card Ben made me. Apparently, he came up with these things himself, and I feel very happy that he notices some of the things I do, that I thought went largely unnoticed. :-)

LOOT! (When we were kids, didn't just a few little folded cards come home with us?)

Another card from Ben :-)

Happy Valentine's Day, to all the people who are special to me. You know who you are. :-)

100 days of Kindergarten

Xavier and Bennett both celebrated their 100th day of Kindergarten recently.

Ben had homework for the day - to count 100 of something and bring them into the class to share. He chose fruit loops, and blazed through the activity as if he'd been counting to 100 for years now. He checked his work by arranging them in groups of 10 and counting by 10's to 100. (His idea, not mine.) He definitely has an aptitude for math type things...he can sort of just glance at a group of items, circle them once with his fingers, and tell me correctly how many are in the group. Its pretty cool.

And on Xavier's 100th day, he came home wearing this hat. He loves hats, and was very pleased with himself that day. He usually hates coming home from school (he screams and yells at me EVERY DAY for 10-30 minutes, complaining that he is no longer amongst his friends). But this day, he was happy.

He also cannot keep his hands out of his mouth lately. His 6 year molars are coming in AND, big news - he has his first loose tooth! Its the front, bottom right, and he has a finger or his thumb in his mouth half the day, wiggling it around. See?:

Q and U - married!

Together with the rest of the Alphabet,

the letters Q and U request your presence

as they are united in marriage,

January 21, 2010 at 9am,

in the gymnasium at

Hazel Harvey Elementary School.

How clever is this?! The Kindergarten classes where Xavier goes to school, held a ceremony to marry off Q and U together. It was a big to-do, very elaborately planned, and was the culmination of the kids learning that Q must always be paired with U in a word.

The kids walked down the paper aisle runner to traditional wedding marches, and took their seats on the stage. (Parents sat behind them to watch the ceremony). I, showing not much self restraint, giggled through most of it. Because, lets face it, this is pretty funny. The kids/teachers were all dressed up in wedding attire! There were actual wedding cakes! I'm telling you - elaborate!

This is Xavier, and his beloved paraprofessional, Lauren, waiting for the ceremony to start.

Below, is Mrs. Garbinsky (Xavier's teacher), officiating. The letters were united in "qwa". They took vows...my favorite one (which I couldn't stop giggling about) was:

Mrs. Garbinsky to the girl that was "U": "Miss U, do you always promise to stand by Mr. Q in every word he appears in."

little girl ("Miss U"): "I do."

Mrs. Garbinsky to the boy that was "Q": "And Mr. Q, do you promise to understand that sometimes, Miss U will need to appear in words without you?"

little boy ("Mr. Q"): "I do." (I swear there was a tone of disappointed resignation in his voice.)

HA!!!

After the ceremony, the kids put on their coats, and went outside, so that they could give a big send off to the happy new couple, bird seed and all.

Then, on to the reception. (Elaborate!) There was a lot of dancing (the chicken dance, the hokey pokey, the twist, etc.), and cake. Here are Lauren, Xavier, and his friend Jordan getting ready to twist. (Look at Xavier looking up at Jordan and Lauren. ;-)

Lauren said, during the rehearsal the day before, Xavier was so excited about the dancing/music, that he was coiled up into a permanant, ecstatic little ball. Fists clenched, shouting glad tidings of happiness. He loves dancing :-) I get kind of sad, knowing my days of being able to hold him while dancing are in short number. He's huge now (45lbs, 45in. - or as we like to say, 45-squared.)

Xavier and the ever-present friend, Jordan. As an aside, Xavier has quite the entourage. When I bring him in to the classroom every morning, he is immediately surrounded by no less than 4-5 kids, waiting to attend to his every need. There are actual struggles over "who gets to take his coat". He's like a little magnet, this kid of mine. :-)

Chicken dancing with Lauren.

Can't say enough about how wonderful Lauren is to Xavier. He's SUCH a lucky boy.

Happy New Year

Wow, I'm only a month late on this one! Awesome!

This is something Ben wrote, ALL by himself, January 1st. You can click on the picture to see it larger, if you'd like.

I like how he wrote '2010' as '20010'. Wrong, but cutely wrong. :-)

Christmas 2009

HoHoHo! Merry February! I'm catching up, don't judge! ;-p

Here's Bennett, Christmas morning, pausing right before he opened his first present. Nick and I got our first present before the boys got up...Xavier slept until 9 and Ben until 10. What a Christmas miracle!

Nick, opening his gift from me, a weathervane for our shed. Before you go thinking this is really a strange gift, I'll have you know, Nick really wanted one of these, and was totally surprised and happy about it. I was laughing, because the opening of this gift was akin to the opening of the leg lamp in "A Christmas story" (see previous post)...Nick exclaimed (stealing a line from the movie), "Well, there could be ANYTHING in here!" :-)

Xavier with a few of his gifts - a favorite was the Mickey Mouse toy sitting front and center on his lap. It plays short little Mickey songs. :-)

My Dad got us a Wii. That's right. Our first game system in 15+ years. Ben was ecstatic. The picture below shows Nick and Bennett getting his "Cars" game started for the first time.

And finally, here are several of our family members, exchanging Christmas gifts after dinner (we had everyone over at our house this year.) Pictured are - Nick's sister Michelle, his brothers, Mike and Eric, his mom, our sister in law Vicki, and our nieces, Alyssa and Kathryn.

That's it! I realized when I was making 2010 calendars back in November, even though I take millions of pictures every year, I never take many Christmas pictures. Anyway, we had a great Christmas, and at this point, were really looking forward to our vacation in Disney World...where, of course, I DID take millions of pictures.

2009 Christmas Prep

Happy Groundhog Day! Now...lets talk about last year's Christmas! HA!

Bennett made this card at school - apparently, in his mind, Jesus resembles a segmented insect with a mohawk.

We made our first gingerbread house. It was fun to build (construction was surprising easy, compared to other horror stories I've been told), but not so fun to decorate. The cheapo icing bag that came with the kit broke about 5 minutes into decorating it...make the rest of the job excruiatingly tedious. We did the best we could, and it came out alright.

The end product of 'the house'.

A "Thanksgiving gift" I gave Nick (so we could have it up in the weeks before Christmas). We LOVE "A Christmas Story". And it doesn't hurt that I believe Xavier bares a striking resemblance with Peter Billingsly (Ralphie.)
"NOT A FINGER!" (pronounced 'fingaaa!', and said with much frustration.)

HA!

Here's Bennett, spreading magic reindeer food. My friend Lisa has the super secret recipe, and she was very generous in giving us a bag to scatter on our lawn Christmas Eve. Ben took FOREVER in the 20 degree temps to spread it just right, so the reindeer would see it.

The bros loving on each other ----

This was Ben's pick for a pose - Xavier thought this was funny.

Here's Ralphie by the tree. I mean Xavier.

Xavier loves the white lights. He could stare at them all day long. This picture is pretty special, because it really tells you just how much wonder and amazement he feels when looking at them. Kind of an "ooooo-ahhhhh" expression, right? :-)