Brian took the kids to a tractor pulling expo. I wish I could explain to you better what that involves. Wait… no I don’t. I have no desire to learn of or discuss the ins and outs of tractor pulling. But that’s ok. I don’t have to. That’s what Brian is for. My role is to stare at him blankly thinking, “where in the world do you come up with/find out about this stuff?” The kids had a ball, of course, because well, there were tractors. Loud ones. And they were pulling things expositionally. (Is that even a word?) It doesn’t matter… here are the pictures:
Liz was going out of town for the weekend, so Aaron invited Brian, Ben & Grace to go to Corpus Christi and tour the USS Lexington. The kids had a blast, of course. They took a ton of pictures… that is one crazy huge boat.
Ben at the controls… what could be scarier?
Oh, yeah… Grace at the controls.
The brig… I need one of these at home.
Best friends…. shooting off a cannon… like best friends do.
Fence or no fence… this picture makes me a little nervous.
I love how small the kids look next to the planes.
This picture of Grace cracks me up. It reminds me of the episode of Friends where Phoebe’s New Year’s resolution is to fly a commercial jet and she says, “Okay, I’m gonna go too. I’m gonna go to the airport. I figure if I hang around long enough, someone’s bound to leave one of those planes unattended.”
So long, suckas, I have an unattended plane to fly.
I could not be prouder of my sweet Ben lately. I have always been so impressed with how smart the little booger is (of course… I’m his mom!) However, what he has been doing with his reading lately has me simply FLOORED!
By his 3rd birthday Ben could recognize all of his letters and the sounds that they make. We worked with him at home (mostly with alphabet puzzles and his letter magnets) and he did lots of letter activities at his preschool. What helped him the most with his phonics was this video:
After watching this a few times, he was singing “the A says ah, the A says ah, every letter makes a sound, the A says ah!” (A note of warning: it is IMPOSSIBLE to get this song out of your head.)
For Christmas last year, he got the second DVD in the series:
This video taught him about building words and smashing sounds together. We would try to get him to sound out words, but he was not interested. It was much more fun to just have Mommy or Daddy read book after book (after book, after book, after book…)
This past Spring, I heard about a few friends who were using “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” with their children. You can read about it here. I ordered the book and Ben and I worked on it together. We did Lesson 1, and he LOVED it! We followed up with Lesson 2 and he was doing great. He loved the “games” where he would have to “say it fast”! A day or two later he asked to work on reading again so we did Lesson 3. We were right on track to complete Lessons 4-100 when our precious Noah decided to join us! The book of reading lessons has been sitting on the shelf, collecting dust, for the past SEVEN months. There have been a number of times that I’ve thought that I really need to carve some time out to do those lessons with Ben again, but just recently I learned that he could do this:
I guess my work here is done. In all seriousness, I can not take any credit for this. It's like he just woke up one day and reading clicked. I have no idea when or where he learned all the sight words. We actually got him some sight word books right after his birthday. I think it was a set of 10 books with 4 or 5 words featured in each book. I showed him the set when they came in and he proceeded to flip through the title pages and read all of the sight words to me. ALL of them. Again.... what? when? how? Oh, this child. I'm not really sure what to do with him next. He can read and sort laundry. I think he's ready to take on the world. ;)
It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for three years! You can read here about the 1st and 2nd annual Fright Nights.
The Sullivans offered to host again (which is so great – we love their neighborhood!). This year, the party GREW. I think I counted 20 kids, give or take a few. Dinner was a little crazy. There were kiddos everywhere. A few friends ended up with frito pie on their bottoms as they shuffled around and sat in each other’s plates.
These little guys watched the action from the safety of their blanket. I would love to know what they were thinking about all the shenanigans going on around them!
Once dinner was over, we headed out for the trickin’ and treatin’. Ben apparently had somewhere to be, because he was sprinting like a mad man from house to house. He was so funny leading the charge and shouting “lights off, lights OFF!” as he passed up houses where no one was home. Grace took her sweet time, and Noah was content to just chill in the stroller. I thought that he would surely fall asleep along the way, but I guess he didn’t want to miss anything.
Ben and Grace were both excited to show off their loot. We’ll have candy for weeks!
Cole and Elise are our neighbors and their Mommy & Daddy had to work, so we brought them along with us. The more the merrier!
Here I am with my two besties (and fellow creators of Frito Pie Fright Night). Please ignore my hair. Thanks, ladies, for telling me that part of my pony tail was trying to depart from my head. So much for true friendship. ;)
Brian and I were EXHAUSTED by the time we made it home. These two were still going strong, though. Gracie sure loves her Noah!
