So much art! It's hard to "record" it all!

This is all just from today!
Here's our big boy's watercolours:










This one is by our big boy AND Nana, who has done lots of painting herself!



Here is the first face I've ever seen drawn by our little one. It is not just a coincidence that it looks like a face; he deliberately made it to be a face. As he drew them, he pointed to the eyes, the mouth and the head.



Here is a picture of The Wizard of Oz that our big boy made, which kind of connects with an article I read about getting kids to connect to reading/writing themselves, which said that pictures are not a moment in time for children, they are more of a many layered story. If you get the child to explain the picture, an entire narrative emerges that makes a lot of linear sense:

Our biy boy's family presents and kid party today!

We gave our big boy an easel today, because he is always drawing... drawing on paper he takes from the printer, drawing on a Doodle Pro (which is that frame which draws with sort of a magnetic pen that is shown in these posts a lot)... so we thought we'd get him his own special place to draw and paint. It's two sided, for little brothers who like to do whatever big brother is doing. On one side there is a white board, and the other is a chalk board. It has a paper roll that can be pulled down and you can paint/color on it! He gave us a huge huge when Kurt brought it up!

Then, some clothes with the regulatory dragons and griffins (or other such terrifying fantasy animals):

K'nex (very fun building sets):

And a dragon Webkinz (the dragon can now join a huge online world with several other pets that our big boy already owns... they all live in a huge house and play! Cute):

Then... the birthday party!

Here's how the shield turned out on the cake:

One little guy said: "Hey! That's Peter's shield!" So I guess it worked :-)

Making crowns:

Opening presents:

Next up is the cupcakes he wants to have at school on his actual birthday... When I asked him what he wanted, he told me specifically strawberry cupcakes. I asked him if he wanted the cupcakes to be strawberry flavoured (which I don't know how to do, but I could find out!) or if he wanted pieces of strawberry in the cupcakes. He wanted pieces. I found a food blog (that began my love of food blogs) that had what looked like a fantastic example of what he wanted. He has approved and so that is what I'm doing tomorrow!

http://makingbananapancakes.com/2008/06/24/strawberry-cupcakes-with-fluffy-chocolate-frosting/#more-186

As well, he is Person Of The Week at his school, so I'm going to visit his classroom tomorrow afternoon, and Nana is going to bring the cupcakes on Tuesday, and Kurt is going to go on Thursday! He gets to bring special things everyday in this suitcase:

Tomorrow it is an album of him from 0-6 years old (we had to move fast on the 6 year birthday photos)... so cute!

Jen and her big son's party! Saturday, Feb 21st

So... my birthday is on February 20th, and almost 6 years ago I received a fabulous present of a little baby 4 days after my birthday! So, we share this birthday time, even though it's somewhat reluctantly by our big boy who is pretty sure mine doesn't count.

We went tobogganing at a local hill:

In subsequent photos you will see what is referred to as a "bonk" on our little one's head... not from tobogganing itself, but from simply losing his footing on level ground and "bonking" his head on a low wooden part of the stairs leading up from the bottom of the hill... he didn't seem to upset about it after a few minutes... so he kept on sliding down like this:

Big Boy had "ordered" braised pineapple with a brown sugar glaze for his birthday treat. I asked him how to put a candle on that. He said get one of those candles with a "6" on it and put that with it. DONE:

He didn't eat it at first, but later when Nana had a bite and told him how great it was, he ate it all!

Schaefer played with balloons...

Kieran opened presents.....

...., including presents from Aunt Barb for Kieran and Schaefer...

Much fun!

Have to say a huge thank you to everyone who gave your beautiful costumes to our boys! The costumes in our house are a huge part of coming to play at our house! Our costume box is brimming with costumes that are paraded all over our house whenever we have little visitors! Plus the boys run around in costumes themselves all the time! What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon using one's imagination in a magical world! Sometimes they try to put the costumes together "properly" (whatever that means when you're 2), but often they have their own ideas of what they are dressing as... of course they do! Looking forward to the mummy costume... it's still a bit big!

Birthday prep

Today we're have a party for our big boy and sort of me... that isn't taking much to get together! More on that later! It's more the kids' party tomorrow that is taking some preparation!

Kieran wants a Narnia party, but all he really knows about Narnia is that there is a lion in it. So... Narnia party it is! I saw a cake on a website that had a crest on it with icing. So, I tried to do it by melting those chocolatey wafers and piping them through a bag.

It's supposed to be a crest with a lion, like in the movie... but this version looks like a monkey! My free hand with medieval lions isn't so great:


Ahhhhh... that's better! As you can see there is a template underneath :-)

So because I was making 2 chocolate chip cookie ice cream cakes for today's party, I decided that for tomorrow I'd just order a white cake, because Narnia is all snowy, and I'm going to put the crest on top. It's VERY solid and easy to move, as I learned from our little one's Diego/Dora cupcakes.

So... what do you do with the tiny amount of leftover melted chocolate? I think this guy knows:

So does this guy:

We're going to use the Narnia theme, but stick on the edges and not get too Narnia-ish because he really doesn't know much about the film or characters... so he knows it's in snow so we will eat white food like popcorn, and make things with white playdough that we can bake so kids can take their creations home... and we will make crowns for the feast because in Narnia the kids are all called kings and queens or something.

I don't know, I haven't seen it either! As well, we'll play White Witch tag... the white witch tags people with their wand and they have to freeze, but then Aslan, the lion, can breathe on them (a puppet that our big boy will have) and they can unfreeze. Also, they can do free play with white balloons being snowballs to 'throw' but hard to throw with a balloon ball so it's mostly just to be silly... what? 5/6 year olds being silly? Nahhh! The balloons have a little bit of rice in them to make them "sound" like snowballs when they land.

For all the green people out there, I will be "reusing" these balloons in my classroom... they make great shakers! Or, they can be tossed onto a huge set of staff lines that I have on a large sheet, and students can go "read" their snowball song! How do you like that game, Chelsea? :-) I think I already suggested one that was sort like that, but with beanbags... but this could be a winter twist! Or... students can toss them to each other on the beat... I hear a winter "Stomp" coming on! Icicle sounds... wind...

Most of these ideas (except the music ones) are directly from websites like http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/ which I love to use every time Kieran comes up with some new theme he'd like! That is a fantastic website!

Glenboro pics

I was going to put some Glenboro pics in here a LONG time ago! We had camera issues... plus every once in a while I float off into a netherworld of BUSY where I feel like I'm always breathless going here, lightspeed going there, and then suddenly I notice I have 5 pages of messages in my inbox, the kids toy room looks like someone threw a grenade in there and I actually forget that it's my own birthday... that being said... it's almost OUR BIG BOY'S birthday! More on that later!
Here's some Glenboro!

Nope... you have to wait for a grown up to go outside, Schaefer!

Almost asleep......

Yes, and another year of having a nice nap in the great outdoors... Gorgeous winter napping weather courtesy of Mother Nature!

I just love this look of all the tubes being hauled up!

pics for mom!

Tell me which one you like the most!

Our big boy wrote a story!

Dinosaur Story January 2009 Show

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

2 front teeth, chills and visiting...

Preparing for the Christmas pageant... or... developing skills as a masterful attack sheep!



A wonderful Christmas day at Nana and Bop's house!


Had a great visit with family at Pelican Lake!

Magnum (aka making fish faces):



Here is a special chef's outfit made by Aunt Barb, and is already coming in quite handy!





Our boys as Rudolph.





Our little one really looks like he's upset and we made him dress like that, but it was truly his idea... he saw his big brother and grabbed the antlers himself, and then started rummaging around for the nose, saying "nono...nono" which is nose to him... anyone with a toddler knows that you can't dress them in things they don't want to wear, and our little one will wrestle you to the ground if he doesn't want something, so be assured he is dressed exactly as he wanted to be!

Our big boy indeed lost his second tooth at Grandma and Grandpa's!




Unfortunately, Kurt has spent most of the past week looking like this:



He's starting to feel better but now our little one has quite the fever and sore-sounding throat. Big boy says his throat is sore but isn't hot yet, so we'll see.