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Category Archives: Kids

Story time and volunteering in Owen’s class

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As part of the Star of the Week stuff, family members are welcome to come in to do something special. We chose to bring in a book for me to read during story time. Of course, I wanted to read one of the cool books we’ve had specially made for Owen with his name in it but he wanted Pirates Love Underpants. 🙂

Hallway artwork:

hallway snowman artwork

Owen’s SotW poster on display:

Owen's SotW poster on display

Owen is Line Leader this week so he gets to do a bunch of things in the classroom (this will likely be super boring for anyone except grandparents 🙂 ):

Their Groundhog Day predictions:

Groundhog Day predictions

Of course, Katie wanted to go sit with Owee during their other story.

sitting with Owen for story time

But it didn’t last for long:

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And that didn’t last long either… Soon she was back over playing with the toys:

“Mama! A lion! Mama! Mama! A hippo! Hippo! Chomp chomp! Crocodile! Kangaroo! Hop hop!” While placing each animal on the floor around her. 🙂

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Trying to keep her occupied so she doesn’t bother the class:

mom and Katie selfie

I saw this and laughed. It seems to say a lot about kindergarten in one picture. 🙂

sanitizer station

After storytime, I had agreed to stay and volunteered to help while the kids did their daily center activities. I lucked out this time and Owen got to be at one of my tables. 🙂

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Katie is a bit more outgoing now and doesn’t want to stay in the play area while the kids are working so she kept bothering me and I finally just gave her a sheet of paper and let her color with the big kids.

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What they sing before every snack time:

Birthday dinner, cake, and presents!

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Even though we went to Red Robin this past weekend to celebrate Owen’s birthday… AND I took him a Five Guys burger on his birthday at school… We still went out to eat for his birthday dinner! 🙂 (Yeah, we like going out to eat.) 🙂 We tried a new pizza place that’s close to us and it wasn’t too bad. I’m actually getting sick of pizza so I had a Stromboli which was pretty good. And Katie was introduced to the Parmesan shaker. 🙂

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When we got home we Skyped with Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob, sang happy birthday, ate cake, and opened presents.

Then I gave Owen his gift certificate for the Magic School Bus monthly experiments. Before he opened it I explained it was from mom and dad, Gramma Jean and Grandpa David, and Papa and Grannie—and I was sure he’d be over the moon!! And of course he couldn’t have cared less, LOL. He just couldn’t understand that it meant 12 new experiments (like the volcano he just did) and kept looking at the paper like Aaaand?! I kept trying to explain it and I think he finally started to get an idea…but he probably won’t fully get it until the packages start arriving (it should be mid-month).

Things never turn out as you expect when kids are involved. 🙂

Santa says happy birthday to Owen!

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When I made the Santa video for Owen at Christmas, I also signed up for a birthday greeting. 🙂

Notice at the end Katie is saying it’s her turn—because she remembered that at Christmas her Santa video came after Owen’s. She never did really understand that she wasn’t getting a birthday message now because it wasn’t her birthday.

Candle time!

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Oh and noticed his cake pretty much as soon as he walked in the door after school. He had to put the candles on himself—immediately if not sooner. 🙂 it was especially excited because these were the cool silver candles he picked out at the dollar store.

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Satisfied with his work! (He really did do a good job—spacing them out very evenly along with the Happy Birthday sign.)

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This has been my day.

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Katie has started whining about not wanting to take a nap…when I’ve said nothing of the sort. This was after I told her no about some random thing.

I accidentally took the video with SLO-MO on, so I edited it to put her big “I DON’T WANT TO TAKE A NAP” in slo-mo at the beginning. 🙂

I’m still working on how to get the real video with no slo-mo.

Edit: here it is, except it got cropped.

Owen’s King’s Castle begins

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Owen is starting his 996-piece King’s Castle set he bought with birthday money he’s been saving for years. (Well, he technically wasn’t SAVING it so much as we just kept stuffing money he received in his bank. We’ve been trying to teach him about money lately—and how expensive Legos are—so we counted out over half of his savings for this set.)

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Starting the King's Castle

He is one happy little boy!

Kidisms 3

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Katie: Are you done?
Owen: Does it look like I’m done?

Owen: School is closed! I love that kind of day!

Owen upon seeing Katie this morning in her dino PJs:
Hi little dinosaur-y.

Katie, as she’s done eating dinner:
Okay, I’m done eating. Goodbye.

Owen: Ahhh, this is comfy.

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Owen, after a bath:
Mom, if I wear comfy stuff, I’m calm. If I don’t wear comfy stuff I freak out.

Star of the Week

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At Back To School night, we had to sign the kids up to be Star of the Week—basically an “about me” board to share with the class—and I was able to grab the week of his birthday. So this weekend we worked on it. I had asked him to think about what pictures he wanted to use, but that was too broad. So I started asking him about specific pictures, but of course he wanted every picture I suggested. So I just picked a bunch of good pics and then once I saw the actual instructions (the theme turned out to be more “show why your child is a star” vs. a general About Me page) we concentrated on four areas:

  1. Owen is a master builder (Legos).
  2. Owen loves his friends and family.
  3. Owen is a great big brother.
  4. Owens loves to play in the water.

I printed out all the pictures and text and had Owen cut them out (which he did pretty good at, but we need practice on cutting evenly around things). Then I arranged most of the pictures—but let him do all of the gluing (which was an exercise in frustration—plus I see now how kindergardeners go through a zillion glue sticks).

Star of the week Prep

Then he wrote a few sentences about things he liked. He did really well with the Star Wars and Family sentences (even using his pinky to allow for spacing between words) but then kind of lost it when it came to the Lego sentence… But overall, still an awesome job!

Star of the Week final

I have a feeling it will end up with more stickers on it by the time it goes to school Tuesday… 🙂

Owen’s first real play date

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A tiny bit of background… Owen decided maybe two months or so ago that he wanted a pool party at our community pool for his birthday. We were totally on board with this idea since it would be inexpensive (no cost for the pool and we just have to buy food and drinks) and he could invite his whole class. Well, loooooong story short, we are still going to have a summer birthday party, but we will only be inviting a select number of friends…and in honor of his actual birthday, we are letting him have his very first sleepover!

So in preparation for the sleepover, one of the invitees came over for an extended play date today—it would also be his first away-from-home sleepover and we thought it best for him to be comfortable with us, the animals, the house, etc. His mom and I chatted for about a half hour (they were the ones we sat with during Bingo Night) and then she left.

The kids had a great time! There were light saber fights, beanbag jumping (with only a few warnings to be careful), and then finally…Legos!

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When the visit got extended and I needed time to prep dinner without wondering what they were up to about the house, I finally let them watch a half hour of TV. 🙂

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Catching up on school work

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I’ve been very bad about scanning and posting Owen’s schoolwork/homework and art projects as they come home…so these are not really in any particular order, except I guessed on the dates and they’re all from about Thanksgiving to the end of the year. 🙂

The robot-like creatures are from a video game he plays with daddy and the numbers above them are their “health” in the game.
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At the time he told me what this was, but we’ve both since forgotten.
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This was from months ago, but I just took a picture of him with it this morning. It’s a playground he designed.
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I love this monster!
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Better pictures of the satchel he made for the Thanksgiving Feast.
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He came home with this turkey and honestly, the vegetable- and God-feathers threw me. One, he dislikes vegetables and two, we are not religious (and there has been no discussion of religion of any kind—not on purpose…it just hasn’t come up) so we were confused as to how he’d come up with being thankful for both those things. We asked him and he did the shrug-his-shoulders answer. I was thinking maybe he brought home the wrong turkey or took someone else’s feathers (because they didn’t really look like his handwriting) so I actually emailed his teacher! Turns out, after more subtle questioning, he just borrowed ideas from his classmates and copied some of the things they wrote!
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Owen was VERY excited about the Hour of Code and everyone got a certificate! (The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics.)
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Mom, notice the bubble light? 🙂
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They learned about all different holiday traditions…
2014-12-18 menorah

2014-12-19 hanukkah

2014-12-19 kwanzaa

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2014-12-31 2015 calendar

Kidisms 2

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Me: Katie, we have to change your diaper. You’re stinky.
Katie: No, I’m doing stickers.

This is what I hear from Katie’s room as I’m putting clothes away in Owen’s room.
Owen: Mama, come look at your daughter.

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Owen: Mom, I’m going to play this game by myself, okay?
Me: Great!
Owen, every six seconds: Mom! Look at this! Hey mom, red and green won. Mom! Mom! Mom!
Me: :/

Owen wanted to start a new Star Wars Lego project. I told him that it was the biggest and most expensive project we had bought yet…AND that it would be the hardest, too.
Owen: But hard is easy for me!

Owen likes to say “Mom, come look at your daughter!” when Katie does funny things. Tonight, we got this:
Katie: Mom, come look at my daughter!

Katie tripped in the kitchen.
Katie: Awww. I hurt the kitchen with my leg.

Katie: I’m a superhero!

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Local road trip!

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We went to Manassas today to see one of Tom’s coworkers at a Farmers Market (he’s part owner of a BBQ place) and then we went to the fish/coral store. Of course I couldn’t get a good pic of the cool colors under the lights…but the pic still turned out cool.

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Drawing!

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On the way home, we stopped at the park:

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Katie LOVED this part. She had daddy help her the first time and then she had no fear.