As soon as he walked in the door…
Category Archives: Toys & Games
Puzzle Queen
This was a totally new set of puzzles. I showed her how one set matched and she did the rest with very little help. (Sorry about the beeping in the background.)
Fun with Atlanta friends!
We stopped to see our good friends in Atlanta. It was actually Bodi’s 6th birthday weekend, so they had a bounce house set up for the party the next day and the kids had fun in that! (It was also a Ninja Turtle-themed party, so that’s what the masks and weapons are for.)
But first, the boys about 4.5 years ago (November 2010):
And today…
Last trip to the beach!
Looking up at a plane going by. We saw lots of jets and planes and helicopters the whole week!
She didn’t go in the water much, but when she did, she did some STOMPING and SPLASHING!
The one thing she liked to do? Throw shovels full of sand into the water. Yes, kids are strange.
And a fun screenshot I saw while I was editing the video:
It was impressive watching the beach guys carrying in the chairs in the evening.
Post-kite fun on the beach!
Grannie had bought a ring/horseshoe toss game so they played that. I wrote in the sand. Katie played in the sand. Owen and daddy played with the glider. I took some artsy fartsy pictures. The men sat in chairs.
The kids’ first kite!
Gramma Jean had a kite that we took out for the kids. (We thought we had brought one but it turned out to be a glider instead of a kite.) The kids LOVED it!
Cookie Monsters and playing catch on the beach!
Playing catch on the beach
He finished his Lego tree house!
The kids like the pool better than the ocean.
And I wasn’t going to complain because that meant NO SAND. 🙂 We had lots of fun with the grandparents!
Katie had quite the aim with the water gun! She was a sneak, too—she’d hide it under the water until she got close enough to you to spray you! 🙂
Night flyers and breaking rules
I had bought these night flyer toys back when we had a big yard (as they can fly up to 200′) but never used them—and our house isn’t really conducive to anything more than 10′—so figured a beach vacation would be the perfect opportunity. 🙂 Tom thought we should do them in the parking lot so they didn’t end up as garbage in the ocean…but after about 10-15 minutes or so, someone came out and told us we couldn’t do it in the parking lot due to liability. Whatever. We were pretty much done by then so we just went inside. But the kids LOVED them and had a great time!
Pre-bedtime cuddles with daddy
Of course holding her new Happy Meal dolly that she can’t let out of her sight since she got it yesterday. 🙂
Legos with Anna…again!
Owen brought a Lego set so he could do them with Anna like he did last year. He was so excited that within, I think, two minutes of walking in the front door of the condo, the box was already open! We did have him wait just a bit, and they started working after dinner. 🙂
LAST YEAR:
Birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese
Tom usually has birthday party duty but since he’s gone it fell to me. And of course I had to take Katie as well—so it was her first trip to Chuck E. Cheese.
Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as crazy as I thought it would be. Of course it was Chuck E. Cheese so it was a little bit crazy but overall it wasn’t bad.
Katie’s skee ball style:
The Clifford ride it was super tame and she looked pretty bored…so the next one moved more and she quickly said “DONE. DONE!!”
Then it was time for lunch and the birthday show (Chuck E. Cheese comes out). Katie was EXCITED. She’s saying “CHUCK E. CHEEEEESE!” 🙂
Redeeming tickets!
And then it was time to head home. This is the toy Owen picked—a tiny blow up sword (which she said was his favorite thing about the whole day, LOL).
And a mustache tattoo he got in his gift bag:
And these were the cards we had printed! (I think these were the best deal of the whole place—one card for one token!)
Both kids had a great time!
Well, I wasn’t expecting THIS today!
He lost the other front tooth! I didn’t even know it was that loose until about an hour ago! It likely wouldn’t have come out today, but apparently he was using his teeth to get Legos apart. 🙂
Lego ruined our night.
So every month, Lego offers a free mini build at their local stores. We saw it advertised on both a flyer and our Lego calendar so made plans to go. I made sure to check the website to see if there was anything else we needed to know. And there wasn’t. This is the entirety of the information about the event:
So let me just share with you what I wrote to Lego when we got home:
I am very upset and also have a very upset little boy right now. We received the monthly Lego calendar and saw the “free monthly build” advertised for tonight so we told him about it and made special plans to go (our first time ever!) and he was super excited. I happened to check the website to see if there were any special details I might need to know and didn’t see anything. So off we went. We arrive, wait in what I thought was the line for the free kit (which I expected to have to wait in line so no big deal), get to the front pretty quickly (I was actually impressed, but how long does it take to hand out a pack of Legos?), and was stopped dead in my tracks: “Oh, you don’t have a book? That’s the other line.” Which I then noticed out the other side of the store—and was, of course by then, way too long to even think about getting in and receiving the free kit before they ran out since the line was crazy long. So then I had an upset kid because he’d been looking forward to this for days. So a big fat thanks, Lego, for advertising the crap out of this free build but giving NO MENTION WHATSOEVER (even on the minibuild website!) that you need the special Lego “passbook” in order to get it. I’m extremely disappointed and would hope you can rectify this in some way.
Truth be told, I had seen a few kids carrying these blue passport-looking books around but didn’t think twice about it since I never saw any mention of it. I googled when I got home, and see that the passport is a fairly new thing—but technically it’s just for marking visits to Lego stores. There is a place to stamp that you were THERE for the mini-build, but I saw no mention of it being REQUIRED to get the mini-build. So now I’m wondering if this wasn’t a corporate decision, but a store-by-store decision. Regardless, I was pissed.
The next day I received this response:
Dear Jen,
Thanks for getting in touch with us.
We’re sorry to hear that you had such a disappointing experience when you visited one of our LEGO® stores! The LEGO Group is dedicated to providing excellent, consistent service in all of our stores. It is only with your honest comments that we are able to improve our services to better service the needs of our valued customers, so thank you very much for your email.
As a one time exception, I have sent out the parts you need to make the March Mini Build! Please allow 7-10 business days for delivery as they our sent from our warehouse in Denmark.
So I’m very happy they are sending us the kit, but still disappointed they didn’t even mention the passbook issue. I’ll definitely be asking at the Lego store the next time we go in.
Katie’s in Elmo’s World
Snow day Lego project!
This was Owen’s last new Lego project…The Research Institute:
I bought it for the super cool dinosaur, but since it was under 200 pieces it literally took him like 20 minutes to put together. 🙂
Katie peed on the potty!
We haven’t officially started potty training yet, but every now and again we will ask Katie if she wants to pee or poop on the potty. Sometimes she wants to but nothing happens and other times she wants nothing to do with any of it.
But tonight when Tom asked her she said yes! And then actually proceeded to tinkle!
We all made a big deal about it and she got to pick a toy from the toy bin! I think Owen was most excited, getting out the toy selection and picking her toy—until we told him she got to pick her own toy! To his credit, he was still excited for her!
She picked those growing capsule animals:
Of course I’m not expecting anything to come of this. Owen did the same thing and then it was another two years (!) before he was actually potty trained.
This is how a snow day starts!
King’s Castle, Part 4: Complete!
Xbox dancing!
Now that the Kinnect is out, they love dancing!
Owen’s first sleepover
Owen’s first sleepover was tonight—and it was the first for both of his friends, too.
The kids played for a bit, then we started Fruit Ninja, which they all thoroughly enjoyed.
It’s somewhat exhausting—and they can only really play one at a time—so then we did Crash Course which they could all play at the same time.
Manuel doesn’t have pets, so he was ENTHRALLED with ours (you’ll see more pics later). 🙂
Getting ready for cake!
Time for a movie! Katie enjoyed the sleepover as much as the boys did!
Getting the boys ready for bed about 9. They lined up for a picture, each with one of Owen’s stuffed animals—and here Owen was realizing that they each had one of the primary colors!
Overall, it went pretty good. The boys were boys (roughhousing and such) but they are all fairly similar—very nice, polite, not too terribly rough, and they listened well. We were most worried about putting them to bed and what happened after that since neither of the boys had had a sleepover before. Of course, their parents were on call to come get them, and I had been updating them via text and pics throughout the night. So they all got their PJs on, brushed their teeth, and decided who would sleep where. We told them they could stay up and talk, but they couldn’t be too loud (since Katie was sleeping next door). I read them a story, pointed out all the night lights, told them that if they were scared at all or if anything was wrong to come get us (and we could call their parents), asked if they had any questions (no), and then turned out the lights, crossed my fingers, and went downstairs.
Within minutes, we heard them coming down the steps. 🙂 Apparently the boys were scared of the big stuffed bear, even though they had all been playing with him. But no biggie, Tom just went up with them and threw it in the guest room.
The second trip down (again with all three of them!) was because the kid who decided he wanted to sleep on the top bunk was apparently suddenly afraid of heights and didn’t want to sleep on the top bunk even though we went over that before. But no biggie, we asked if he wanted Owen to sleep on the top and he said no, he wanted to. Ooookay. Back to bed then, and we sent them upstairs.
The third trip down was to tell us that somehow the top-bunk-kid needed his bed made again (turns out he had pulled off all of his bedding to sleep on the floor). Okay, no biggie, Tom went up and got the bedding issue settled.
At this point, I told Tom we should go upstairs to our bedroom so the kids didn’t have to come all the way downstairs each time. So we did. 🙂
Minutes later (the fourth time out of bed), two had to go to the bathroom—even though they all went before getting in bed.
The fifth time, someone was scared of everything in the room. We added another night light (in addition to the three already in there).
Then we heard them talking quietly and we thought maybe that would be the end of it…but then we heard loud thumping and lots of noise so Tom went down and and found them all out of bed! They got told they could talk but they had to stay in bed. We heard more talking but nothing crazy.
About 10, we finally noticed they were really quiet. Tom checked on them and they were all out! We crossed our fingers and hoped it lasted!
Fruit Ninjas
In preparation for the sleepover, Tom reconnected the Xbox Kinnect. The kids tested out Fruit Ninja as the first game.
THE KRAGLE!
Unfortunately, Kragle is sometimes called for (after the string to the drawbridge has popped out four times and gets tangled up).
Owen’s okay with it: Kragle me up!
King’s Castle, Part 3
He doesn’t want to build and then he goes through three bags a day.
She loves these puzzles!
And she’s really good at them! (Yeah, so they’re not exactly puzzles, but they’re close.)
King’s Castle, Part 2
He’s been taking his time so there’s just a bit more done.
Owen’s King’s Castle begins
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.)
He is one happy little boy!
Swimming in Legos
I was watching the volcano experiment when I heard lots of Lego noise from the other room. I walked in to see this:
