Quiet times

Guess who!

Rocky likes Richard Scarry

Stephen wanted to make a book.

It's going to be about Lego Ninjago. And it's going to be 15 pages long. 

Meanwhile, the little brothers read books.

Math Night

Last night, Stephen had a Math Night at his school. We brought the whole family.

The gymnasium was set up with different stations for each grade level. Here Stephen plays war with his teacher Mrs. Puckett. 

After he blazed through the kindergarten activity, he tried first grade, second grade, fourth and fifth grade to the amazement and cheers of several teachers and his principal :)

He also did science experiments with marbles and calculators. 

Here's Rocky eating his 100 snacks that he painstakingly counted out from a long buffet line of cheez its, chocolate chips, Cheerios and the like.

So sorry I didn't capture Oliver, who wandered around the gym with no fear.

Nutty Science show

 We've tried to stay busy this week while Daddy is out of town. On Tuesday, the boys enjoyed sitting outdoors for a summer library program called Nutty Science. Stephen especially enjoyed the diet coke bottle rockets, which I failed to capture because I was too busy cowering/vigilantly watching where the messy rockets would fall.

It began raining right when the show ended, so we retreated to the library to get our week's supply of books & DVDs.

Mom through Stephen's eyes

Mom, since you enjoyed the last post, I have another for you:

Stephen was so excited the day he dictated these answers (before I saw this worksheet)... he wanted to know if he got them "right." He was asking me, "Mom, is your favorite food salad? Or Jell-O? Are you 50? Are you really good at changing Ollie's diaper?" I was pleased that he knocked more than a decade off my actual age :)

Stephen's view of himself

The instructions say: Draw yourself here.

When I asked Stephen to tell me about what he drew he said, "this is me thinking about having a hamster, and this is you thinking about being a writer."

Nashville Science Center

Last Wednesday, we had a family day in Nashville. We took Stephen to the Adventure Science Center, where he ran through the galaxy, operated a digger in a ball pit, watched choo-choo trains, and climbed the tallest playground equipment Joe or I had ever seen. Here's some photos and videos of our adventure.

The altitude was making this kid crazy.


Steve can use a wheelchair!


Watching Daddy- aka "the drunken marionette!"

A quiet morning studying

I was working on a little freelance project this morning and Stephen was awfully quiet in the other room. I say "awfully" because usually when my son becomes quiet it means he's intently working on whatever activity is most likely to get him seriously injured. Awfully quiet moments at our house have included Stephen standing on the step stool in the kitchen to pull dirty knives out of the sink, Stephen removing the outlet protector and holding file cabinet keys poised to go in their place and the ever-fun toliet fairy game in which either the plunger or toilet brush serve as his magic wand.

So you can only imagine my relief when I found that he was innocently studying his flashcards and basking in the light of our sunny picture window.
This kid is crazy about flashcards. Sometimes I hide them just so I don't have to pick them all up again. But this morning he spotted them on the top shelf and pointed and made his little squeaky "uh-uh-uh!" to indicate that he wanted them.

He's pretty good at identifying them too... he knows cake, house, penguin, jelly, apple, monkey, elephant, car, sun, ball, flower, fish... and probably some others that I'm not aware of yet!