Blame it on My Teacher

Bowling Trip

Recently we went to the bowling alley with the boys. Here are some pictures showing true participation from C for the first time. He had his own ball and rolled it with some slight assistance each time his turn came up. He really enjoyed bowling and did NOT enjoy waiting for his turn. I guess that too will come in time. I think what I liked most about this picture was his bowling shoes...they just look cute.
As you can see, he did a pretty good job. If you look closely you will note the bumpers up on our lane so that he had a chance at scoring. They worked great!
Here is one of Nicholas trying to knock down the last two pins. He loves going bowling! He is very good at waiting his turn while others on lanes next to him go first. He has also started trying to stand up and throw it (kind of) like E and I do.

Christmas-December 2008

We spent part of Christmas vacation at Grandma S's house. The boys had lots of fun and loved the gifts they got.

We came home shortly after to spend Christmas morning at our house. My mom came up to spend Christmas morning with us too since she had only seen us a couple days when we were at her house.

Christmas Play- December 2008

This year was Nicholas's first year in Preschool. They have an annual Christmas play and Nicholas had a part as a reindeer. He was quite a shy reindeer, but he did an excellent job. Somehow we only got a couple of seconds of it on video...not sure what happened. I do know of a friend who was there too and took video on the whole thing, so hopefully I can update this with a video as well.
As you can tell here, he is singing, but very quietly and not with a smile on his face at all.


He was much more relaxed and back to his normal self afterwards. Here is a great shot of the reindeer t-shirt that he made in class. He even had cherry chapstick on his nose for Rudolf!!

October 2008

This past Harvest season we continued our tradition of going to the nearby Presbyterian church's pumpkin patch to gather our pumpkins and take pictures. This year was special because Christian was able to go and enjoy it. Here is a shot of each of the "guys" in their scarecrow outfits.



They always have various setups throughout their little pumpkin patch where families can come and take pictures. Here is one where we got the boys. I apologize for the small picture...I somehow saved this micro-picture as the same filename as the original one...so I no longer have the original.


Since Christian is the messier of the two brothers and doesn't mind getting dirty as much, we stripped his shirt and proceeded to clean out our big pumpkin. He looked in and changed his mind, but we got this cute picture right before that happened.




This is right about the time where he decided he was done. I think one smell and feel of those ooey-gooey pumpkin seeds was more than he wanted. Sigh, if only I knew then how good roasted pumpkin seeds tasted...I would have saved those babies and had a snack!!
Here are our creations. The pumpkin on the left was Nicholas's...the one on the right was Christian's and the one in the center was for our family. Overall the pumpkin carving was a success.
Here are my superboys in their costumes...Presenting: "Spider-Nicholas and Super-Christian"

Busted Lip

He's had quite a few of these now. This was the first busted lip he had. I was getting the boys out of the car after coming home from Parent's Day Out with them in tow. They both had their backpacks because both of them were attending Parent's Day Out at the time. I got them out of the car and reminded them to get their backpacks when Nicholas and Christian started racing up the driveway and to the door. As they started out, Nicholas gave Christian a little shove so that he could stay ahead. Christian ate it on the driveway. I ran up to him and he was SOOO bloody! I freaked out a little. Luckily, our next door neighbors were home (they are both ex-medics) and I got their help to stop the bleeding. He was sore, but sucking on his pacifier ("bee-bee") within 10 minutes of doing this. Needless to say, it was probably one of the more minor things I will be going through with this one. He seems to get into accidents more than "your average bear." Later, I realized I had not only bloodied up my dress that I was wearing, I also had a bloody handprint on the upholstery of my van. It looked like a crime scene. Thankfully ALL the stains came clean.

Nicholas's 4th Birthday Party

For Nicholas's 4th birthday party we used the theme "Clifford the big red dog." We had games and a special bone-shaped birthday cake covered in candy dog bones. He had plenty of friends over and we played "Pin the Tail on Clifford" and had a Clifford Scavenger Hunt. The kids had lots of fun and Nicholas loved the birthday presents he received. The big hit of the party was the Geotrax sets that he received. The kids played with that for a while after we finally got it untangled from its parent-proof box.