Simple pleasures: messes

You can tell when the boys have been enjoying themselves by the amount of toys on the floor of their room.

Lucius...

Lucius is one sweet, fun and sports loving kid. He loves to snuggle almost as much as he enjoys trying every sport imaginable.

The other day all he wanted to do was play baseball. Since I did not wish to throw anymore tennis balls from him to hit, I decided to try something else. I put a rope through a tennis ball and tied it to a tall branch on the tree. He hit that ball so many times it was almost unbelievable, except I watched him do it so I know. He was there for about 45 minutes. Several times he hit it and it got stuck in the branch. Mostly it just swung back down and he tried hitting it again. He is one determined kid.

Mariposas...

Oliver's class is studying the life cycle of butterflies. Last week almost all the butterflies hatched and to celebrate they had a butterfly puppet show. The school invited families to come watch with the Dual Language first grade classes. Lucius and I went to watch it with Oliver. It was all in spanish, but I think I got some of it but it was very nicely done even if my spanish isn't the greatest.

simple pleasures: texting...

Oliver's been texting a few people on random occasions. He and I were driving home from a friends house Sunday night when I asked him to text daddy that we were on our way home. Because well, I was driving and didn't want to text & drive. He was ALL over that and started texting at 8:08pm. He would get super excited when the dots appear telling him that the other person is responding. Later I looked at my phone, seeing that Oliver has found the emoticons and really enjoys using them.

simple pleasures: books...

I feel like all I post is are photos of the boys reading. Seriously, they do play with the occasion toy!

On days Lucius and I go to the Library, we check out lots of books. We do our best to get some that Oliver might enjoy as well. Here's Lucius and a little friend who always seems to be at the library when we go. She's super cute and follows Lucius around. He's super nice and shows her all his favorite books (it's adorable).

And Lucius enjoying his story time with our favorite librarian, Ms. Jennifer. 

Last week Thursday, we checked out 51 books. When we all finally got home around 3:10pm both boys sat down and started reading. After an hour and a half they had barely moved off the couch and it was still eerie quiet. They only took a short break for dinner (Oliver didn't even want dinner- he just wanted to keep reading). It was about 7:10 before I saw them put the books down and go play with their toys a few minutes before bedtime. Crazy.

Oliver reading in the car one day. Of course we've now discovered that he gets a bit carsick after reading in the car. So we try to discourage long bouts of reading while we're on the road. 

One night we were going to read "The Sea of Monsters" (It's book two of the Percy Jackson series) but I realized I had a lot of laundry to fold first. I asked Oliver to wait a minute. He kindly suggested that he'd read to me while I folded the clothes. And then he started reading. I haven't heard him read out loud in a while and it seems he has only improved. Plus he makes some of those Greek names in the book sound easy to pronounce.

Last Fencing Class...

On Saturday the Boys had their last fencing class. The Teacher did a tournament in two divisions, younger kids and older kids. Their were four younger kids who fenced each other: Oliver, Lucius, another boy and a girl. Oliver and Lucius started by fencing each other. Oliver won the match by one point (3 to 2). After that they each won all their matches, beating the other two kids. I thought that was pretty good.

They had been practicing all week with each other and with Daddy. I saw marked improvement in their fencing stabs. Where before they were just swinging the sword wildly, in the tournament they actually were jabbing their opponent with purpose.

Here's a video of the day's tournament. Lucius is in the blue plaid shorts and Oliver is wearing grey sweatpants. They fight each other first then they each have a turn fencing the boy with the black pants. the password is: fencing.

fencing from Margaret on Vimeo.

 

They won First and second place in the younger division. Lucius was pretty happy about second until he realized Oliver got a sword and he didn't. Thankfully right after these photos were taken a bunch of the older kids came over to tell him that he was super good at fencing. I was quite impressed with those other kids and how encouraging they were toward the youngest kid in the class (Lucius). 

They both really enjoyed taking the class and both have a big interest in doing more fencing in the future. I'm excited to see their interests bloom and be a part of helping them try new things.

a plumbing lesson...

A week ago already, we had a little issue with the kitchen sink. Daddy had already been working on it for a while and the boys were getting more and more interested. Thankfully daddy turned it into a helping/ teaching moment.

simple pleasures: colorful driveway...

The Little Misters spent the entire evening one night coloring the driveway. I love seeing their drawings and all the color they add to the front of the house. People in the neighborhood sometimes ask us where we live, I explain where and I see a light bulb go off in their heads when they say "OH, the house with the colorful driveway?!" yup that's us.

the Little Free Library grand opening...

I (with the help of my sisters) made Mormor a Little Free Library for her birthday present. Her birthday was at the end of March but it wasn't till last week that I finally finished all the little pieces that needed to be done so we could fill it. On Thursday last week I invited some friends over for the official Grand opening. We filled the library, had treats and I even read two stories to the kids that wanted to listen (pretty much everyone but Oliver). It had been raining on and off that day and I wasn't even sure we'd be able to have the party, but it worked out. Bonus- the rain decided to stop as soon as everyone arrived. Perfect timing.

 

It was a fun time and I'm glad it's finished, one cause I like to check stuff off my to do lists and two- because we can sit out front and read all summer long. Super excited to see it be used by our neighbors too.

(Thanks dad for taking some of these photos for me so I could enjoy the moment)

national bike to school day...

Last wednesday it was national bike to school day. Not that our school pushed it or even knew about it. I found it just by chance one day while looking for other things. But I put it on our calendar and the boys were pretty excited about it. We got up at the normal time and had breakfast. Then we tried to leave earlier rather than later, but we failed to leave when I would have liked. Oliver has outgrown his smaller bike but isn't tall enough for the bigger bike. He can ride on it, but is very nervous on it, which also means he rides really slowly.

Lucius on the other hand has been riding to school at least once a week with me so he just flies when he rides his bike. Oliver had to ride the bigger one and therefore we were late to school. Marmee might have lost her cool a few times on that bike ride to Oliver's school because it's next to near impossible for me to ride as slow as my first born was riding that day. AND Lucius, sweet guy that he is, would at least stop to wait for us every so often when he got too far ahead.

BUT in the end we made it and only ten minutes late. Not to bad. Before we reached school Oliver had already decided that we would be the ONLY people riding our bikes that day. I told him more than likely we might be but that it took someone to start doing it for others to follow. Lead by example, right?!

We walked Oliver back to his classroom and then left to ride home before it rained on us. 

On the ride home we stopped by this skateboard park to check it out.

Then it was back over the freeway bridge towards home.

A Hail Storm...

Sometime last week or maybe even two weeks ago (my mind and blog posts can't keep up with the flurry of activity & photos) we had a storm come through. It was a lot of rain and then hail. It lasted all of five or ten minutes and then it was finished. Lucius (who happens to be terrified of wind, rain and tornados) was in a complete state of panic. It was all we could do to keep him from bursting into a million pieces. But as soon as the storm was done, he went out on the deck to inspect and play in all the hail stones that were left behind.

Oliver drew a picture of his "fun day" to share with his class the next day for his sharing time at school. He even wrote it out in Spanish.  Mi Dia Divertido (con hail) (translation: my fun day with hail).

Art Museum adventure...

The last few years we've been going to the Art in Bloom event at the Minnesota Institute of Arts. This year the boys did not have school on Friday May 1st so we took an adventure to see the flowers and artwork. I told the boys when we got into the car where we were heading and much to my surprise they were really excited about a visit to that museum. They started listing off things they remembered from past years, things they wanted to look for again this year. I'm not a huge art museum person, but I love a good indoor activity when its raining outside, but I'm glad they now think museums are cool.

We arrived right when they opened but they were already quite busy. We bought tickets to go see their special exhibit. It was going to cost $20 for me and $10 for Oliver, Lucius is still young enough to be free. When I went to pay the awesome man behind the counter said he'd give us Oliver's ticket for free! Score- love it when nice surprises happen. we walked around taking a few pictures before we could get into the special exhibit- The Hapsburg Collection Exhibit.

Lucius and Oliver love taking pictures and they do a pretty good job. Plus it engages them into finding things they don't usually stop to notice, giving me more time to take their pictures or look at things myself.

 It's only too bad we couldn't take pictures in the special exhibit cause they were soon bored. They both really loved seeing the jousting horses and armor on display and the little movie playing beside it about jousting. Then they were finished- and it was just the first gallery. Oh well, we had a little chat about being nice and taking it all in for my sake.

We walked back to our car for a picnic lunch after we made it through the Hapsburg stuff. Then they decided they weren't done, so we went back inside to find what they wanted to look at. Taking more pictures along the way and seeing fun flowers too.

Here's a few photos I took with my big camera: