First snow...

The Little Misters have been waiting since spring for snow. They were pretty excited when it finally came. They were in their snow things and out the front door almost an hour before the bus arrived. I even fed them breakfast they could take outside, on the go so they didn't have to disrobe to eat. 

They even made snow angels, the first of the season. 

Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving Day we drove up to Oma and Opa's house to spend the day eating and visiting. 

We played a few games, read the black friday ad's, helped taste test all the goodies and drank as much tea as Auntie Dana was willing to make. 

Lucius was pretty excited to watch as much football as he wanted. He still talks about it as "the day I watched three football games". And he remembers who played who and what the scores were for each game. Crazy.

Eventually it was time to cut the turkey and feast. 

When we could eat no more we all retired to Oma's new couch where 80% of us all sat together. 

That is until it was time for pie! 

Quoteable: Stress out

"I have ten hundred and 98 things to do... PLUS two more things and that equals one thousand! I just can't do all those things."

Oliver was SUPER stressed when a friend came over to play while he was in the middle of drawing a picture.

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Oliver is trying to convince the world that nothing is really "his and hers". I continually hear him telling friends that pink isn't just a girl color. The other day I hear him tell his friend:

"Theres no such thing as boy stuff and girl stuff. Except for maybe boys bathrooms."

A note...

When I sent a package to my Cousin Kj, I asked Oliver if he wanted to write a letter to her son Oscar (who they played with in WA when we visited). This is what he ended up writing:

I wish I had taken a photo of Oliver's other note he wrote to Bethy. I think it said something like "I want to have a sleep over with you again. We should assemble that soon. Also I think you look like Colbie Caillat the singer. I'm learning cursive, I wrote your name in cursive on the front."

More games...

Since unpacking our board games, Oliver, Lucius and I have been playing new games. One night I broke out Boggle and thought I'd try to teach them how to play. I totally was not expecting my youngest to get many real words as he's not quite reading yet. First thing he says when the timer is flipped "can I do Spanish words?". Then during all five rounds we played he found about 5 or 6 real Spanish words and spelled them correct (or pretty darn close). Words like "sol" and "los" "es" and he sounded out car as "CR".

I was impressed. BUT maybe not as impressed as the following week when we tried playing Banana grams (simpler to scrabble without a board). Lucius spelled "yo soy tomate". Then went on to ask or sound out several other random words. We're still practicing places the tiles correctly but we had fun.

Oliver caught on pretty quick to both games and had fun playing with us.

His pieces looked like this on the second game.

Cursive...

One evening Oliver opened up to me about all the things he dislikes about school. I was seriously sadden (and frustrated) to hear my almost 8 year old tell me that it was "mostly cause I'm not learning anything new, except maybe in Math and Science".

I asked him what he wanted to learn. He mentioned cursive and multiplying. We'd just talked about cursive being a fancy way to write stuff because I saw this piece of school work that had come home.

He thought it'd be fun to see what cursive was and try to learn it. So he stayed home one Friday and worked on learning the two things he wanted to learn about. Of course he did get a bit frustrated with the cursive at one point and told me "i'm not learning anything, i'm just writing. Writing isn't learning". Oh boy. But then he started getting it (being left handed he was having trouble starting the letters in the right places). He spent most of the day trying it and he quickly mastered his own name and a few other words. It went a lot better when he traced my copy and then he'd try it on his own. 

Then he wanted to do some multiplying. He said he already knew how to do it. I wasn't sure if they've started teaching that in school yet or not, but I was surprised when he knew most of his times tables (1-5 and 10 times tables). WOW. He was giggling and telling me I couldn't stump him. He even wanted to figure out a few of his own math problems he thought up: like a googleplex times a googleplex.

After Lunch he and I took a trip to the bookstore to see if we could find a cursive book and a multiplication workbook. We found a few and he picked out which ones he thought looked best. We spent a bit of time in the children's book section too. When we got home he spent even more time working in his cursive writing book and reading. We even did a times table chart thingy together.

I'm surprised by how much he already knows. I love that he loves to learn new things and be challenged. I just hope I'm able to work with his teacher to help bring that same passion for learning into his classroom.

Simple Pleasures: Lazziness contest

This apparently is a "laziness contest" in progress. (Jerimy finally figured out the contest came from the Garfield comic strips that Oliver loves to read so much). Too funny.

Which soon turned into a tickle fight.

I love that they get along so well (most of the time).

This is another laziness contest that happen a different day.