This is My Forties

I'm so very very behind on updating and I figured the best way to remedy that situation is to dedicate one blog post per family member.  Sure, it'll be a long grueling process but, hey... you're worth it ;)  Let's start with the eldest cherub, shall we? Noah turned 9 back in mid-August and we had a wonderful time with our good friends and neighbors.  Josh and I had a bit of a revelation when we asked ourselves a simple question.  Why are we saying "no"?  Noah would ask us constantly if he could bake cookies and we always replied "no" and then... wait... why?  I can't tell you how many times we told our kids "no you can't" about something they were perfectly capable of doing, which probably felt a little disheartening for the wee poppets.  So we said yes and we've been holding onto that line of logic for all three of them since then.  It's been amazing.  Gone are the days of "no you can't"... now if we hav...

First off I'd like to say that after I posted my Monopoly blog, I won every game HA!  Until today.  We were playing mostly every day since then though.  Noah's getting better, but hasn't won yet and is still not discouraged, which is good. Things going on with Noah:  OK so the kid had something similar to an Iowa test (CogAT in Maryland) and he scored in the upper 97th percentile nationwide for nonverbal reasoning skills, the other 2 categories he got a 50% and 65% LOL!  This means when it comes to manipulation of physical objects, our son is the king.  We knew that already, but it's nice that he tested well and was recognized by others so he can possibly get into better science or math next year... or maybe have different teaching techniques brought to the classroom for him.  In a classroom of 25 3rd graders with one teacher and no aide, I don't expect much.  That poor woman.  However, our school currently holds  awards for their Gi...

While we desperately needed the rain, it was still a little disappointing to have our last week of summer be spent indoors.  We made do though.  The living room was our playground. Noah entertained his brothers by allowing them to watch him defeat various bad guys on Zelda (one of his birthday presents).  He also enjoyed vacuuming dog hair off the couch, really he did, he's like that with anything that involves a machine of some kind. Brennan took to annoying the dogs every chance he could get.  He said he checked their teeth "so they could fly" ::shrug:: ok, son.  He also tried to make them "hold hands" and tried to get away with "petting them with his feet"... riiiiight.  He drug them around by their collars, outside and then back inside.  I stopped him every instance I bore witness, but he was relentless.  Thankfully none of the dogs are novices at the game of toddler torture.     Brennan spent a lot of t...

All last week I was implementing various psychological warfare tactics on Noah.  We weren't going to celebrate his birthday, I didn't have time to get any presents for him, we forgot the day or didn't believe the current date.  He knew I was joking, but on some level he was afraid his birthday was going to be total crap.  It wasn't :) He got his eggs and toast for breakfast and shortly after that we headed out to see "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" (his choice).  Personally I think Greg Heffley is a jerk-weed.  He lies all the time and thinks he's better than everyone.   But, Noah loved the books and it wasn't my birthday.  Noah had a good time sitting in his own huge leather recliner with his own fanta to drink. Noah chose wings for lunch and Buffalo Wild Wings was right across the street so away we went.  He got sweet barbecue :) Being in a family requires compromise... grocery shopping might not be fun, but it's necessary. ...

The boys and I went over to Noah's school for a little hands-on learning fun.  Noah was our teacher as we took a look at all the things they have been learning this year. In 2nd grade they have already introduced multiplication and division and they're sure to include these lessons in many ways: word problems, manipulatives, and the simple text version I remember.  They have also begun to introduce practical application with fractions.  Tristan did some geometry and found a sphere! In social studies we learned all about Native Americans.  We saw the Aztec calendar.  Did you know it only has 20 days?  We also got to see the paper model of Tenochitlan the kids made, the original Mexico City, built by the Aztecs. We read Noah's fascinating tale about planting 10 cents that grew into a money tree!  I cannot wait to read the rest of his stories.  Noah has apparently already learned how to use Microsoft Power Point too, which is so very "...

Noah finally lost his other front tooth!  It's been looking really awkward in there for awhile and I've been threatening to pull it out if he didn't (which is an empty threat).  The other night it came really loose and then he just kept wiggling and turning it.  He held the attention of his little brothers with his antics. After about 20 minutes of his tooth hanging halfway out of his head I started begging for him to allow me to give him a hand.  He refused.  I tickled him instead. After 5 more minutes of this nasty tiny worn down tic-tac tooth I told him to grab it really tight and then I whacked his hand and it popped right out.  No trauma.  No tears.  No pain.  He just laughed.  Yep!  There's a reason I don't have any girls. Noah knows there's no tooth fairy, but he likes to put his tooth in an envelope under his pillow and wake up to cold hard cash regardless.  He got a euro 50 for this particular one AND I ...