There are no words

I don't ask.  I just was glad to capture it on my phone.

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Jackpot at Andy Alligators

So last weekend we went to a good friend's 3rd Birthday party.  It was at Andy Alligators- like a Chuckie Cheeses but waaaaaaaay nicer, like a Dave and Busters but smaller and for kids.  Anyway, one of those kind of places.  We like it because it is newer and still very clean and the food is actually good!

Anyway, Nick has been to Andy Alligators before and loved the game where you spin a wheel to win tickets.  Imagine a lifesize slot machine but more like the "spin the wheel" on the Price is Right.  Well, what a feeling when Nick struck 100 tickets!!!!

Sorry for the blur!  So much excitement!!!  Just look at him waiting for his 100 tickets to spit out!

And then, well, you can IMAGINE the excitement when STELLA hit 1,000 tickets!!!!!!!  HOLY MOLY!!  the lights go off, the machine spends like 5 minutes spitting out tickets and she was guarding them to make sure no one walked up and grabbed a handful.  I was helping, so no pics of the grand winner!  She had quite an audience too.  To put it into grown up terms, this might be the equivalent of a Royal Flush on the poker machines.

It's like a mini Vegas up in here!! Huh?

And here is a terrible b l u r r y shot of Miss-I-Just-Won-A-Thousand-Tickets driving her first bumper cars!  Of course, she took the pink one.

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My little worker bees

This is a new exhibit at the OK Science Museum.  It is all about building things.  I really like how they made this area for the kids!  It is all hands on!  They love it, too.  Turns out, Nick is quite the foreman!  And Stella was the #2 on the worksite! Naturally.
Before we got to this play area, it was just your regular run-of-the-mill play structure.  You know, kids running all about, bricks just doing any old thing, lots of chaos, noise...the regular stuff.
OK, do you see the wall of bricks?  All those orange and red and yellow blocks stacked up to the second level?  WELL, as you can possibly imagine, those weren't there before my kids got on this thing.  Pretty sure that Nick, with the enthusiastic support of Stella (which may or may not have included telling that boy not to touch the rope)...got that wall built.  Yep.  My kids, somehow, organized a child workforce to construct a "two-story" wall of foam bricks.  Do you see all the workers falling into line?  Look.


They even convinced Henry...


He's a quick study...


SO Funny!!!!!!!
Oh, and please excuse the photos.  The out-of-the-old-iPhone-camera shots were weird so I added a cross process to them.  They look a bit funky but better than the originals.  These at least look artsy.  Maybe.
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Swim Lessons Finale

Last night was a pretty big night for Nick!  He finished his first real swimming lessons course and as a treat, he and one other boy got to try the water slide!  I never dreamed he would be ready this soon!

This was his first "go" at the slide.  He went down about 4 more times.  They turned the slide on just for the two boys!  So fun!

We are going to try him out in the next class up which starts next week.  Not sure if he is ready but we'll just see what happens.  He did have a good night last night.  They started class with swimming the length of the (small) pool and was able to do that no problem.  I wasn't so sure, but he did great- water was too deep for him to touch at first then he swam to the shallow end where he can touch the bottom of the pool on his toes.  I was really surprised how far he has come.  Like I said, big night for him!

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Swimming Lessons Started Up!

It is time again for swimming "lessons" at the Y.  I think, though, Nick will actually learn something this time.  Stella just gets to kick across the pool and use a "kicking board", as she calls it.

 But it is fun.  They need something to do, I suppose, since kids these days don't just go out to play (like we did).  And when we do go outside they need to be well-supervised.  And if they are being well-supervised then they are going to be very hungry because dinner just doesn't make itself!  : )

This is actually Stella's FIRST swimming lesson class.  She just loves whatever time she gets in the water.

I am pretty sure they will be taking lessons again next month.  As long as I can get them into lessons that overlap.  I'm sorry, but I don't want to sit at the pool all evening or every evening of the week.  And Henry refuses to go to the child watch, so I just wrestle him for the whole time.  Fun times.  So these might be the only pictures unless Shawn is home and can stay home with Henry.  For now, I know they are fuzzy, but you get the idea.  Big smiles from both kids.

OH, speaking of smiles...Nick lost another tooth!  He asked me to pull it on Sunday because it hurt when he ate.  I, once again, had to mom-up and do it.  It was easier to pull this one.  But then Shawn threw the tooth in the garbage (accidentally).  So we just wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy.  She understood!


--Kate

Henry's Christmas Highlights

Henry's Christmas involved many wheeled vehicles.  Namely trains, cars, and trucks.  The garbage truck was his FAVORITE BY FAR!!!   A garbage truck.

I don't know how many laps he made around the house pushing the garbage truck!  All I know is he was waaaaayy too busy with the garbage truck to eat breakfast.  And that's pretty much what he told me, too!

Occasionally, he  would switch it up to the giant John Deere tractor.  "Whatch out Nick!  Coming through!"

But then, back to the garbage truck!

I have to say, the garbage truck is actually pretty cool.  It came with a dumpster which the truck picks up with the front arms and dumps into the back of the truck.  By the afternoon, Henry was saying "need more trash!" as he collected anything (plastic bags, tissues, legos, bits of cardboard) to put in his trash dumpster.  Only to pull the handle to dump into the back of the garbage truck.  

Henry meets his "robot".

And not even Henry could resist the house!  He got the bathroom stool so he could reach the third floor.

--Kate

Stella's Christmas Highlights

And well, you saw that Nick's Christmas Day was all about the "guys"...Stella Ann's was all about the girls!

Princesses and Barbie and clothes OH MY!

Shawn spent a good bit of his morning opening dolls and clothes for Stella. 

And now, the girls all have a place to sleep at night.  (Here Stella rearranged the furniture so the beds were in the living room...she has since reconsidered that decorating faux pas).

The girls got a car, too.  Cruisin!!

And another toy that she really wanted was this dog.  It whimpers and barks like a real dog.  I should add that her request was for two dogs- the other one you can "walk" on a leash.  She will have to settle for "Cookie" who was 50% off.

--Kate

Nick's Christmas Highlights

Christmas Day pretty much consisted of playing "guys" for Nick.  He got some new Star Wars guys and GI Joe guys and well, they all fight together against whatever enemy is against them.  At one point the enemy was Nick!  He got a new light saber and was carefully knocking over his guys, one by one, with a tap of his light saber.  I WISH I had moved quicker-  but by the time I had grabbed my camera, he proudly declared himself the winner against "the guys."

A "guy" in the new (huge) tank.

--Kate

Merry Christmas 2011

This was Christmas Eve.  After mass.  Before sprinkling reindeer food in the yard.  After cookies were set out for Santa.  Before falling asleep in hopes that St. Nick would soon be in their living room delivering presents.

And boy did he deliver!  But didn't he know about my "nothing-over-four-feet" rule?  Or my "no guns" rule?  Or my "we-don't-need-another-garbage-truck" rule?

 HOWEVER...I do love the squeals...

 ...and smiles...

 ...and "wows" that come along with those rule-breaking gifts.

Hope your Christmas was hectic and calm, loud and quiet, energized and tired, busy and lazy all in the same day.  Ours was.

--Kate

School's out! School's Out!

Teachers let the monkeys out!

Ever hear that one when you were a kid?

I think it means this:

This is what they did whilst I was on the phone with one of my dear, dear friends whom I have not talked to in YEARS.  And have not seen in longer!

Stella, posing amid the chaos.

And in case you thought the littlest was just a spectator...

But it was worth it!  I got to talk to my friend.  Kids got all sweaty.  Henry actually took a decent nap.  All is good.

Boys...I will never understand how they play!

I was the sneaky mom tonight and captured some video of the boys "playing" though I think of it as a mild form of roughhousing. It's really annoying to me when they start tackling and throwing. But this happens e.v.e.r.y. night after dinner. Every night. And since Nick has been home from school for the past two days, he didn't have any homework to do that would pull him away from this "playing" tonight.

I pretended to look something up on the laptop and caught them on my phone.

OH and please excuse my mess of a house. In my defense, Shawn has been gone two weeks straight (and minimal time home for the previous several weeks/months). Yes, I am blaming him.  haha! He gets home tomorrow night! Thank God. Enjoy the show!

Check out Henry's WILD throw at the end of the clip! It's really quick, so don't miss it!


In this one, Nick is trying to pick teams. Henry is saying he wants to be the "jounge" team. Which is his way of saying "orange". He had trouble with that word. And I think he means the Miami Dolphins.


Another football play and big throw by Henry.



OK.  Now can you imagine what this game will look like in about 5 years?!?!?!?!?

--Kate

Scary Christmas to You

This. This is what I live with everyday.
This constant comedy.
I know I missed a day of posting. Maybe this funny pic made up for it. I have been busy tying up loose ends for Christmas. Next year I will begin my shopping in October. Somebody remind me. Okay?

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Outtakes from Our Family Photos

I am STILL trying to get our Christmas card printed.  I send them to Sam's Club because they are the cheapest to print, I get free envelopes (even though technically I am not printing a "card"), and they do a decent job.  But now I am waiting for their equipment to get fixed.  Then print.  Then wait.  Then address, stamp, stuff, seal, mail!  I will get them done.  And very soon.  But in the meantime, here are some cute outtakes from our family pictures.

Oh, and today me and the kids have stuffy, runny noses and a little sinus pressure with that.  Hmmmm....funny we all just got the flu mist on Tuesday!  Grrrrrr....

Sorry, but these are the straight out of the camera photos.  OK, not that one up there at the top...I edited the crap out of that one!  It's these next pics that are dull.  I spent so much time editing and creating our photocard that I didn't touch these.  Just cropped a couple, maybe.

Are you liking my Christmas gift to you??
Posts and pics everyday!!

--Kate

Henry's First Lego Creation

On Monday morning, the little Henster was busy in the kids' room playing. So I took advantage- ate some breakfast, poured more coffee... Then he came zooming into the kitchen with this:


His first Lego creation!! It is an airplane. It had cool moves and realistic sound effects.

He plays with legos all the time. Nicholas has a bunch. (Now that kid can create some awesome things with Lego!!). Henry has just never combined pieces to make an object of some sort. He usually prefers to throw them. And he is never really interested in these larger Lego blocks. But they are easier for him to build with, maybe he figured that out now! I hope so because we have a big bucket of them.

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Can't fight bad guys in a Catholic school uniform! Duh!

It is not often (like never) that the kids want to change out of their school uniforms when they get home.  Stella likes her uniform because most days she wears a skirt.  And OH, when it is mass day and she gets to wear the jumper- it's her favorite!  She will even ask to wear it again the next day.  Now, Nick, he just never wants to change clothes because he, well, doesn't want to waste his time with it.

But, when there are bad guys to get....it's a whole different ballgame!


He asked me if he could change his clothes after school.  He came out wearing this.  I have no idea what is going on with the soccer socks and the camo pants stuffed into them.  I didn't even ask.




Oh, and since we must do everything that big brother does...


Even when it is only 20 degrees outside!

"BOYS!"