James Says / Amelie Says

Sam was attempting to explain the end of daylight savings to James, when he yelled “I’m not a scientist!” and ran out of the room.

Leah was playing with the big kids in their room and I heard a thud followed by crying. I came in and asked if she had fallen off the bed. James said no, “she threw herself overboard.”

Leah did something and James said "Thank you very much," and then a few seconds later I hear him pipe up from the back seat, “I was being sarcastic!”

Amelie made a calendar at school for us with poems for most of the months. Her composition for October was a couplet: “It is totally not hot / I see a pumpkin rot"

I asked her where her glasses were, and she said, "Now that's a good question." 

James & Leah at the Park

I wanted to take a picture of James & Leah at our neighborhood park, showing off their goofy clothes. (They did not want to take a picture :)

James wanted to get down to the serious business of the monkey bars.

He does his shoes this way on purpose - so the tongues stick out. (I have no excuse for Leah.)

Tie Dye

I tie-dyed some shirts with my small group from church and they turned out AWESOME! I did tie-dyed shirts for Christmas presents several years ago and still had lots of supplies left.

Okay, so I didn't dye the one that James is wearing. I kind of figured out how to do a heart, but a peace sign is still to advanced for me. Waiting for Fuzzy's tacos: 

Climbing at the park:

Hanging out with Grandma Mary:

Crystal

I made Sam take some pictures of me with the kids. This was from the summer - look, Amelie's still in her cast.

And then he took a bunch more to show off some tie dye. (I'll post more about that next.)

Museum of Art and Archaeology

The Museum of Art and Archeology had an open house and I took the big kids. There were all kinds of things to do, but I only got 3 pictures (and James asked me not to post one!)

There was Chinese calligraphy. Amelie wrote "family" and "people" and the woman told us that together it meant "family member." James hung back and watched.

They then did paper cutting. Also not pictured: a scavenger hunt, basket weaving, a whole hall of artifacts including bows and arrows from various locations and time periods, a re-creation of a room from the mid-1800s, a station where I built a clay dwelling that then got mashed down and other clay dwellings were built on top of it, which were then mashed down for a model of a tell, and all kinds of other stuff.

I told the woman throwing pottery that I was impressed by how many she had made in the 2 hours the open house had been going (5 pieces) and she said if she wasn't going slowly and explaining to children that she probably could do 25 in that same time period!

At one of the exhibits, James started to complain loudly that "This IS BORING" which was actually much more embarrassing than the pointing and giggling they'd done in the room of plaster statues of nudes.

Game

The kids invented a fishing game, where they cast a bungee cord off the back of the truck and try to snare a bent tomato cage off the driveway. Look at Leah's face!

Sibling Photo

Hey look, there they are posing on the big rock again. All ready for church:

This was mid-morning after Amelie's slumber party.

School Pictures

The kids did school pictures!

James is 6 years old and in Kindergarten with Ms. Newkirk.

This one pretty much cracks me up! Amelie is 8 years old and in third grade with Ms. Malloy. She had very particular opinions about how I should fix her hair. Though she is trying to grow out her bangs and pictures were after PE. (She had particular opinions last year, too.)

They did pictures again at Leah's school. She's 1.5 and has just moved up to the 1's room. They did two poses and I think I like this one the best:

But this one show a lot of personality:

Baby Fashion

Leah has a wide variety of outfits. She's quite the fashionable baby. I am in love with this romper - even though I forgot about it in a WHOLE BOX of 12-month stuff that she still fit into until right near the end of the summer.

Leah has a Cardinal's shirt that is almost too small, but she just had to wear it once. (Though I think she wore it last year, too.)

This is a 6-month dress - we've gotten A LOT of use out of it. I'll see if I can dig up any pictures of her from when she was littler wearing it - or it would be fun to do a comparison post and show Amelie wearing all the same clothes 7 years ago.

You can see that several of my "fashion" photos are outside right before we need to get in the car to go to daycare/work. 

These shoes belonged to James :) 

Amelie wore this dress one Easter. 

Sitting on the bench right before school. We're not supposed to go in until 8 o'clock. 

James wore this outfit, too. 

I have a big bin of things that I'd like to pass on. I was thinking about having a yardsale, but never got around to it. 

Glasses

Amelie got glasses!

Sam went with her and James for their yearly checkup. I shouldn't have been surprised when he texted me that she was getting them - but I was. Here she is picking them out:

She did not go with this pair. (Check out her angler fish t-shirt - she did a project on angler fish last year and the teacher had the pictures they'd colored of the subjects all made into t-shirts for the individual kids. The sticker on her front is reminding us that school picture day was the next day.) 

I took her back to pick up the glasses when they came in 2 weeks later. The first thing she said was, "Ooohhhh!" Then she said things were a lot clearer. Later she said that she regretted not getting them until after school picture day - she wished she'd had the glasses for her school picture. I reassured her that she would be wearing her glasses for many school picture days to come.

Here she is checking them out for the first time:

Lookin' sharp! 

James and Leah came, too. Leah wanted to sit in the chair in front of the mirror and said, "Mine!"

Amelie broke her glasses at school after having them 4 days and we couldn't fix them, but the eye doctor did.

I asked if she liked the glasses, and she said that they helped her concentrate, but sometimes they hurt her ears.

Sleepover

We didn't have a friend birthday party for Amelie this year - just a special meal, cake, and presents with family. She asked for a sleepover party after going to one at her friend's house, and we said yes for a (very) belated birthday. She invited her cousin Ellie and three friends from school. We actually traded James and he went to stay the night with his cousin Ben so he'd be out of the girls' hair.

Her original plans were to have a scavenger hunt at the park for party favors, eat Chinese takeout, show her friends the playhouse, and build a fire in the backyard and toast marshmallows for s'mores.

Well, it rained almost all day and then was chilly and muddy, so they just opened favors and toasted the marshmallows inside over candles instead.

They did go out to play in the playhouse - and got terrifically muddy. I had to rinse shoes off in the sink afterwards - and then they weren’t dry yet at 2am (more on that later) so I threw them in the dryer.

Leah snuggled down with everyone to watch the movie that we started about 7:30 or 8:00pm with dimmed lights and popcorn. HOW NAIVE!

Then they rocked out with the instruments in the basement.

There were chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and a mad scramble for a bunch of misplaced belongings when the parents came to pick them up.

And (almost) everyone stayed up incredibly, unbelievably late - the last ones finally caved about 3:00AM.  One of the moms texted me a picture of her kiddo conked out on the couch about 20 minutes after leaving our house.

Aunt Barb texted me this picture - apparently Ben and James went to sleep at regular bedtime:

Poor Sam is somewhat shell-shocked. He said maybe MAYBE we'd consider it again when she is 10.

Outside

Just hanging out outside.

They're playing with the stalks from the big clump of daylilies we have in the front yard. 

En garde! 

6th Birthday Party

James turned 6!

We had a party for him at Bonkers and invited 20 kids (that number includes the three we brought with us :)

James requested Chuck-E-Cheese but I persuaded him otherwise since it's too loud and overstimulating, and then we got to Bonkers and they'd taken out a section of the climbing structure/toddler area and added in some loud and overstimulating rides/arcade games. BUT the point is the kids had fun,  and I really can't overstate how nice is is for them to do all of the cooking and clean-up.

James's favorite food is pizza, and conveniently enough, that's what they serve :)

They won tickets at the arcade games. 

And Amelie figured out some kind of scam where she just got piles and piles of tickets on one of the games. 

They could then exchange their tickets for various cheap plastic prizes. (Though Shauna's bunch made out with magic 8 balls, which I thought was neat.) Here's James picking out his loot at the end. He says  this sword (which lasted a whole 4 days) was one of his favorite gifts that he got for his birthday. His other favorite gift is the remote-control car he bought with the birthday money Grandma Doris sent. 

Here's a slideshow my phone put together of the party:


Here's the link from Amelie's Bonkers party. (for comparison purposes)

In other birthday-related news, Sam's folks wanted to take James out to dinner - anywhere he wanted to go. He chose Subway (I suspect that the attached Baskin Robbins was a big part of the draw, but he didn't want to change his mind even when offered ice cream regardless of where we ate).