~ N, O, P ~

My poor blog has been suffering because of moving preparations and everything that's been going on, but I finally pulled this post together! It takes me a long time to get these school posts together....but here we go!

N week:
during Nuh week they talked about noses, nurses, numbers, nuthatches and nutcrackers. They ate nachos, mixed nuts, fig newtons, nutella (mmm) and nectarines.

Here's some noodle art he made that week. Cool huh? Noodles glued to some pretty hip paper.
By the time we took the picture he had forgotten all about it. He's like, "what's this??"


O week:
During this week they talked about opossums (we know all about those out here in Missouri!), orangutans, octopuses (octopi?) and sea and river otters. I love how they talk about animals. The kids learn all sorts of things about them like where they live, what they eat and if they're warm blooded or cold blooded, etc. It's fun to quiz him about the animals when he gets home.
During this week they ate oatmeal cookies and oranges. I know they had more snacks than that, but that's all I could get out of Max that week.
Some O art:

(orange)

This is my favorite. It's an octopus. Isn't it great??

P week:

During puh week(s--I think there were two) they talked about polar bears, peacocks, prairie dogs, panda bears, plants, penguins, porcupines, puffins and tree pangolins (wow, what the heck are those?! I need to go look them up I guess.)
They snacked on pistachios, pretzels, pineapple, pickles, peppers, plums, pecans, papayas and had a pizza party.
Here's some P art for you.

"Polka Dot Painting"


"plants"


my favorite the "Peacock" so cute!

More school stuff to come....if I can ever get to it!

::Such Happy News!!::

I have a new nephew as of this morning! What a great May Day gift!
Look at him, isn't he adorable?
His name is Christopher but his parents like to call him Scooter. He's my sweet brother Cammon's and my sweet sister (in law) Lorri's first baby. I'm so excited for them!
It was a long day for all of them I think, and they were all very brave (especially Lorri), and we're just all so glad he's here!
I'm just so sad I'm not there to take pictures. And hold him. And smell him. Soon enough I keep telling myself.
I sure love youguys! Congratulations!!
(beautiful brave mommy and sweet little boy)
(adorable Cammon and new little son!!)
I'll post some less brand new pictures once I have access to them for sure.

.::School Picts::.

Here's Max's school picture from this last fall.



Isn't it funny? Can you see the paper mache mushroom on the right hand side?
I like his hair in this one. It looks like him.


Here's his picture from a couple of weeks ago.



So funny! I don't like his hair so much in this picture, it looks like somebody tried to tame it, which is just a bad idea. The school pictures are so silly. I'm glad I have other better pictures of him, but I'm glad to have these too---they're just a crack up!

::Never Gets Old::

This morning I finally got done folding and putting away about 12 tons of laundry. I looked up and here's what I saw:

I suddenly had flashbacks.

2004:


early 2006:


later 2006:


Sitting in a laundry basket is the kind of coolness that seriously never gets old.
I just wish I had one my size. Sort of.

.::Visual Proof::.

I just think these are so cute that I can't resist posting them!

Here's the page where he wrote his name for the first time. You can see down at the bottom the one where I wrote the first line in black and he finished in blue. Above that is his second successful attempt. (yeah, I realize now it looks a little like he's writing MAT, but keep in mind his Xs are on a bit of an upwards curve....)

Here's another page we did right then. You can see all the different words we worked on. I had to remind him what a lot of the letters were shaped like, but I didn't help him any more than that. I especially love how the word fish looks, and the E with like 7 legs. My letters are at the top, all the rest are his.

And then here's a letter to Parker he wrote last week. I helped him spell and reminded him what letters looked like on a separate piece of paper. It's so cute!

Now that I have it scanned maybe I'll actually mail it one of these days. We'll see...
Here's a picture that went with the letter. This is the first thing I've ever seen him draw that wasn't just scribbles. I told him to draw a face and he just did. I couldn't believe it. There's a guy, a couple of hearts, a tree, grass and the sun in this picture.

I'm just thrilled to have a child that actually drew something!!! (as you can probably tell). Yay for Max!

::He can WRITE! Who knew??::

A little background here. Up until this point Max has hated to color, and didn't ever care to draw. I got all sorts of fun coloring books to try to tempt him and would always offer to draw with him, but no dice. He's been doing better with coloring at school lately (he was terrible when he first started), but it's still much more of a chore than a pleasure.
Alright, on to the news.
A couple of days ago Max decided he wanted to write his name on some paper. Which really meant he wanted ME to write his name. So I did. A couple of times. Then I asked him if he could do it. He said he couldn't, and that it was just too hard.
I made the first line for the M and then had to go and answer the phone or something. When I came back, he had written his whole name, starting off the line that I had made.
I was basically flabbergasted. He was so proud he looked like he could've floated away. Then he wrote his name again right away. Just as well. Then again.

He proceeded to write his name a zillion times, for about the next two hours. (and yes, his paper was upside down for this picture, because he was making Ws, otherwise known as upside-down Ms!)

I helped him write a few other words, you know, dad, mom, fish, mama, love. He did really well.
It was a little tough to get him to take a break for dinner.

I knew he could do it. Sometimes it's so funny that all it takes is finding out you can actually do something to do it! He's such a smart guy, he's reading a lot and has known his alphabet backwards and forwards for a couple of years. So I'm not surprised he can write like a champ--I'm just surprised at the suddenness of it. It's so funny.

He's very serious about it. Obviously. When I picked him up from school the next day his coloring page was covered with cute little MAXes. Oh yeah, and AXM and XAM. He's experimental.
We're proud of him and his adorable chubby little arms!

.::No more crowns & No bed either!::.

Kris finished his last crown on monday. He's done with ALL of his graduation requirements! It's amazing. Really amazing. All his hard work and stress has paid off, thank goodness. We thought there was a very strong chance that he'd have some sort of problem and that his finishing would be delayed, so we're SO relieved that he's finished. So yay for that.

We sold our bed. We weren't planning on selling it until much closer to our actual move date, but Kris and I got anxious and listed a whole bunch of stuff on Craig's list this weekend, thinking we were running out of time. We didn't think that anything would sell right away (I guess I don't know what we were thinking honestly). We had a ton of emails on the bed right away, and somebody came and picked it up the next afternoon. So now we're sleeping on the hide-a-bed in the couch. For three more weeks. Augh. We thought about stealing Max's bed back, but he got a little bothered when our bed left, and said that nobody was allowed to take his. We figure if he sleeps well everybody sleeps better, so whatever!
And to everybody that's stayed over and slept in that bed, sorry. It's not quite as comfy as I'd hoped. Better than a lot of things, but just not as comfy and I'd like right now.
But now we have some money saved up for our new bed that we're going to get from Ikea when we move and I'm excited.

More news coming tomorrow hopefully...in the meantime please enjoy:

::How cool is this?::

I didn't even know that these cool tag-along bike things existed until a couple of years ago. Isn't it fun?
Max was really scared to ride it at first, the bumps and turns and everything made him pretty nervous. But Kris offered him ice cream or something equally motivating, and all it took was one successful ride. Now he's an expert.

Here they are on the way to school one morning a little while ago.

I'm always a little nervous that he's going to just fall off, but he's a bigger boy than I think he is.
We haven't gotten to go on a ride all together yet, but hopefully sometime soon we will--now that the good weather is going to be more consistent (hopefully!)

We got this thing off Craig's list for a really good price. Isn't Craig's list great?

In other news, Max woke up two nights ago in the middle of the night yelling and screaming that a hot dog was eating him. How weird is that? I asked him about it the next day and he remembered the dream. He told me all about the hot dog eating him. I tried to explain that hot dogs don't eat people, people eat hot dogs. It didn't help.

Yesterday, unbeknownst to us he brought one of his quarters into the bathroom with him while he was using the facilities. He's been earning quarters by doing the chores. Really his only chore right now is feeding Sultan (much to Sultan's chagrin). It's been working out so far though. Anyway, Kris and I were in the living room and we suddenly heard this horrible screaming and crying. Max came running out of the bathroom with his pants down around his ankles screaming "MOMMY!! DADDDY!! OH NO!!" He scared me to death. I couldn't imagine what had happened. Guess what? He'd dropped his quarter into the toilet. "into the deep deep water!" Total tragedy. Good thing Mr. daddy dentist has a whole box full of rubber gloves just waiting for jobs like that. The quarter was recovered and all is now right with the world. Yuck.

In conclusion, last week Kris taught Max that there is such a thing as a knock knock joke. He didn't really get it at first, but after some coaching he's started to make up his own jokes. And wow they're ridiculous. I think I remember Murphy doing this same thing long long ago.
When I tell him a real knock knock joke (I think I know two. One is like Dwain the bathtub I'm dwowning!) he looks at me like I'm a weirdo. Here are some good examples of his specials from this afternoon.

knock knock, who's there, pineapple, pineapple who? Pineapples are yummy!
knock knock, who's there, parrot, parrot who? parrots fly in the air
knock knock, who's there, harrot, harrot who? Harrot heart! (????????)
knock knock, who's there, pirate, pirate who? Pirates swim in the BOAT!

I hope everybody had a good weekend. We're back to work and school tomorrow. Hopefully all will go well!

~ Spring Week ~

Right around easter Max's school had "spring week."
It was really fun because he came home with all these wonderful happy springy projects, right about when we really needed a little shot of spring.
Here's one of them:

Isn't this adorable? I think that the teachers prepared all the kids' paper--sponge painting it or something. The little shapes are foam stickers. So cute and cheery!
Here's another craft:

The egg opens and closes and the little chick comes out of a little pocket in the egg.

Can you see he's getting a little better at coloring--well at least a little more enthusiastic!
Here's an easter basket craft:

The eggs were colored separately and then glued on.
One day they decorated real eggs. He carried this egg around for an entire day--I finally told him that if he didn't let me put it in the fridge Sultan would eat it. He gave it to me. Later that night he woke up crying "oh no! Sultan ate my egg!"
Yikes--I wasn't trying to give him nightmares!

They finished out the week with a big easter party. The easter bunny came early that day and hid a basket for everybody. It was really exciting for the kids.
The basket had a few small treats and a cute fuzzy little bunny.
Max loved it.

They do such a great job at his school making things fun and exciting--and mixing up the fun with learning. We'll be so sad when we have to leave it behind!

Happy spring everyone!