Hooray and Boo

Or perhaps, Boo and Hooray?

Boo because: the boys are sick and E is coming down with it, too. I should've wondered when they all were sleeping soundly on the way home from an Ikea trip on Friday! Z started first with cold symptoms and quickly progressed to the beginning stages of croup and sounded SO bad yesterday (but actually didn't go into it last night, hooray!), Samuel started with a nasty headache Sat night and started the cold yesterday and tonight E woke up from a 4 hour nap screaming and refusing to eat:(

The joys of small apartment living and family love. Boo.

Hooray because:

After almost 1 1/2 years (due to illnesses, moving, babies, school, etc), we finally finished our alphabet books!! Yea! I haven't reset up the alphabet wall due to lack of....a wall:) But the boys kept asking to finish their books and I kept putting it off until it seemed like the perfect project while stuck inside yesterday.






Finally, mommy! I've been waiting and waiting...

He wanted to cover up his bones with gray:)



Banana was the one thing he could think of in the house that was yellow:)


I hope I never see a zebra with orange eyes in real life. Creepy! But sort of cute....:)
My anti-picture taking dude

Love the green face!

Because he yells a lot?
The most colorful zebra I've ever seen!

And even though she didn't get to do an alphabet book, Eliana wanted to say hello!

Okay, maybe not. (don't worry, she got lots of love and cuddles 2 seconds after the picture was taken!)

V and W weeks!

 We have been V, W"ing" the past 2 weeks and having a good time, as you can see! I'm not so sure what's going to happen this week for X week. Seriously, X? Who made that letter??!! But it being X week means there are only 3 weeks until school! Where did the summer go?

V is for:

Coloring with "Vibrant" colors! (the crayons really are called Vibrant:)

 V's and W's! V's in Vibrant and W's with some White on them (of course, Z refused to color with white:)

 Z chose V is for Violin and S chose V is for Van! Samuel added a road and a sign that says "Bump" on it:)                                                         

 These were our V words for the week. We talked a lot about Vegetables and Voice, which was fun!

W is for Coloring on the windows with Window Markers! Zakkai had to make it more fun by stacking the markers to color. Needless to say, marker ended up on the window sills, the walls....He's a dangerous one, that one!

We were ecstatic when we wrote the W words with writing utensils on Wednesday while wondering what in the world we were going to do the rest of the week! ( like it?!)

 

W is for Water; Samuel added himself on the left holding the cup, with 5 hairs on his head because he is 5:) And added me on the right pouring the water from the pitcher. Zakkai chose watermelon, one of his favorite fruits!

U Week

I am finally getting around to posting about last week's "U Week," among other things:) These end letters of the alphabet are tough!

U is for:

Umbrella! This is Z's for his alphabet notebook. He cute out (most of) the pieces himself! That boy loves some scissor and glue time! I had to pry the glue out of his sticky fingers...

And S's umbrella. As usual pink substitutes when red isn't available:) He did a great job!
Underwear!! Who doesn't need new underwear? Okay, so we bought it just after U week ended. But who cares! Both boys got new undies and have been wearing them proudly:)

U Week is also for:

Books: "Underwear!" (a very funny book about a grumpy bison who learns to love underwear), "The Ugly Duckling" and....well, we didn't find too many U books.

Activities: We went to a special waterplayground and went underwater! I forgot my camera that day:) But we talked a lot about "Under" that day.

Words: Under, underwear, unicorn, umbrellas, universe,

U is hard!!
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Our new art display wall in the boys' room! I have been wanting to put up some of S's art from preschool (you may recognize the top 3 pics!) and didn't want to resort to tape. Soon Z can add his preschool art, too! Samuel is so proud to have his special art on display:)

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I leave you with Ben playing his guitar he inheirited from his grandpa. He loves this thing and had to pull it out since his mom is here visiting. A son never gets too old to show off for his mama!

So boys, if you're reading....you are never too old to make me proud!! Man, I'm sappy. Must be a sign of getting older:)

T Week!!!

I totally got sidetracked from doing Alphabet Weeks a month or 7 ago:) It was too hard to have the energy to do it for so long with all the winter illnesses, etc. BUT. I realized a couple of weeks ago that there were exactly the same letters left in the alphabet that we hadn't done yet as there are weeks left til school starts.

So...we have resurrected our Alphabet Weeks to countdown til school. And I felt guilty for not finishing. Especially when Samuel looked through his alphabet notebook a couple of weeks ago and asked why it stopped at S...

T is for:

Painting T's with teabags!!


Z takes his painting very seriously:) And refused to use the teabag...

Samuel is getting really creative with his painting, a craft he used to hate!

Z always wants to do extra papers after he's done. He requested a turtle (and Samuel requested himself eating a tortilla. Hey, whatever floats your boat!)


For Z's alphabet notebook: T is for Tree! I love that he mixes all his colors together and yet picked the perfect colors for a tree:)

For Samuel's notebook: T is for none other than...Train! (the shadow at the bottom is me, not the painting!) I love how colorful it is and how everything is colored separately. So true to how he approaches many things in life!
T is for Thomas Train! We couldn't find any Thomas books at the library (go figure) but we did find a Thomas movie:) Thomas has been a part of our family for 2 1/2 years. Sniff.

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T is also for:

Books: "Albert's Terrible Toothache", "Arabella Miller's Tiny Caterpillar", "The Two Sillies", "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" and "Firetrucks" to name a few!

Food: Tacos!! Tea, Treats, Turkey

Subjects we talked about: Toys, Trucks, Trains, Toes, Tummies, Uncle Tim, Trees, Thunder, Tigers, Tigger, Trouble, Teamwork and more!

*And we tried really hard to go see "Toy Story 3" as a treat with a movie giftcard we have, only to get waylaid by many non-working traffic lights which made us already 10 minutes late before we came upon a completely flooded road! All thanks to the pouring rain and bad storms we received on Fri night. We are going to try again this weekend:)

Need ideas for "U" week!!!

Sickies and R Week

This little heap of misery had a very rough night and day:( He was up literally all night coughing. Doze and cough. Doze, cough and cry. Doze and cough. And cry.

He was so pathetic this morning and fell asleep on the floor at 10:45 am and slept for 3 1/2 hours! You know when this ball of energy who talks non-stop, is too busy to stop and potty train and eats more than me..doesn't eat, doesn't talk, cries and falls asleep on the floor, he is sick! Poor baby. I'm hoping for a better day tomorrow.

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R Week!

R is for:

Rainbow Noodles! A quick and very fun activity shared with me by my good friend! All you need is a box of noodles, a couple tablespoons of rubbing alcohol and food coloring!
Add the rubbing alcohol and shake to coat all noodles; add food coloring of child's choice and let them shake!

I laid the noodles out on paper towels on the heater and they were dry within minutes! Ready for fun!

The boys could not wait to wake up the next morning and play with the noodles again!

Scoop and pour. Pour and scoop.
R is for Roses! My loving hubby surprised me with some beautiful roses a couple days before Valentine's Day!

Sunday, Valentine's Day was dubbed "Red Day!" The boys' faces lit up when I burst into their room and announced that it was "red day!" They knew, whatever it was, it was something GREAT! :)

We all dressed in red. We ate off of red dishes. We had red apple pancakes. Okay pink. But they were supposed to be red!

We decorated some Red and pink cookies!

With lots of sprinkles!!

And the boys made rainbow "R's" for their alphabet wall and for their notebooks, "R is for Roses" and "R is for Racecar!"

R is also for: Running, Race, Rocketships, Rhinoceros, Rabbits, RED!, Rain, Reading, Ready, Rainbows, books "Rain, Rain Everywhere" and "Rumble in the Jungle" (totally thought we had more R books:)

Samuel is very excited for "S" week:) Too bad it's starting out with "sickness."

Spring?

Alphabet!

Remember a really long time ago before Thanksgiving, H1N1, Christmas, New Year's, the stomach flu, pink-eye and gum graft surgery, when we used to do the alphabet each week? Yeah, I barely do, too...

I finally got my act together enough to get caught up so we can start again! Without further ado, here's the left over crafts from P and Q!

Zakkai's P is for Pumpkin!

And his Q is for Quilt! Like the one mommy may never finish...

Samuel's P is for Pears!

And a red Quilt for Q!

The alphabet wall is still going strong:)

Q is also for: Quick, Quack, Queen and the one book I found at the library called, "The Patchwork Quilt."

Q may have been a lame week and I can think of a whole lotta excuses why but here's to hoping for a Rockin' R week! Bring on the ideas!!

And p.s. Everytime you guys comment, it makes my day!!!