Kids in a box

The kids played happily together for a few minutes on Saturday. They're pretending the box is a boat, and then they run to an island.

Blue Girl and Water Boy

Saturday morning, Alice was "Blue Girl with Superpowers!"

Then she turned in to garden girl and sort of helped Zac plant things in the garden.

Simon was very helpful in watering the pine needles.

Simon and the Grapes

Simon doesn't want to eat, sometimes. So we developed a trick, which works sometimes, where we pretend he is an owl and the food on his plate is a mouse. It doesn't always work very well, especially since showing the kids a video of a owls barfing up owl pellets.

I wish I had started this video earlier. Simon had been battling with this plate of grapes for a couple of minutes before I began recording. But you get the idea.

And yes, all of these videos amount to our shortcomings as parents. Did I think I'd let my child throw away a plate of grapes? Of course not. But he's germy and you don't know which ones he's put in his mouth and spit out as owl pellets and you have to get the kid in the bath sometime, so here we have it: Simon is throwing away perfectly good grapes.

Lego Lady

Alice putting together legos from a diagram in the booklet. I helped, but she caught on quick. These are simple enough model that she can make them.

Alice and Izzy

Zac took this picture of Alice and her good friend Izzy at pick-up.

Simon's art

Simon's art folder at school is often empty.  When there is something in it, it's pretty minimal, like these two examples.

White square with light orange scribbles.

Green rectangle with two small cuts in the bottom right corner.

Alice's Art

Here is some of the art and work that Alice has brought home from school over the last month or so. Zac and I love looking at her work. It is so fun to imagine what it reveals about her little brain and way of seeing things.

In the formal school work, it is fun to see how she can follow the rules. Although a lot of her numbers are backwards in this calendar, the writing is neat and you can tell you put a lot of effort and care into it.

I like the extra little flourishes above the butterfly's wings.

Ok, now we get into the free drawings, which can seem a little manic. But like all art, it is fun to look at and see what you see in it.

Below, Mom and Dad, with kids flying kites.

The picture below is a hurricane. Can you find the eye of the storm?

The two pictures below were drawn by Nelson Shogren and colored by Alice.

Sera's 36th Birthday

Both kids said happy birthday to me in the morning, which was fun. Once they were dressed, it was time for the traditional morning cake viewing (since we can only decorate them once the kids are in bed.)

I picked the kids up from school and Zac picked up the Vietnamese take-out food for supper. Alice surprised me with this birthday card she had made for me at school.

This picture on the back of the card is, I believe, a reference to the "Finger Family" song. I always find it really creepy, but Alice loves the song.

Selfie with Simon and hoot owl, after supper.

The deal is that Alice gets to put the candles on the cake and Simon gets to help me or Zac blow them out.

Zac printed out these cool retro NASA-JPL posters that I'd sent him a link to a long time ago. The other fabulous birthday present was a box of Legos.

Alice in the morning

Color this box

Two days before my birthday, Zac wrapped a big box in white paper and had the kids color on it to make the wrapping paper.

Umbrellas in the sun

Sunday we stayed home and did some housework. The weather was quite lovely, so we went outside in the morning. The kids sort of helped was the cars a bit, but soon preferred to ride their bikes and scooters on the sidewalk.

Alice wanted to look at her umbrella, and then of course Simon needed his too, so I made them go on the porch to play with them.

Simon was still in need of lots of snuggles. I think the germs reprogram the brain so the kids wants human contact as much as possible to spread the germs.

How Alice Counts to 100

She seems to favor 8s.