Happy 5th Birthday!

I remember bringing the twins home from the hospital the first day and thinking it would be a long time before they'd turn 5. Well, it hasn't seemed as long as I thought it would!  I hope the next five years go much more slowly.

We wanted to do something a little different for the kids instead of just going out to eat and opening presents, so we took them to Enchanted Castle, a little indoor amusement park. Jared and I came here a few months ago on our date, and we still had tokens left and a coupon for a go-cart ride.

After playing the games and riding some rides, we bought out go-cart tickets and headed for the indoor track. Jared and I had such a fun time together the last time we were here, and he was excited to ride with Steve this time and race me and Alexa.

I'm glad I took this picture of Steve and the kids, because a few minutes into our ride, I slammed into the wall and Alexa hurt her head pretty bad. She really wasn't tall enough to ride and the strap didn't hold her tight enough, so she slammed her head against the side of the car. She had a pretty big bump that swelled and turned black and blue. The management was understandably concerned, gave us lots of water and rolls of tokens. We hung out for a little while longer, but she wasn't feeling great so the kids cashed in their tokens and we left.

We were really hungry by then, so we went to Culvers right across the street. We didn't plan it but I remembered how we took them to Culvers on their third birthday, too.

I had bought a teeny, tiny cake from Jewel earlier that day, so after singing and blowing out the candles, the kids got down to business. Presents!

They were both pretty excited about their presents. Alexa's favorite was her DK History Explorers computer game.

Jared and Steve spent a few hours putting together his Bobba Fett Lego set. This was his only present from us because it cost $80. We told him that if he really wanted a big Lego set, it might be his only present from us. I was worried when he opened just the one and Alexa had five that he would this it was unfair, but he was absolutely fine with it. We give the kids allowance and they're really getting the concept of how much things cost and how long you have to save up for something big.

That weekend we had the kid's party with extended family at Steve's parents house. It's always a gamble as to where we'll host the party since our house is tiny and everyone wouldn't fit if we had it by us unless it was in the backyard. It was pretty rainy this year, so it didn't work out for our house. Alexa received lots of books, a butterfly net, and a much-requested DK World Explorer kit.

Jared, of course, received lots of Lego sets, including a $100 Scorpion Pyramid kit, which several people went in together for.

When most everyone left, Uncle Andy hung out with us for some badminton....

...and I don't think he counted on getting tackled by the kids.... and even me!

We came home and the kids stayed up late that night playing with their new presents. Here's to a wonderful, S-L-O-W 5th year.

Scooby Doo & Legos

I've said this in a previous post, but my kids LOVE Scooby Doo and the gang, especially Jared. He will spend hours with his Scooby Doo figures, tying them up, hanging them from his pirate ships, and shooting them down with his nerf gun.

We found the five pack figure set for only $10 at Toys R Us. They are his co-ultimate toy. The other has to be Legos. Jared is such a right-brained person. He is so creative, a deep thinker and has a built in sense of order and sequence. He loves to be read to, but I think he will not be ready to read for quite a few years. I thought things would be strange since Alexa started reading words at 2 and now reads longer children's books like Stuart Little on her own, but she reads books to him on the couch and he doesn't seem to think it's strange that he's not reading them on his own yet she can. I'm so, so, so thankful for this. They both would be so out of place in a school classroom. I guess it might party be the way they've been given a lot of freedom growing up, but it might also be their in-born personalities, too.

How great is it that they get to grow up knowing that playing Scooby Doo and Legos is just as valuable as reading a book or watching an American Frontiers DVD (which they just did this morning!)

Winter Games & Activities

This past winter has definitely been the winter of games. The kids are big into games now. Oh, we've played Candy Land, Memory and similar games before, but now it's the kids really asking on their own. Scooby Doo is very, very big in our house. Not a day goes by that we don't watch, read about or play with Scooby and the gang. This haunted mansion Scooby Doo game was a HUGE hit around here. The gang has to make it to the top of the mansion, but there are traps along the way.

On Christmas Eve the kids received a Smashed Potato Head Playdough game. I have to admit that I find it pretty fun, too. You have to make it around the board without getting either cut in half, turned into fries, rolled into a hamburger or chopped in two.

Besides Legos (which deserve a post of their own), Jared loves his Trio set next, especially one that also turns into a Batcave. He and Steve have spent hours playing with this set. He's hoping to get a Joker set for his birthday in a few weeks.

We've also really enjoyed Don't Wake the Daddy.

Of course, it's always fun to play good ole blocks with Daddy.

Alexa seems to go back and forth with wanting to play with her GeoSafari laptop. She really likes it when others play with her.

What she ALWAYS wants to do is look at globes. She loves to search for different countries on the computer, read about them, and then find them on the globe. I guess my love of all things travel is rubbing off on her!

I love the show Art Wolf's Travels to the Edge. It combines two passions of mine- travel and photography. Alexa really enjoys cameras, too. So, she and I really got into watching this show together this winter. One day she asked to take pictures of the screen to kind of emulate Art as he was taking pictures on screen. Here's one of her shots.

The kids have also spent quite some time with Alexa's GeoSafari Talking Microscope. It's a pretty cool toy for kids who like looking a small insects and spiders and taking quizzes on them.

What indoor winter activities have been big around your house this year?

Thanksgiving Day

When I was thinking about how I would describe our Thanksgiving on this blog, I thought about sharing how wonderful the dinner was with the rolls, mashed potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, turkey and the rest of the food.

I thought about how much fun we had playing Telephone Pictionary and all the laughter.

I thought about how wonderful it was when Steve's sister's husband showed Jared how to shoot rubber bands to knock off figures from blocks and how much he loved doing that all evening long.

But the memories I'll most remember came from our Thanksgiving circle sharing time. We all sit in a circle after dinner and go around sharing something we are thankful to God about. We do this three times. When my turns came around, I shared how I was thankful that Steve and I can still be crazy silly together after 8 years of knowing each other. I also shared how I was amazed how we need to be thankful about the hard things in our lives because they're there for a purpose we might not even be able to understand for a long time.

But the thing I was most thankful for, the thing I felt most passionate about, was that God has blessed me with the ability to give my children the gift of time and freedom. They are four and a half. I'd only have another 8 months with them before they'd be gone from home a good chunk of the day. They'd not have time to pursue those things that excited them for large blocks of time, and they would constantly be compared to others, tested continually and not living to the fullest.

I thought about the day, how Alexa took the camera from me and followed everyone around, taking silly pictures. I wanted to remember this Thanksgiving as a time of freedom and joy, of unbridled learning and unending adventure.

Here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving day as seen through Alexa's eyes.

Random Fall Fun

While the above photo isn't quite the picture of jumping up and down fun, I just had to include it here in my blog because I love seeing my two boys cuddled up together. As much as a pain it can be at night sometimes for us to have the kids crawl into bed with us and get kicked and elbowed in the stomach in the middle of the night, I know I will deeply miss smelling the tops of their little heads before drifting off to sleep and watching their chests slowly move up and down.

While digging through their Halloween candy, the kids found this mini War card game. I had never played the game before, so it was a fun new experience for us all. Many times people who are deeply entrenched in school mentality cannot fathom how anything math related can spontaneously occur- they think everything must be pre-planned and thought out. Not that researching cool number and pattern games is bad, in fact I find it a lot of fun browsing through catalogs like Mindware, but even without any extra thought things like this random finding of a card game and exploring how numbers can be more or less than each other happen all the time.

I don't know if you have anything like this at your library, but  our neighboring town's library had these awesome cloth activity bags. The kits usually include a book, a laminated card showing you how to "teach" the material, and some cool toys. How's this for serendipity? It was a week before Halloween and we had been reading online about different Halloween traditions and also how other countries have similar traditions. Around this time the kids had also watched Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico, which plot takes place during the Day of the Dad festivities in Mexico.

Then Alexa picks this bag out at the library without even looking inside it, and when we get home we realize that it's all about the Day of the Dead. We read the book and played with the toys. The family in the book talked about making Pan de Muertes. I asked the kids if they wanted to make the bread with me, and they did. It was the first time I had made bread before by scratch, and to my surprise it turned out great! It was like this perfectly planned out unit study, but of course much better because I couldn't have planned it out so perfectly.

I've mentioned before how Jared is our late-night boy, sometimes not falling asleep until 11:00, yet still up by 7:00 the next day. He gets into the most wonderfully creative moods late at night. Here's one of his late night Lego creations.

Jared's the type of kid who wants everything. Right now one of his favorite activities it to take all the ads out of the Sunday paper and point out the hundreds of things he wants for Christmas. Alexa, on the other hand, is much different. We gave her $20 this vacation to buy whatever she wanted, and she would always leave stores, aquariums and other attractions empty-handed because she didn't find anything worth spending her money on. So, when she saw a commercial for the Glo-Doodle and was jumping up and down saying she wanted one, we took her right out the next day to get one. (She had so much allowance built up by then it was crazy).

Legos & Dolphins @ Brookfield Zoo

We didn't know beforehand that there would be a Lego exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo, but it was a welcome surprise.  We actually spent more time here than looking at animals.

It's absolutely amazing at what people have been able to make out of Legos. And to think that someone gets paid to do it!

We bought a membership today which entitles us to four tickets to a dolphin show, so we decided to see the show today ( which was really on the 10th). I didn't realize how crowded it would be or how we would have to stand in line a long time in the hot sun, but we were able to get a good seat in the center.

We've seen one other dolphin show at the Shedd Aquarium which cost us about $55 for the family and was more about a theatrical experience than really seeing the animals. For $13 our whole family sat much closer to the tank, saw more of the dolphins and learned a lot more for much less than half the cost of the Shedd.

I really wish I had a better camera because I would have been able to take some incredible pictures. Jared fell asleep in Steve's arms halfway through the show (funny, he did the same at the Shedd, too!), but Alexa really enjoyed the show.

After the show, the kids watched the dolphins in the underwater viewing tank while I headed to the bathroom. The sea lions were right next door, so Alexa and I watched them glide around for a while. They'd swim right up to the glass, so you could literally get nose-to-nose with them if you wanted to.

Alexa wanted to look at the grizzly bears, but we found out they moved them to a new location on the other side of the zoo. It really was hot, and we were sweaty and tired, so we just decided to come back another day for that. Since we live only a five minute's drive from this zoo, we can come for only an hour and not feel bad about it! I'm so looking forward to coming back many times over the next year.