This Week

Awesome! (with no heater on)

Aaron peeled and cut (with a butter knife, which actually takes considerable force,
 so I was pretty impressed) this whole bag of carrots all by himself.

Baby school

Big boy school

Clever little fellow

Building lego pyramids. Mom helped Alexander build one
and then he added a birthday candle.

Lego pyramids: mommy's, Aaron's, and Andrew's.
Andrew switched to the bigger blocks and thought his deserved the award for biggest.

Look what I made mom!

Take a picture of me!

Piano dollars

Pyramids virtual field trip. Aaron taking pictures of Daddy's pictures and videos.

Reading Cards Our Family!

Special delivery with the remote control car

Tea party

The Everyday
Usually I am obviously taking pictures of the most special things in the week.
I've been trying to take pictures here and there of the extremely
ordinary too to remember these days more fully later..
This week I thought I'd take pictures of an totally regular,
 normal, almost boring food day (well at least this is normal for us, here and now).
I thought some of you might like seeing the pictures too.

So this is a boy's breakfast

And this is mom's breakfast.

Lunch: red beans, rice, and broccoli

Snack: options here are usually just fruit or peanuts

Dinner: scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and corn on the cob

Treats: pumpkin bread, or if the boys have candy in their treat can they have
 the option of choosing one piece of candy instead of a homemade treat.

The Everyday:
Two loads of laundry hanging on the (new, hooray!) laundry bars

The knight of battle.
(Also almost a daily occurrence, but he is very special.)

Happy Birthday Grandpa Jeff!

We all hope you have a fabulous day!

Love,

Nate, Anna, Aaron, Andrew, and Alexander

The boys worked very hard to make you special things so your special birthday could be extra special.

(And they want you to know that!)

This is a grandpa cheetah bear.
By Andrew
Cheetah bears are a reptile that lays eggs. See their beautiful shiny fur?
They can run super fast. They are never given to sillyness, in fact they run fast from sillyness.
They bathe every time they hear a joke.
They can fly in their fast cars. They can glow in the dark like a lightning bug,
 so they use their paws for flashlights and nightlights in the dark.
They sleep in sleeping bag nests and hibernate deeply.

(And now it is time for a certain non-grandpa very young cheetah bear to go to his nest.)

Those are plant fireworks that you see exploding there.

Happy Birthday Grandpa Jeff! Love, Alexander

(He actually worked a long time on this and kept saying/singing
Happy Birthday Grandpa Jeff over and over, but he didn't want to use any other colors this time,
and no one else could write any words on it for him either.)

Andrew and Grandpa Jeff shooting off fireworks. Andrew is holding the birthday cake.
Daddy is throwing confetti.

No birthday is complete without games, so Aaron made you a maze.

Maze instructions

Aaron's drawing of your house and pond. And symbols for all four seasons.

Andrew made you a birthday book about measuring. He'll tell you the story.