Old Man Jacobs

 Yesterday Jess turned 30.  So weird.  He went in to work at 5 am, AND I happened to know his coworkers were planning on a breakfast for him, so the kids and I slept in and he went to work.  He came home at lunch to pick us up though, and we went to Arby's. 

 We ate and gave him all the drawings the kids worked on the day before.

He was pleased.

His coworkers also got him a giftcard for dinner at a steakhouse, so we got to have quite a dinner date last night.  My dad and Trudi babysat, and the older two ended up spending the night.  So we didn't give him his last gift from the kids until they came home today.  

 

It's a book of poems and their illustrations by the kids, with a little help from me.  My favorite might be this one written by Paige:  

"You're the bomb, 

you are the bomb.  

Can't believe, 

you ARE the bomb."  

Obviously Cason did the illustrations for that one.  :)

Happy birthday(yesterday) Jess.  You're the best dad and husband around.  We can't imagine life without you.  Love you so much.

Popcorn Girl and a Mummy Tortoise

Wednesday morning I did my volunteer time in Paige's class.  I was helping a few kids that needed a little extra help writing sentences.  Last time I helped kids out in the hall and Paige was sad she didn't see me much.  This time she was glad I stayed in the classroom.  She kept coming over to tell me something or give me a hug.  When I was leaving she asked me "How come you never pick me?"  Haha.  I told her Mrs. Arnold ASSIGNS me a job, I don't just come in there and pick the kids I like the best."  :)

Then I took the other two to storytime with Veronica and Aivree, and we saw Nicole and her littler girls there too.  Cason was happy to see Delaney, and went to sit up front with them.  (We were the slackers walking in right when it was about to start and had to sit in back.)  It was Neely's first time if I remember right.  If she did ever go it was as a newborn. She liked it, but was a little shy.  She stayed right up against me, being all stoic.  She DID shake her eggs to the music though.  :)

After we picked Paige up we met Veronica again, at the park this time.  The big girls don't get to see each other as often now that they're in Kindergarten, so we got them together.  Veronica taught the kids about Spiderswing.

 

 

Lily and Cason did some "cartwheels".  :)

 On Thursday Jess had his mom pick him up in the morning on her way to work so he could get there early and get some stuff done.  I got all 3 kids ready and we all took Paige to school without Jess's help, for the first time.  It actually wasn't too bad dropping her off.  The hard part was getting myself and them all ready, making Paige's lunch, and making breakfast for three kids who all really wanted something ELSE for breakfast and happened to be a bit cranky that morning.  (Paige wasn't actually, she's never cranky on a school morning, but she DID wish I made a different breakfast)  

After we dropped her off I went to see her popcorn word board, because she told me they got her school picture on her little popcorn now.  :)

Her tiny little face looks so cute on that gigantic board.

 

Then Caso and Neely and I went home.  They played out front for a bit.  Caso was drawing letters and numbers with chalk and said "Mama I made a D!"  Neely was coming over to check it out in this picture, and telling him "I WIKE a d, Cason!" even though he'd already moved on to his next letter, an E with a little something extra.  Ha.

When we picked Paige up we came home and started working on some birthday gifts for daddy.  Cason kicked things off with a picture of "Daddy and me running to hug".

That boy's a real perfectionist with his drawings lately.  He made many attempts that he was pretty angry at for being "SOOOO STINKY!" which usually meant the head wasn't as circular as he liked or the eyes were uneven or something.  

This is one of the reject piles.

There were more on the floor.

He also drew daddy as a bomberman, with all his bombs.  He ended up cutting the bombs off this picture and telling me he was going to use them to make a bomb game.  So he drew another one for daddy, with more colorful bombs.  A rainbow of bombs.

This is unrelated to Jess's birthday, but he also brought me this picture of Sammy(our tortoise) as a mummy for Halloween.  He asked when we can go outside to give it to Sammy.  I'm dreading that because even if we catch Sammy when he's out and about, Caso's most likely going to have his feelings hurt when he sees the lack of a reaction Sammy's likely to give.  Ha.

I love how the animal mummies only have bandages on their heads.  :)

He Knows What He Is

As I said, Caso was singing while drawing his Bombermen on the sidewalk last night.  So I got some video.

While I'm posting videos, here's one of naughty Neely.  She's been telling us "Le' me go" all the time.  Usually she says it thinking she's funny, but sometimes it's when she's feisty and we're making her hold still, like to change a diaper or brush her teeth.  She'll say "Le'me GO daaaad" or "Le'me GO moooom." 

Richard Simmons Skeleton Craft

I made a second bat.  The only thing I did differently was add some wire to his wings to make them sort of poseable.  (I was also more careful to sew his head on straighter, the last one leaned a little to the side.)

I was sewing him in bed the other night with Neely, who was watching Kiki's Delivery Service, and Paige, who was reading her first Magic Treehouse book to me.  Mrs. Arnold recommended it for her, so Jess got it on the Kindle for her to try.  She really liked it.  She read the first 3 chapters to me out loud, and did so well, and only needed help with a couple of words.  I noticed she even tries to use different tones, depending on what the characters are saying, which I thought was impressive. 

I also started a mummy, and have it about half made.  Caso's pretty excited about that one.  He keeps asking me when I'll work on it again.  He also started drawing mummies for all of us. 

Even a Gia mummy.

He's still spending LOTS and LOTS of time drawing lately, and I love it.  Today it's only 9:30 and he's already done lots of robots...

  ....and this one of "the guys in the boat who were scared of the storm and then Jesus made it go away so they weren't scared any more."

He also drewlots more bombermen on the sidewalk last night, while singing a song he made up, but I got video of that, which I'll try to post later.  :)

Jess had flag football practice last night, so while he was gone we played outside, went for a little walk, and then did a little skeleton craft I saw in a magazine.  Just Q-tips, cottonballs, and glue.  We did paint on eyes and a mouth at the end though.  

Caso's was cute.

Paige's was too, and then she got creative and added crazy polkadotted cottonball hair.  :)  It reminds me a bit of Richard Simmons.

Since Friday...

Paige had piano, which she loved as always.  Then Faith stayed with us for a few hours, and they asked to sew. 

They made little ghosties.   Paige drew a little ghost and cut it out, and she and Faith used it as their template.  Then Caso drew the little guy, and used his own drawing as HIS template.  The one on the left is Faith's, the middle is Caso's, and the one on the right is Paige's. 

Cason wanted to try sewing, but this is how that turned out:

So I pretty much sewed his for him, but it IS based off of his drawing.  :)

Veronica dropped off little gifts for the kids, including some colorful, softer, looser hairties for Neely to wear on her arms.  She wore all of them at once of course, and looked like Rainbow Brite all day.

 I was working on the first of some Halloween creatures, a bat.

I had a ridiculously hard time making this pattern, and didn't want to give up, so the house was a wreck for 2 days, felt and fabric scraps, thread, and stuffing all over the place.  On Saturday Jess took the kids with him to pick up some soup at Grampa and Grama Trudi's house, that they thought we would like.  So I got a couple of hours of uninterrupted sewing in, and finally figured out my batty pattern. 

Then I heard a knock at the door, and opened it up to this:

I think those were Colton's when he was little, and they told them they could borrow them for a few days.  Neely was wearing a superhero cape, and kept yelling "LOOK A' ME MOM!  I SUPERMAN!"  Don't know why I didn't get a picture of her.

Paige also had a soccer game Saturday morning.  It was super hot, so we sat out in the shade and couldn't see the field very well.  It was the wrong day to not have a good seat, because our little superstar scored 6 goals!  Now there are three weeks before her next game, so maybe it'll be cooler the next time she plays.

Casual

Just a morning snack over here.

Batties

We're starting to get excited for Halloween over here.  I usually wait to get those decorations out on October 1st, but this time I couldn't wait, and we did it this weekend. 

Bats are probably my favorite of all the cute Halloween creatures, so we have several crafts in mind, that involve them.  We started with this little clothespin bat.  Yesterday the kids painted clothespins black, so we could let them dry and do the rest today.  Cason was the most focused he's ever been on painting, trying really hard to make sure he didn't miss any spots.

Neely focused too.  On painting her clothespin for several minutes, but then herself.  We went straight to the bath after this crafting session.

Today we cut the bat and his wings out of paper and put it all together.  Caso cut his out himself, 

and Neely got to do some of the gluing.  She mostly poured glue all over the paper scraps she found on the table.

She also tried to glue the eyes on, but Caso ended up helping her.

The naughty girl's new thing is putting my hairties on her arms.  They're always super tight because her arms are still fairly chunky, so I'm always taking them away so they don't cut off her circulation.  She manages to find new ones all over the house though, and gets really mad at me when I take them away.  I have to check her at naptime and bedtime to make sure she hasn't put any on under her sleeves or something.  She'll have 2 per arm sometimes.

Anyway, here are our finished bats.  Caso added fangs to his, and Neely added lots of random glue spots to her bat's body.  :)

Her Arms Are Too Short

 This is a couple of weeks old.  The girls were dancing for us first thing one morning, and I loved this moment when poor Neely tried to dance like her big sister.  So cute and funny.

Bombermen and Bots

Neely has discovered Caillou and it might be her new favorite show.  At least for the moment.  She will start singing the theme song out of nowhere, it's really cute.  Tonight I turned on Netflix, planning to watch Family Ties(I'm on a kick lately), but Neely spotted Caillou and yelled "ready, set, CAILLOU!"  Needless to say, Family Ties lost out to Caillou.

Caso has discovered his artistic side.  He's spent HOURS drawing bombermen and robots the last week or so.

They're everywhere.  The cement out front:

Papers all over the house(I like how the little ball on top of his helmet has it's own smiley face):

a

The marker board in daddy's office:

Today while Neely napped we drew together.  He did a couple new awesome pictures.  The first one was a regular old robot.

 

 Then he drew this one:

He told me "It's a picture of you when you were little, driving the robot ship your mama made for you." Cute, I'm riding inside my robot ship, driving it with all the little buttons he drew all around me.  I think this is the first time he included hair when he drew one of us.

Then he did a version for daddy.  Daddy is "one years old, and then thirteen years old, driving his robot ship."

 

As for Paige, she still loves school SOOOO much.  We had the first parent teacher conference.  It was great of course, how could it not be with a kid who gets disappointed when she finds out it's the weekend, and makes up homework assignments to do when her teacher doesn't give her any real homework.  Ha.  It was also fun to get cute little pictures and projects she's been doing.  Like this drawing of our family.