Happy St. Patrick's Day

Good Luck Bear is super cute.

Connor was in charge of decorating our dessert today.

It kind of ended up with a Minecraft grass block look.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Life of Fred: Mineshaft - Complete!

Lex has now finished all of the Elementary and Intermediate series books in the Life of Fred math curriculum.

Since he finished the books a little earlier than expected, we are going to take a short little break from Fred before we start the middle school books.

I went out and bought some fun math curriculum for extra practice before we start Life of Fred: Fractions.

This is the first book.  It's a story book that does a really good job with number sense and how numbers are related to each other.  Plus there is a decoder magnifying glass.  So that's fun.

These little work books are full of themed multiplication and division problems for extra practice.

These should be fun.  I'm looking forward to playing Division War.

Happy Math, Everyone!

Sandy Springs Lantern Parade

This past weekend we did a thing.  It was a really great thing.

We participated in the annual Sandy Springs Lantern Parade!!!

First, we went to Michaels and Party City to buy supplies.  We bought battery powered tea lights (next year we will buy much more powerful and brighter lights), dowel rods and paper lanterns.

Then, we decorated our lanterns:

Grandma Ella made a pink owl.

Connor made a moose.

The moose antlers were a little bit floppy, so Connor named his moose:

Flopsy Wopsy the Moosey Woosey.

It was the perfect name.

I made a couple of Pokemon lanterns.  One was Pikachu.

The other is the purple one: Gastly.  It's a ghost type Pokemon.

Then, one of the boys' friends helped me make a Minecraft creeper lantern (the green one) and a narwhal lantern (the blue one).  Lex had specifically asked me to make him a narwhal.  It took two tries to get the horn right.

Then, on the night of the parade, we all gathered together with the bigger floats and the band and marched down to the river!

Once we got to the river, we got some snacks and watched the rest of the floats and lanterns go by.  We didn't make it down watch the water part of the parade, but apparently all the floats and some of the lanterns continue making their way down the river.  It was a great event, and I'm already looking forward to next year!  Next year our lanterns will be BIGGER and BRIGHTER and BETTER!

Today Connor is 10!

Grandma Ella and Papa Kirk are in town to celebrate Connor's birthday!

He had a very big day today.  It started with some Minecraft and his favorite special breakfast: homemade brownie waffles.

Then, at his request, we went to see Captain Underpants at the movies.

Then Papa Kirk wanted to go to Cane's to try the chicken.  Even after the movie theater popcorn and nachos.  (Spoiler alert: it tastes like chicken.)

And then we went to the park and had a squirt gun battle.  (FYI:  Tik does not like to be squirted.)

Finally, we were all worn out.  We headed home for more Minecraft and Stratego.

When Daddy was done with work, we went out for burgers for Connor's special birthday dinner at Freddy's.  He loves the steak burgers and skinny-cut french fries, but mostly, he loves the special fry sauce.

And even though the thought of any more food was just ridiculous, we came home to have birthday cake.

No one even thought about ice cream, though.

And finally, Connor came on a little shopping trip with Grandma Ella and I, and he selected a very nice red and black basketball as a birthday treat.  (Because one always expects to find birthday basketballs near the frozen foods in the grocery store.)

Happy Birthday!!

Hurry up, Tooth Fairy!

Lex has had a loose tooth for a little while now.

While brushing his teeth for bed tonight, Lex discovered that his tooth was really very wiggly and loose, so he decided to try to pull it out so that he could put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't come out.  Also, Lex isn't squeamish about blood.  He had it dripping off of his chin, and onto his keyboard while he was playing Minecraft.  Because obviously when you fail at pulling out your tooth, you get right back to what you were doing before that.

Fortunately, he was wearing a red shirt, because he kept wiping his bloody chin on his sleeve.

Maybe it will come out in time for the tooth fairy to visit tomorrow night.

Artist at Bedtime

Last night, after a long day of playing Prodigy Math yesterday, I thought that it would be a good idea to sneak in one more activity before bedtime.  After I had prised the children from their computers, I set up a family drawing challenge.

Apparently I was a little reckless with the word challenge.  I mean, we are talking about little boys here.  Ones that take competitions and challenges very seriously.

It was after 8:00 PM when we started drawing.  Which is fine.  It's a good activity to settle them down a bit after computers and before bed.  And Connor finished his drawing really quickly.

Lex, on the other hand, took his time.

Around 9:45 PM, it was getting out of hand.

"Good pictures take a long time," he told me.

"If it's a competition, then I'm going to win.  That's why I am taking my time.  It takes a long time, but I want to win."

At this point, I had totally forgotten ever mentioning anything about any sort of competition or challenge at all, and just wanted him to finish so he could go to bed.  He reminded me that I had said "challenge."  I set a hard and fast limit of 10:00 on his artwork.

He finished at 9:58 PM.

Here is his prize winning Minecraft inspired artwork.  His prize?  Staying up until 10:00 PM last night.

Anglophile Phase

Lex loves to watch videos on You Tube.  They are usually related to the games he is playing, and they are usually done by British people.  It started with Stampy and his Minecraft videos, and then it progressed to Squid and all the other games.  Today, he is watching some other blokes doing Ark Survival of the Fittest videos.

Well, he spends so much time watching these British fellows and listening to them talk, that he has started speaking with an accent himself.  He's actually pretty good at it.  It's like he moved to another country and learned a new language by watching TV.  Except it's still English, and he is still in Texas.

He asked me to make him some tea and crumpets this week, and I finally got around to it yesterday.  Only, I didn't really know what a crumpet was.  So, I found a recipe online and set to making them.  It was the first recipe in my search results, and it wasn't completely accurate.  But I didn't know the difference at first.

I'm sure that the batter was correct, but I didn't execute the baking part correctly, and I made English Muffins instead of crumpets.

But, they were delicious and Lex likes them, and next time I will make actual crumpets.  Unless I want English Muffins, in which case I will make these again.

Speaking of making these again, here is how it happened:

Ingredients:

1 tsp Baking Powder
2 1/2 tsp Instant Yeast
3 1/2 cups Flour
1 1/4 tsp Salt
2 Tbsp Melted Butter
1 cup Milk
1 1/2 cup Water

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in stand mixer on high for 2 minutes.  Cover bowl and let rise for 1 hour.  Lightly grease frying pan and spoon batter onto pan.  Cook like pancakes, only at a lower temperature so that the outsides don't burn before the middle is done.

P.S.  The batter was really sticky.
P.P.S.  These were really tasty and easy to make.  I might give up store-bought English Muffins.

In which Connor had a birthday party

Last night, we had a sleepover birthday party for Connor.



There were friends.



There was pizza.



There was a cookie cake, designed to Connor's exact specificiations.



There were root beer floats.



Also, dodgeball, Bang! (The Dice Game), football and Minecraft.



Lots and lots of Minecraft.  Minecraft comes with all kinds of laughter and shouting, usually.



This morning, there were pancakes.  Happy 9th Birthday, Connor!

Too Much Fun

This past weekend, all the schools here had a snow day.  No, there was no snow.  It was a day that was set aside in case they had needed to take a snow day during the previous winter.  Since they didn't use it then, they got the day off now.  It's weird, but no one is going to say no to a free spring Friday holiday.

So, on Friday, the boys had a friend come over to play all afternoon.  As soon as he left, another friend came over and spent the night.  (They had an all-night Minecraft LAN party.)  The next day, as soon as his mom came to get him, they decided to sleep over at his house for that night!  (Kevin and I had a date - dinner and a movie!)  Then, when I picked them up the next day, they decided to all get together with that first friend again to play Pokemon.

Eventually, it was time to go home for a nice Sunday dinner, and all the kids were dropped off with their normal families.  Except mine had had too much fun, and they didn't make it to dinner.

They both fell asleep on the short ride home.

It was never so easy to transfer them to sleep in their beds when they were infants!

They had a wonderful weekend with their friends.  Too much Minecraft.  Too much Pokemon.  Not enough sleep.

In which we paint

Lex decided the other night that he wanted to paint.  Fortunately for him, we had everything that he needed to paint very handy in my little closet/office/homeschool-supply-cave-under-the-stairs.

And so, he set about making a masterpiece.



In the end, it turned out really well.

Self-Portrait of Minecraft Skin

by Lex

But he had squeezed a ton of paint out of the paint tubes, and when he was done, there was still a lot left over. Instead of letting it all go to waste, I decided to paint a picture using all the leftover paint.

Waves & Sand Abstraction

by Julie

It turns out that the two paintings look pretty nice together hanging on the wall since they are painted from all the same colors.

Minecraft Playdate

In which Lex gets a haircut

When both Connor and Lex had long hair, everyone thought they were twins.  And while a few people mistook them for girls, most figured out that they were boys.  Obviously, Connor and Lex didn't like being called girls.  And Connor, in particular, didn't like being called twins.

So, Connor was happy when he got his haircut and no one thought he was a girl or Lex's twin anymore.

But a strange thing happened.  The number of people who assumed that Lex was a girl after Connor got his hair cut increased exponentially.  His long hair became a source of frustration for him, as people called him a girl several times a day.  So, he decided to get a hair cut, at a place where he could play video games while it was being done.

Lex actually laughed at the salon girl when she asked him if he knew how to use a mouse.  Obviously.  It's  a mouse.  You need one for Minecraft.


Lex looks great.  More importantly, he thinks he looks great.



He was especially proud of his clothes this day because everything was Star Wars.  He was wearing a Lego Star Wars t-shirt, Angry Birds Star Wars pajama shorts, and some Star Wars socks.  He was rocking it.

Since he got his hair cut, no one has mistaken my boys for girls.  But we are back to the twins thing again.  All day long we hear, "Are they twins?"

"They look so much alike!"