A thinker

We've got a thinker on our hands. Tyler for a while has realized that if something is too expensive or no longer available that he should ask Santa for it. Things from Santa are free after all. Tyler has clearly been putting some thought to this. This morning he asked if Santa's toys were really free or if we had to pay Santa for them. Well Tyler, Santa is magic so it really is free. sigh.

Happy Thanksgiving

From Tyler

From Hailey

Turkey Cinnamon Rolls

The kids and I set out to make these Turkey Cinnamon Rolls yesterday.
Ty was only slightly motivated and had them all done in about 10 minutes.

Hailey worked really hard on hers. She had a great time and probably spent about a half hour decorating.

Here were the end results...clearly an adult or older child made the turkey I had found on the computer :). They taste great...especially good right out of the oven.

Tyler's turkeys

Hailey's Turkey's

Snow

It began Monday with a little dusting, it ended with the first Thanksgiving Day snowfall of their young lives!

A Boy and His Legs

Tell me it's normal for a boy's legs to look like this!

She was just pretending

We were at the dinner table the other night when Hailey was telling a story. During the story, she was holding her fork, prongs down, and driving them into the table top....HARD! I told Hailey to stop and made some wise comment i am sure bout how stabbing the table is not appropriate. Hailey responded, "Daddy, I'm not." The incident repeated, again with my same admonishment. She replied this time, "Daddy, I'm not. I was just pretending....really hard!"

If it weren't so funny I would have been furious. As it was, Val and I busted up and it became one of those moments.

Tantrums

We had been tantrum free around our house for a while but they are making a come back. They've changed a bit as she's grown older I guess but they still aren't any fun. We've had maybe 4 "episodes" over the last month or two. They start out with Hailey getting upset, mad about something. So she starts to cry. She cries hard enough that it makes her cough and once she starts coughing she can't stop. This makes her cry more...which makes her cough more. I don't think she is trying to have a tantrum it just sort of happens once the coughing starts. The coughing takes a long time to end and when it finally does, she's so worn out that she has to take a rest. Here's what a post tantrum recovery looks like at our house.

The Joy of Painting

Everyone has seen the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross at some point right. The painting show with the guy with the crazy hair that were filmed years and years ago (70s ?) and are still on Tv. He can paint an entire picture in a half hour and it looks amazing. Tyler and I stumbled upon the show a few weeks back and Tyler was mesmerized. He thought the whole thing was incredible.

For the next couple of days he wanted the watch the show and try painting himself. So we got out his washable kids paint....


and watercolor and sponge brushes

And he was ready to create his masterpiece. Clearly Tyler's "supplies" weren't exactly the same as Bob Ross but Tyler had a blast painting along. It only lasted a couple of days and then Tyler decided that this Bob guy was the best painter ever and it was just too hard to paint along. It was fun watching him work though and he really did a fabulous job given what he had to work with (oh and the fact that he is six....or maybe he was still 5 here :)).

Ready to go

Hard at work

Day 2

I love his trees....multicolor, textured, and used Bob's same application technique.

Hailey played along for a little bit too. She's nearly naked because she still wears her Halloween Dragon Costume around a good portion of the day. It's very warm so she usually takes her clothes off before she puts it on. Then when it's time to eat or she needs a painting break, she just takes it off and goes about her way. Putting other clothes on is too much of an inconvenience.

Knights and Blocks

We bought a couple of sets of knights for Tyler's birthday. One set we used to decorate the cupcakes. The other was for Tyler (and Hailey) to play with. Tyler has had a lot of fun with these guys. They've been used for all sorts of pretent play. I really liked the block castle he made (he still uses the blocks all the time for various structures, roads for cars, etc). His building skills seem to be getting better and better all the time. Hailey made one too but somehow I didn't get a picture of it.

Thankful Turkey

Hailey brought her Turkey of thankfuls home from school the other day.

She is thankful for:
playing with kitty
playing with my brother Tyler
hid and seek with Tyler and mommy
wearing my dragon costume
trick or treating
snuggling with kitty

The shoe solution

Double reinforced toes.

Hailey's Soccer

Hailey's first round of soccer has come to an end. I think Dave had fun coaching. I know Hailey had fun playing. She was very excited to receive her medal at the end of season soccer party.

Now we move on to swimming (starts the week aster next). We went for a family swim yesterday because we haven't been swimming since August. I was afraid Hailey would have forgotten a lot of what she learned over the summer. No worries, she's still a fish. And she still has complete confidence in the water. It's a good thing we are getting back to lessons.

Lego Heaven

Tyler was in Lego heaven the first week after his birthday. Each day he'd wake up and have a kit just waiting to be build (I imagine the school days seemed endless to him as he anticipated coming home to build). He built a lot of kits and he did everything by himself. I did have to tie a knot in a string pulling up the knights gate but that doesn't count. He is so great at following the directions and gets such a thrill out of starting with just one lego and ending up with this "awesome" creation. A photo tour of his week.

Ultimately the minifigures are his favorite. He loves to build, don't get me wrong, but everything he built is for one of the figures and whatever adventure they are about to go on. So, the figures are always built first.

He actually broke out most of the figures even though he wouldn't be working on some of the kits until later. Here are all his kits, just waiting to be built....and the minifigures just waiting for their creations.

Buckets of legos and and a book of directions. This is pure heaven for Tyler.

Here are some of the completed projects.

Lego City

Castle figures

Dragon Knight Castle

Prince of Persia (this was one intricate kit with all kinds of fun stuff in it)

Pirates (this was his own creation after he built the original)

working on the TIE fighter