I Think He's More Evolved Than We Are...

So Ben, he functions on very little sleep. He just does not get tired... like EVER. He outlasts us by hours most nights.

I have gotten up in the middle of the night at all hours to find him wide awake, light on, just hanging out.

We took away night time computer/DS time, because I did NOT appreciate finding him up at midnight playing video games. But, reading? I really can't argue with that. Especially since he gets up for school without complaint every morning at 7:45.

I had put a pile of new books in his room a couple days ago because he needs to read a certain number of books by the end of the quarter for reading. So yesterday, while he was getting ready, I asked him if he had made any progress on any of them.

Without missing a beat, he said, "Oh yeah. I read three of them."

?

!

How late did he stay UP!?

Then there was the time I went in in the morning and found an entire fleet of paper airplanes.  OMG.

And last night, I got up with Jonathan at 11:30 or so and saw B's light was still on. I popped my head in to turn it off and found him folding Star Wars origami like it was going out of style.

"Dude! Really? Origami? It's almost midnight! You SERIOUSLY need to go to sleep!"

"I'm not tired!"

Sigh.  I'm pretty lenient because a) he's clearly a night owl and I can't change that and b) as long as there is something non video-game related going on in there I figure there's no harm because, again, he doesn't complain in the morning.

But doesn't it seem like a nine-year-old should  be asleep by midnight? I mean, really?

I'll admit though, it's kind of fun to see what he produces overnight sometimes.... LOL!

I half expect to go in there and find a mad scientist lab one morning with him all disheveled-looking exclaiming "Eureka!!!" and realizing that he's figured out how to clone the cat or something...

Grasshopper Logic...

(credit to my friend Helen for pointing out the similarities between my story and this one...)
One bright and sunny day, Grasshopper came home from school, dropped his backpack, and was just about to run outside to meet his friends. "Where are you going?" asked his mom. "Out to meet some friends," said Grasshopper. "Do you have any homework due tomorrow?" asked his mom. "Just one small thing of History. I did the rest in class." "Okay," said Mom Grasshopper. "Be back at six for dinner." Grasshopper hung out with his friends, came home promptly at six, ate his dinner, then took out his History homwork. His mom read the assignment and freaked out. "Rewrite twelve Greek myths as Broadway musicals. Write music for songs. Design and build all sets. Sew original costumes for each produciton." "How long have you known about this assignment?" asked Mom Grasshopper, trying not to scream. " I don't know," said Grasshopper. 

MORAL: there are plenty of things to say to clam up a hopping mad Grasshopper mom. "I don't know" is not one of them.  -Squids Will Be Squids "Grasshopper Logic"


It's Ben's birthday weekend... party on Saturday... general birthday'ing type stuff on Sunday. In short, we are BUSY.

So last night, he says, "Oh! By the way... I have a math project due on Monday."

"Wait. A what now?"

"Yeah, I brought the paper home yesterday."

I quickly went and flipped through the stuff I had pulled out of his folder and filed the day before.
Oops. For once it was not his fault that I didn't know about a project.  Glad he said something...

So yeah, he has to create a board game, you know, just a fun little somethin' somethin'' with spinners and a board and questions.... over the weekend... in all of the spare time we're going to have. LOL. 

Sigh.

Pawning this one off on Tom. But I know I'll end up having to get involved because neither Tom NOR Ben can follow directions to save their lives.  (this brings to mind the cultures project for reading class that Tom "helped" with back in February that I ended up having to make Ben redo because daddy failed to follow the checklist the teacher sent home... ) 

Already had to rein him in once because he was throwing out college-level probability questions as ideas for the game and I was all like, "Hey! John Nash! (Btw, you're welcome for the awesome "Beautiful Mind" reference there) This is third grade. Back it up about a dozen and a half levels... we're talking coin flipping here..." 

So yeah, there's that. 

But, it gets better. 

So THIS also came home...

Okay, so I think the project is great and all... but he is supposed to gather supplies by next Thursday. Only, see, this is my first time around the third-grade block, so to speak, so I have absolutely NO idea what I should be sending in.

And this paper is no help because please note the bit up there about not wanting to give the parents too much info so the kids do the actual designing. I'm all for that because... well...  see above mention of my husband "helping" and also because, knowing some of the parents at our school, if they are given too much information about this project, some of their kids are going to miraculously have perfectly engineered cars that look like they were created by someone who works in the design department at Porsche instead of a group of 9-year-olds.

But, c'mon... I need SOME guidance! Examples of what to send in! Are we talking duct tape? Milk cartons? Wood? Recycled orange juice containers? What?  I really don't even know where to begin with helping him gather supplies.

GAH!!!

Third grade is kicking my butt.

No Wigglers...

I came across my tooth fairy supplies yesterday while I was cleaning and realized I haven't had to use them since we've been in the new house. This means no one (read:  Ben. Simon's are pretty solidly hanging in there right now) has lost any teeth around here for two full years!

And honestly, I can't remember the last time he lost a tooth before we moved either, so we might actually be closing in on 2-1/2 or THREE years. He lost like eight over the course of a year and a half and then just STOPPED. That's a little weird, right?

Not that I'm complaining. I'm kind of a sub-par tooth fairy...  always forgetting until the last minute and whatnot. But I DO have this to use for next time and I'm kind of excited about it.  ;)

When we were at the dentist a month ago, no one had any wigglers. Ben will probably be next up though again since Simon's teeth show know hint of going anywhere anytime soon. I kind of expected that because he took SO long to get his first tooth. He had half a dozen teeth on his first birthday, but they had all just come in the month before... I remember because I was actually starting to wonder if he actually HAD teeth, my poor gummy-smiled baby...

Also, look what I dug up! :) Aww... five-year-old Ben... old house... (cry)

Love This!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, my kids have the most wonderfully communicative teachers this year! I really don't know how parents (and teachers?) managed elementary school without email communication.

First off, it's quick and easy.

Secondly, I know I can be a giant pain in the butt to teachers via email (and I am... I SO really, really am...),  but my maximum  pain in the butt potential via email HAS to be way lower than my maximum pain in the butt potential if I could only talk to them in person.  Right? Sure.

So, anyway, I mentioned in my earlier post that I emailed Ben's reading teacher yesterday because I thought she'd get a laugh out of that novel of a story he wrote (and then hid and then I found it and took a cell phone picture of it to pass around because I am an awesome mom like that....) since in his classes, he never writes more than a sentence or two for anything. EVER.

I received the following reply:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

He is a trip! I wish he would give me his writing!!! I know it is in him, always have...just trying to get it out of him! :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To which I shot off: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Btw, don't know when he wrote that, but I think it was in your class. Goodness only knows what he was SUPPOSED to be doing. Lol.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I kind of figured that was the end of our correspondence seeing as how we'd had our laugh at Ben's expense and all..  ;) But then I got THIS back: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I know when he wrote that story…during journal time! I looked in his journal and it was blank for yesterday AND I found another sheet of paper with a story like the Borrowers on it stuffed in his journal. It was cute..he was pretending he was a Borrower and what he would take… FYI..he left his agenda and all of his journals in 2 different desks in my homeroom. I returned them to him this morning.

Just love him! 

He is working super hard today..like he is on turbo speed or something! 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seriously, how fantastic is that?  I just love this little update from her! 

It really has been such a great school year for him all around.  

I would be lying if I said I weren't just a little concerned about next year. He has the potential to have two male teachers for the first time EVER.  (Now, I'll admit I'm saying this without knowing ANYTHING about them at all, except that they are really popular teachers, very well-liked by the students, as far as I can tell)

I'm just wondering if I'm going to get this kind of awesome communication next year from men... you know, because they're MEN... not so much as in NOT women... but as in not MOMS.  I wonder if instead of funny banter, cute updates, and helpful observations, am I going to get one-word replies like I get from Tom when I email him at work? LOL.

Leave it to me to worry about something five-months ahead of time! (guess that's where Ben gets it). 

Speaking of Writing...

I picked Ben up for a doctor's appointment this morning and he came down the hall with everything he owns in his arms and an empty backpack hanging from his back. LOL. What a mess. Anyway, so he ended up dropping the whole armload on the floor of the 3rd grade hallway before he made it to me.  I was helping him pick it all up when I came across a piece of paper folded in half. I had been trying to sort out which folders to put everything in, so I held it up and said, "What's this one?"

He immediately snatched it from my hand and shoved it into his backpack. "Oh, that's just a drawing I was working on."

Of course, because I am mother of the year, no sooner did he disappear into the doctor's office, then I dug through the backpack and pulled it out.

This is what I found... from the child who claims he can't write stories or long answers on his homework... or anything more than a sentence on any school assignment ever.

Busted. SO busted. I emailed it to his reading teacher and told her to show him my email if he ever tried to say that in her class again. LOL!

You can try to read the story if you want. It appears to be an unfinished work of Star Wars fan fiction. But I'm mostly posting it because I was astonished at the sheer number of words on the page. OMG!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Well, yeah, it's actually on Sunday. But today was the day for green at school! So here they are... Ben's outfit cracks me up. Simon was wary of putting on the doodleboppers on his head. Seems he has gotten a self-conscious streak all of a sudden. "People will laugh at me!!" 

"Dude. Of course they will laugh at you. You're FUNNY!!! It's like your THING!" 

 Anyway, so  I told him his friends would all have silly things on and he got into it. 

Haven't caught up with the little one yet to take his green shirt picture.  There was a very funny photo op at school today where he was leaned over headfirst into the trashcan lamenting that I threw away his uneaten snack and it looked like he'd had a little too much green beer... wasn't fast enough to get the pic though.  ;)

Birthday Countdown...

Ten days until Ben turns 9!

He reminds me every. single. morning. how many more days, followed by how many more days until his party and what he wants for his birthday.

Then Simon wants to start talking about his party (in May!)  and birthday list and then they argue about it. I end up just yelling at both of them to just STOP talking already because it's too way too early in the day go brush your teeth and comb your hair and WHY in the heck are you arguing about what's on each other's birthday lists?!  It's like they are pre-fighting over things they don't even own. GAH!

Anyway, yeah... I'm currently in the same boat I was last year. One day till the rsvp deadline and only three kids' parents have bothered to call or email me to rsvp. I make it easy, people... you don't even have to pick up the phone. Just send me an email!!!

Tomorrow, I guess I'll send out the "Hey... I know you're busy but did you by any chance get Ben's birthday invitation?" email. I even sent the invites by mail this year so I didn't have to sit around wondering if Ben actually handed them out to everyone or if he just shoved them into the bottom of his locker with all of his gloves, hats, etc.

Someone remind me of this though next time I leave some other kid's birthday invite pinned to the bulletin board, waiting until the last minute to rsvp, because yeah, I'm totally hypocritical about this... I don't know what it is, but I can't bring myself to respond usually until the rsvp date on the invite. LOL.

Threefer Update -- school stuff

Ben:
Two days of MSA down, two to go.  "It's way better than I thought it would be, mom." he says. Still liking the extra recess, snack, and no homework aspect, of course. (I think I'm loving the no homework even more than he is!!)  He was annoyed yesterday that they gave out the teddy grahams snack to the class instead of the one we sent in, which apparently got saved for today. (We sent kids Clif Bars with assorted baked chips ... I think he really just wanted the Cheetos more than anything)

They are reading The Borrowers in reading class right now. I LOVE that book. LOVE LOVE LOVE! I need to find time to sit down and reread it along with him. Have I mentioned I love third grade? It ranks up there with first grade for my favorite elementary school year with him so far. They just do so many interesting things and things I remember from when I was in school.

He seems to me like he has gotten a little more social lately and I like that. Wish I could be a fly on the wall of his classroom sometimes...

Still no sign of the winter coat. I think it's gone for good. (sigh)

Simon:
I've started paying him off in Minecraft minutes for every sight word he can rattle off without help. Wish I'd done it months ago. He knows 57 out of 60 all of a sudden. He also brought home his first "Little Book" from kindergarten yesterday. It was called "Look" and he read it all the way through without help and without even stopping to sound words out.  YAY! Where has THIS been?! I had been a little concerned about his reading progress lately, but maybe it was all for naught.

He has been doing a little better with handwriting too -- mostly his issue is not wanting to put forth ANY effort whatsoever... but when you stand over him and make him do and redo, his writing is actually pretty age appropriate. His teacher has been tightening the reigns lately too and some papers are coming home with "second attempts" stapled to them. Hopefully we can get him whipped into shape for first grade.

The idea of Simon and first grade right now is a little bit ... um... daunting to me. I'm saying a little prayer that he gets a teacher next year who a) gets him and thinks he's funny and b) has a little boy or two of her own and c) is patient, but also has high expectations and isn't going let him get away with being lazy. I know, it sounds like a Mary Poppins request list... but  that will be the best combination for his success next year, I think. We've had good luck so far with teacher fits... so hopefully that continues.  As a mom, I live in constant fear of my kids getting the teachers who don't like/get little boys... and they are definitely out there!!

Jonathan:
I hesitate to write this, but he hasn't had a meltdown in two weeks. He has been pleasant and adorable and relatively easy. Yikes! We're coming up on one full year of our time with Infants and Toddlers and it's amazing to look back and see how far he's come in that time.

When he started with Ms. Cindy last March, he had basically NO language.  Crazy! We are opting to stay with them because why mess with what's working? He has his one-year evaluation coming up Monday and then something about Child Find coming to talk about the options when he turns three in August. We can either go to the elementary school for speech, if he still needs it. Or we can stick with services in our house. Probably going to go with the latter.

And now I need to end this because Jonathan is climbing into my lap to steal my computer. I really miss having my computer to myself... now they ALL play on it. GRRR....

Fort McHenry...

60 degrees? Oh how I love this weather... today was the most gorgeous day and we spent much of it outside enjoying the preview of spring!  We took the boys to Fort McHenry this morning and they had a blast!

My three little dudes... 

This one kept threatening to jump from the walls...

Simon with the flag behind him

SO wish Jonathan had gotten in this photo... 

Action shot!

The Star Spangled Banner and the most beautiful blue sky!!!

What's in here?

Simon wanted me to take his picture with the cannon

"Look! It's a brick hole!!"

Simon and a British cannonball

Poetic...

I got an email from Ben's teacher today (the one out on sick leave) --- apparently the class keeps a notebook where they write to her and she writes back. She wanted to share the poem Ben wrote to her.

*ahem*

I wish you were back.

It makes me want to hack.

And without you,

my world is black.

How funny is that? 

Every single time I have thought about it today, I've laughed out loud. When I asked him about it, he said, "Yeah, I worked really hard on it to make sure it all sounded like it went together." so I'm actually not sure he meant it be funny... oops. ;)

All That Angst Over Nothing...

Ben, I kid you not, was worried about taking the MSA (state tests) this year starting... well, basically the day school ended LAST year. He brought it up at least once a week for nine solid months, even more frequently as it drew closer. There were tears... there were full-on freakouts. "I hate third grade because of the MSA!!" was uttered more than once.  Plus, he was ultra annoyed because he was afraid it was going to happen during his birthday week.

Well, they finally had the first day of the test on Thursday, so when I picked him up, my first question, of course, was --

"Hey Ben! How was the MSA today?"

"So easy! And we got DOUBLE recess!"

(Duh. I had been telling him about the double recess for months)

"Were you bored?" (one of his biggest worries was that he'd finish and then not have anything to do...  I swear, he fears boredom the way some people fear heights or clowns... we're talking phobic territory!)

"No! I finished the test early but then I went back and checked my work."

I felt his head for a fever.

Now? He's actually looking forward to the last three days of it next week! Crazy kid.

But, of course, he has moved on to worrying about other things now. The worry du jour is swim team this summer, followed closely by "fourth grade and all the extra work I'll have to do!"

Neverending... never. ending.

Still MIA...

Ben's winter coat is still missing. I really thought it would have turned up by now. How on earth do you lose your gigantic winter coat? Plus, it's a small school with a central lost and found. Where did it GO? It has his name in it and EVERYTHING.

Guess I should be thankful we're heading into spring and that he had almost outgrown that coat...

Sigh.

HA!

I emailed Ben's teacher yesterday morning to let her know he was coming in with the class snack for the MSA test and that she may want to intercept it, lest he forget he has it and it ended up crushed out by the lockers.

She wrote back that he had actually been doing really well with remembering things lately but that she would go grab it from him so no one sat on it in the hallway.

I wrote back (because I can never resist replying to a reply... I really can't.... ) to thank her and also thanked her again for all her help with making sure he came home with everything he needed every day. (can't tell you how many times I have seen her chase him down the hall with his coat in the last month or so)

Amusingly enough, I arrived at school for pickup and who came wandering down the hall? Ben... with the teacher following close behind. They headed for the office....poked around in there for a little bit, came back out... I looked at her quizzically and she came over to tell me that he had lost his coat and they were looking for it.  They checked lost and found... not there. He couldn't even remember where he had put it down.

LOL.

I assured her it was fine. It has his name in it and always turns up eventually. Plus, it's supposed to be warming up.

TOO funny though.

The Friend Zone...

I don't know if I have written much here about Ben's friend issues. It's part of a longer story that I'll type out someday... but, at any rate, the short version is that I started noticing last year that Ben seems to think everyone is his friend and that isn't always the case.  I remember we had one kid over who he had been talking about for a few months after starting school. I listened to them play and overheard the kid making fun of Ben to his face and Ben didn't get it. (not like goofy boy stuff either... really mean stuff... I couldn't wait for him to leave! Needless to say, he has not been back.)

Then came Ben's 8th birthday party, where we invited the entire class because it was at a place that let us have 25 kids and Ben insisted he wanted the whole class to come because everyone was his friend. I got to see first-hand the reality... some of those kids were NOT so nice.

It has made me wary of when he comes home talking about any "new friends" or "best friends". He has  already been through one this year who was his "closest friend" who started taking things out of his desk and breaking them on purpose and then turned on Ben even more a month later and started making fun of him.

Thankfully, (I think?) Ben seems to be starting to pick up on when he's being made fun of... it just takes him longer than most and it has to be pretty obvious.

He is starting to be hurt by it, which is sad, but, on the other hand, I'm glad he is learning how to tell when someone isn't actually being kind to him.  There were some really heartbreaking rough patches last year where he stuck with kids I knew were using him as the butt of their jokes simply because he didn't realize what was going on and they thought that was funny.  We call those kids "the turds" now and I try to shoot lasers at them with my eyes whenever I see them.

Fast-forward to a couple months ago. One of Ben's teachers asked me if he had mentioned a little boy he had been talking to a lot. I told her that no, Ben hadn't said anything about him at all. She said  I should ask Ben about him --  that they had some things in common and really seemed to have struck up a friendship that she had been trying to encourage, even to the point of overlooking the fact that neither one of them ever got their morning work done anymore because they were too busy chatting with each other.  She said she thought their friendship was more important. (I love that!)

I was excited, but cautiously so based on our past experience with Ben's other "friends". I started asking him about the other boy and Ben insisted he was his closest friend. In fact, as the weeks went on, I started hearing more and more about him and he started asking to have him over to play.

Again, we've been burned a time or two with playdates, so I started doing some research. (it's a small town, wasn't hard to find people who knew the kid's story) Apparently the family life at his house is less than ideal... like WAY less than ideal. Really awful stuff no kid should have to deal with. Also, I'm told he's a nice kid, but a dare-devil with little supervision.  One mom told me he came to their house once and she found him outside with a golf club hitting balls toward their windows. I was warned by multiple people to NEVER ever under any circumstances let Ben go over to his house and play. Another mom told me he made her younger son cry. I've been told not to get involved with the mom, but also that she's so much of a flake, that won't likely be an issue anyway... she'll forget my name before she's even gotten to her car.

I started to think this was another REALLY bad choice on Ben's part, and actually started assuming the kid was probably not actually nice to him and he was just oblivious again.

Well, I finally met the little boy yesterday when we went to play in a friend's neighborhood where this boy also lives. Turns out I was wrong. Like really, REALLY wrong. He told me Ben is his best friend. He was SO excited to see him.  It was genuine -- and they actually seem to get each other, which is a rare find. Ben introduced him to me as "This is ____! His desk is a black hole just like mine!!" (and the other kid nodded in agreement) LOL!

I watched them play for awhile and I can rattle off only a couple other kids I have ever seen Ben interact like this with. (one is the friend we had gone to visit... one is his friend from his old school... can't think of any we've met since he started at the new school....) I could have cried.

So... despite this kid's really weird and totally not ideal home situation and the fact that I'll have to supervise playdates REALLY closely to make sure he doesn't jump off my deck, run with knives, or climb onto the roof or something, I think I owe it to both Ben (and to him, possibly even more so) to try to make their friendship work.

I think they might be a friend to each other that both of them have needed? Maybe? Maybe not? But I hope...

I think back to some of the friends I played with growing up. Some didn't have the greatest home lives either and I know my house was a place of safety and stability for them. We ended up going our separate ways as adults, but we still keep in touch they still tell me they have good memories of when we were younger and happy memories of coming to my house. So maybe we can be the same for this kiddo... and maybe Ben will finally have a close and true friend to share the rest of elementary school with... (and maybe middle school and high school, but I'm not thinking that far ahead yet. :)

Would it be nice and so much easier if he made a "best friend" with parents who we had some things in common with? Absolutely. Not gonna lie. But this is what we were given to work with, so we'll see how it goes... and I think it could be something really good, I do!

I keep trying to end this post with a quote... because I knew I had some fitting ones that sort of sum up my thoughts on this situation. I've gone back and forth and finally settled on this one from one of my favorite authors --

"My personal belief is that God looks through Her rolodex when She has a certain kind of desperate person in Her care, and assigns that person to some screwed-up soul like you or me, and makes it hard for us to ignore that person's suffering, so we show up even when it is extremely inconvenient or just awful to be there."  -- Anne Lamott

Twilight Zone...

Jonathan had some kind of brain re-wiring overnight four days ago that seems to have left him a different child. He has taken the verbosity to a whole new level, now saying things are "my favorite" that he "loves them!" and comparing things to other things and asking people questions about themselves and inviting people into his play. He's happy ALL day long, taking great naps, sleeping great at night, hugging, kissing and snuggling constantly. "Mommy, please read dis book to me. It's my FAVORITE." The sweetness is unbearable. It's also downright WEIRD. He's always been silly and affectionate, but with a healthy dose of crankiness to keep us on our toes.

I thought it was my imagination until Miss Cindy showed up today to work with him and wondered aloud who this child was and where Jonathan went. LOL.

So there's that.

Then, I was driving the boys home from school today and, while sitting at the red light, I realized the silence in the car was deafening. I turned around and Simon was just leaning his head on the window, staring off into space. (Ben's usually fairly quiet on the ride home, but SImon chats up a storm)

I briefly thought perhaps he had choked on the candy treat from school that he had been eating and I had a moment of total panic. But when I called his name he picked his head up. "You okay, buddy?"
He said quietly that his head hurt, his cheek hurt because he had bitten it and his knee, where he skinned it yesterday also hurt. Overall just NOT his chipper Simon self. Not usually a complainer, that one.

I am fully aware of a stomach virus epidemic at school right now so to say I am on red alert tonight would be an understatement. He got into jammies right away when we got home, spent the next hour or so in bed playing Minecraft,  didn't want dinner... but then, a little while ago, he came down and said he was hungry and had a bowl of oatmeal and a banana... sooooo... hopefully he was just tired or something. Gosh, I hope so.

As for Ben? He's just in a easy phase at the moment. This changes from week to week lately, but he seems happy. Is doing what he's supposed to do in school, isn't complaining about going and is bringing home what he needs.  So... I guess all is well there.

The snow thing is looking more and more likely... like LOTS of snow. Bleh. And with 40-mile-an-hour winds it doesn't even sound like it will be fun to play in! Yick. Spring needs to come SOON.

Weird School...

Ben was chatting away in the backseat of the car yesterday and said something about one of his friends telling him that school is giving out Target giftcards for kids who do their best on the MSA testing they are doing the next couple weeks.

I didn't really pay any attention to it and chalked it up to third grade silliness.

Then I got the email from the reading teacher this afternoon:

"We will not have homework this week due to the MSA testing that will occur on Wednesday and Thursday. Hopefully, they will use the extra time to get their "wiggles" out and get some extra sleep!

Reminders:

Don't forget to turn in February Book Logs in by TUESDAY to get a Pizza Hut certificate!

Get extra sleep and eat a good breakfast this week and next week.

Pray it doesn't snow, we want to get this test DONE and get back to our regular program!

The kids will have extra recess this week, no homework, and have a chance to earn gift cards by doing their best during testing."
Seriously?

SERIOUSLY! What the HECK? How does that even work?

I emailed a teacher friend at another school and she said their kids are getting pencils.  LOL. That's a little more like it.

Target gift cards? Can *I* come take the test? Sheesh.

They Don't Pay Them Enough...

I picked the kids up at school yesterday and Ben emerged from the pickup line with marker ALL over his face. I wish I had taken a picture, but it was kind of a crazy afternoon all around. There was a moustache, some cheek decorations... stuff all around the eyes. He looked like something out of the circus.

I laughed and looked quizzically at  his teacher, who was manning the pickup line.  She rolled her eyes, shook her head and sighed heavily. "Well, you know, it was mix-up day... they had the Expo markers... they ALL did it annnnnd that's the LAST time we play with the Expo markers! Right Ben?"

LOL!

Mix it Up!

Today is "mix it up" day at the kids' school as part of anti-bullying week. They are supposed to wear mis-matched clothes and sit with people they don't normally sit with.

Ten to one Ben wants nothing to do with the mismatched clothes and Simon goes bananas with it.

Pictures coming. ;)

Rock On...

I was working on goody bag ideas for Ben's rock climbing birthday party (9! He'll be 9!!!)  next month and I was telling him some of my thoughts:

Me: So I was thinking maybe rock candy, pop rocks, and chocolate candy that looks just like rocks... cool, huh? 

Silence....

Me: Ben...Get it? Rocks? Rock climbing?

Ben: (dead seriously) But I'm not into geology right now.

Me: Well, yeah but it's a ROCK-climbing party...

Ben: Yeah, but I'm not into actual ROCKS. That's geology.

Me: You know what, just nevermind. Go back to Minecraft.

Sheesh. Tough crowd.

B'Ball Tournament...

Ben's team won game 1 of their tournament!

Going back at 3p.m.  for round 2.  I am a little bit torn about how to root for this game as Ben is invited to a birthday party at 4:30 for one of the kids on the team/in his class... as are two of the other players. So if we win, Ben has to make a choice... plus, we most likely lose the other kids to the party. Ugh.

Bad position!

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!

Update: THey lost! Whew! ;) I know that sounds bad... but everyone involved with the birthday party was kind of relieved!