Oh my. It's been almost a month since I posted last! I guess the end-of-school-year activities + getting a brand new computer upgrade will do that to a person.
So what have we been up to in the past thirty days?
Little Man's school year ended with a special First Grade Fiesta. He came home with a cool poncho, sombrero, and tissue paper flower.
Since it was his last day, our whole family walked him to school. Monkey Boy was especially excited to be allowed to walk to school, since I usually take LM by himself in the morning.
To mark the end of the school year, we went on a three day camping trip with some friends. It was a blast- the boys got filthy dirty, fished, cooked smores, and ran around with their new friends.
Here's the smores crew:
Monkey Boy was convinced that sticking his tongue out would produce a better smore:
LM, on the other hand, spent his time perfecting the double barreled smore:
We were at the lake for three days, and each night ended just like this:
The small men also went fishing with the Dearest, which they really enjoyed despite not getting a single bite. The Dearest said one of the fishing coves was full of 3-4ft long carp- if they had hooked one of those, it might have taken the kiddo into the water!
A few days after returning from our camping trip, it was time for Little Man's birthday party. Lately he has been playing
Poptropica a lot online, so he wanted that as his theme. Unfortunately, there are no party supplies with Poptropica themes so I had to wing it. I ended up making a custom invite for him to hand out.
In lieu of goody bags, I made each kid a t-shirt with a Poptropica character iron-on. Since Poptropica is all about traveling to different 'islands' and solving puzzles, we made up a quick scavenger hunt for the kids. They had to solve a math problem....
...which led them to a certain mailbox...
Inside the mailbox was a word search- they had to find all the words...
Once the word search was completed, they came back and the Dearest gave them a letter. All the kids had to gather around and figure out what the letters spelled:
It took them a while, but suddenly they realized that the word was "castle", and the hunt was on...everyone piled into the castle jumper...
and they quickly found the bag of t-shirts! I give all the credit to the Dearest for the fun hunt- he spent 45 minutes right before the party putting all the hints together and printing everything out. I think the kids really enjoyed it:
Other things I made:
...a 'birthday island' banner....
...and a 'tall cake' for Little Man (it's hard to see but this cake is three full layers tall!). LM did NOT want chocolate icing so we iced it with homemade vanilla buttercream. Between the treasure hunt, the jumper, and too much cake and lemonade, I think a great time was had by all.
To top it all off, LM lost his second upper front tooth not long after the party was over, which meant that the tooth fairy was sure to visit. Oh, and we also found this very lovely, very LARGE moth hanging out on a neighbor's tire (in broad daylight, no less):
We looked it up in our caterpiller book and think it's a type of hawk moth. It was at least three inches across- huge! We kept it in a jar overnight, then Monkey Boy let it go the next morning.
What else have we been doing? Well, we've already been to the beach, and we're gearing up for the annual neighborhood 4th of July party this weekend....Somehow I need to find the time in the next few days to make pulled pork for the BBQ sandwiches I volunteered to bring!
The Dearest is still working hard, I'm still haunting the yoga studio, and the small men are still creating chaos at home....so it's Life as usual at Chez Shizzknits. I promise to post more often- I've had a couple of emails from indignant relatives (you know who you are! LOL), wondering where the newest photos of the small men have been!
