Pirates and a Pony

Yesterday was one of those crazy, on-the-go-all-day kind of days for us. It was great but we were exhausted by the end of it! We started off at the science museum with Pop. There's a traveling exhibit called "Real Pirates," which leaves next week, so we had to go back one more time to see it. Brown Bear even came along for the ride!The boys, of course, absolutely love anything to do with pirates, and this exhibit is really well done. The exhibit tells the story of the Whydah, a pirate ship that sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717. We saw real pirate treasure (the only real pirate treasure ever discovered) and even got to touch some. Will and Henry even came home with some pirate treasure and spyglasses (thanks, Pop!).

Arrgh!

After the museum, we went across the street to let the boys run up and down the hill (or mountain, as Henry calls it) in Hermann Park. We had lunch with Pop and then it was home for a quick nap (for Mommy and Will) and quiet time (for Daddy and Henry) before heading off to a birthday party north of Kingwood. It was a hike out there but so worth it!

Henry's best buddy from school, Ben, turned three and we just couldn't miss his party, especially when we heard that they have a pony and were offering pony rides around their yard. This was Henry's first pony ride. Look at that smile!

Pirates + Pop + ponies = the perfect day for my little boys!

Will You Be My "Valentime?"

Will's preschool class has been working on making "Valentimes" for a few weeks, but we got our first official "Valentime" this week when Will brought home this sweet butterfly.He was so proud of his creation and explained every step it took to make it. Will was also very clear that this "Valentime" was for all of us in the family. The left wing is for me and the other side is for Gene, Henry, and Weezie to share. You gotta love a kid with a plan!

The Children's Museum

The boys and I decided to head to the Children's Museum after school on Thursday. It is so much easier to visit our favorite museums on the spur of the moment now that they are all mere minutes from our house! It was a beautiful day and the boys loved playing outside in the water area.

Will got a kick out of making big waves in this tank.

Inside, in the diner, Henry made me some sauteed watermelon
and Will threw a pizza in the oven.

Then we went to Mexico, where Henry drove the van

and cleaned the currency exchange booth with a mop,

while Will manned the little market

and made more pizzas in the restaurante.

What a perfect afternoon!

Introducing the Yeah-buts

Do you have some yeah-buts living at your house? We have two little yeah-buts around here. They're pretty cute and we're planning on keeping them. You probably have them too, if your kids are old enough to speak in sentences. Gene's dad coined the name after hearing "yeah, but" one too many times. I know you've been there before too. You ask your child if he's ready to go and the response, is "Yeah, but I don't have my coat!" Gene's dad calls the boys "yeah-buts" because of this and they love it. Now whenever someone says "yeah, but" the boys are so attuned to it that they ask, "Did I just hear a yeah-but?" Yeah, um, yes, you probably did! I guess I'm a yeah-but too!

Raindrops

Wednesdays are one of our free days, and after having a stay-at-home-in-your-jammies-because-it's-raining-day on Monday, I knew we had to get out of the house today. Will suggested a visit to the Health Museum, and it was a great idea! We pretty much had the museum all to ourselves and there's a new temporary exhibit about the water cycle that is really cool.

At the very front of the exhibit, there is a puzzle area that shows the different steps of the water cycle. Henry loved this part, of course! The rest of the exhibit is set up as a maze, so it is perfect for young kids. You get to pretend you are a raindrop and your goal is to stay clean as you go through the watershed on your way to a healthy ocean. There are lots of human issues that might trip up those raindrops, such as chemical pesticides, pouring paint into the storm drains, using single-use water bottles, and more. So as you travel through the watershed, every so often you come to a spinner. If you spin a dirty habit (like using Styrofoam takeout containers), you end up in the unhealthy ocean and have to try again. Needless to say, the boys absolutely loved running through the maze and spinning the wheels. And even though Will swears he didn't learn anything, his favorite new fact is that ladybugs are natural aphid predators, so you don't need all those nasty pesticides after all. The boys also learned the value of wetlands as a way to clean those raindrops before they reach the ocean. Here's Raindrop Will moving very slowly through the "wetlands." I think we were raindrops traveling to the ocean at least ten times today. The boys are already planning another trip to the Health Museum, only next time, they're bringing Daddy along for the ride!

Pizza Time

We are always making pizza at our house. Well, I should say, Gene is always making pizza. The boys love to help out, and I just suggest some toppings and make sure we have all the ingredients. We had pizza Sunday night. Henry was thrilled! He helped Gene with dough.

But he really just wanted to dig into the pizza! Henry ate FIVE (skinny) pieces! Yum-o!

The Letter J

J is for jaguars and the jungle and jello -- but most of all, if you ask the boys, J is for jellybeans! We started our J week with estimating jellybeans in a jar.

The boys watched a Sid the Science Kid episode about estimation and of course they had to do their own estimation investigation with jellybeans! Will was a pretty decent estimator, but Henry just guessed 6 every time!

Will recorded everything very carefully in his science journal. The top number in his journal was his estimate and bottom number is the actual number of jellybeans in the jar.

We also read Jellybeans for Sale by Bruce McMillan which is about counting and money. And of course we couldn't have all these jellybeans around without trying a few. I found a cute song online that counts down from 5 jellybeans so as we sang the verses, they ate the right color jellybean. Eating the jellybeans was definitely their favorite part!

We drew jellybeans on our capital J. And turned the lowercase j into a cute jaguar.

We checked out a nonfiction book about jaguars and we read Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andreae and Amazon Alphabet by Martin Jordan. The boys' favorite song was "Jungle Song" by Joe McDermott.

We made some Jello too. Yum!

And we had another sweet week investigating the letter J!

L-O-V-E

The other night, Will got out his Magna Doodle to show me how much he loves me. He drew a heart and wrote LOVE inside all by himself. He sounded out the word and only needed help with the e on the end.

What a sweet, sweet boy. I love that kid!
And speaking of LOVE, Henry has got a serious love affair with puzzles lately. He is addicted to them! It's the first thing he does each morning and the last thing he does before bed. In fact, we often find puzzles pieces scattered in his bed with him! Last night, Henry got out this 24-piece jigsaw puzzle and did it all by himself. Will has never been a huge fan of puzzles, but Henry adores the challenge and he's good at them!
I was so proud of my little guy, and Will even said, "I'm impressed, Henry!" I love these kiddos!

The Letter I

After a long break for the holidays and our move, the boys and I are back to our letter of the week activities. Last week, we were on the letter I, so we focused on ice cream, insects, and islands. We started off our week with a trip to the science museum. The boys always get a kick out of sitting on this huge caterpillar in the butterfly center.

There is a large mural on the walls going up the stairs in the butterfly center. The boys were pretending they were insects caught in this huge spider's web. Creepy!!

Henry was fascinated by the grasshoppers.

At home we read our favorite insect books, The Bugliest Bug by Carol Diggory Shields and Bug Safari by Bob Barner, and watched A Bug's Life. Next, we moved on to islands. Will is fascinated by volcanoes, so he loved reading all about islands in An Island Grows by Lola Schaefer.

We made a capital I into an island for our letter craft. Everyone loves ice cream, so we had a very ice-cream-heavy week. We read Ice Cream: The Full Scoop by Gail Gibbons, which discusses how ice cream is made, and then we met Gene for lunch at Berryhill on Wednesday and the boys got free ice cream cones. It was a pretty chilly day for ice cream, but they didn't mind at all!

At home, we made ice cream cone crafts. They are supposed to the lowercase i. The boys had so much fun decorating them with "sprinkles."

We planned on making homemade ice cream and even bought all the ingredients, but we ran out of time. Nana and Pop took us to Ben and Jerry's Sunday afternoon for ice cream, so we did end our week on a sweet ice cream note after all!

And our last craft of the week was to make igloos out of marshmallows and icing. The boys thought this was the best craft project ever because they could sneak tastes of marshmallows and icing!

Ice cream, marshmallow igloos, and icing... what a sweet I week!

Brrrr!

It has been COLD in Houston for the past several days, so we are doing everything we can to stay warm and toasty. Outside activities are out of the question, so the boys and I have been staying in and doing art projects,

sitting by the fire, making banana bread,
and drinking hot chocolate
with marshmallows(mmm!)all the way down to the very last drop!

I hope you're staying warm too!