Birthdays!

March is jam-packed full of birthdays for our family and friends. My mom and good friend Katy share March 10 as the big day, so we started celebrating this week! Katy and Jaime came over for dinner Tuesday night. The boys (and Weezie) absolutely adore Jaime. He is so much fun!

I made a blackberry cobbler for dessert. The candle I put in melted, though, so Katy didn't get to blow it out! My mom and dad came over for dinner tonight. I made cupcakes to celebrate, but Will wanted to know why Gramma only had one candle!

Henry loved singing "Happy Birthday" to Gramma.

And Will clapped when Gramma successfully blew out her lone candle.

Yummy cupcakes!

And this is just the beginning of the March birthday celebrations. In the next few weeks, we'll sing "Happy Birthday" to four of Henry's classmates, Aunt Amber, Grampa, Aunt Jess and, of course, my little Henry!

The Dentist

The boys went to the dentist this morning. It was Henry's first-ever visit, so we've been talking a lot about what to expect this week. Fortunately, Will absolutely loves going to the dentist and his excitement rubbed off on his brother. We've switched to a new dentist closer to our house, but that didn't faze Will at all. He loves that they polish his teeth with cookie-dough flavored paste and that he gets to watch a show and comes home with a prize. Our new dentist took pictures of the boys for their files and then sent them to me to commemorate their first visit. You can see from Will's smile that he was so excited to be there! He even had his first-ever x-rays (and did great) and was perfect throughout the exam.

Henry, as you can see, was not even sure about having his picture taken. Will and I both had to be right next to him and he didn't even want to look at the camera! It went downhill from there.

Henry didn't let the hygienist count his teeth and only let her polish his teeth with the chocolate-flavored paste he picked out because it tasted good and she let him sit up for it. He spent the rest of the exam crying and asking to go home. I can't blame him, though. He's had too many unhappy doctor's visits in the past (fractured arm, dehydration, stitches) to ever want to see scrubs and a white coat again. Fortunately, the little boys have good, healthy teeth, so we're all done with dentists til September. Hopefully our next visit will be much less traumatic for my little Henry!

The Letter N

N is for noodles and newspaper and Nemo! We studied the letter N last week and started the week with a big bowl of noodles in the form of spaghetti and meatballs. We also read On Top of Spaghetti by Paul Brett Johnson over and over again!

Yum!! Even Weezie wanted to join in the dinner party!

We also visited the aquarium at the zoo to see Nemo (clown fish). Of course we watched Finding Nemo at home, fast-forwarding through all the scary parts!

We covered the capital N with newspaper clippings. Henry and I found an article about the space shuttle launches, which is perfect for my space-loving boy. Our favorite newspaper book is The Paperboy by Dav Pilkey.

Next we covered our lowercase n with noodles.

What a neat N week!

Gymnastics, Again

Guess who wanted to try gymnastics class this week? Henry has been such a mama's boy lately that he wouldn't go to school without crying and certainly wouldn't try gymnastics without me by his side. But something changed on Thursday. When I took him to school, he put his head on my shoulder and looked up at me and said, "I changed my mind. I like school days now." And with that he went right into class! So I guess it should have been no surprise that he wanted to try gymnastics class after school on Thursday too. He went right in and sat next to his brother on the mat.

And he loved playing with the noodles.

Both boys loved jumping into the hula hoop and getting stamps from the teacher. The high balance beam is a little scary, but Henry walked across it! I'm so glad both my boys are loving gymnastics class! Next week is Pirate Week at our Little Gym. We cannot wait to dress up and put on our best pirate faces. Aargh!

Friends

We met our friends Kate and Henry at the zoo on Wednesday. The weather was beautiful, and who doesn't love the zoo?

The boys could spend all day at the Children's Zoo. They especially like this boat, even if they can't agree on who will be the captain!

My Henry wasn't too sure about the rooster walking on the fence.
The two Henrys (Henry squared?) loved the petting zoo!After spending three hours at the zoo, we headed over to ride the train. All three of these boys were pretending to be T-Rexes!
And then my little dinosaurs climbed aboard the train.

Beautiful weather + good friends + lots and lots of animals + a train ride= the perfect morning!

Toy Story

Are your kids as obsessed with Toy Story as mine are? We got the first two movies sometime last year and they boys watched them occasionally, but then Gene's aunt gave them Toy Story 3 for Christmas and the obsession really began! Will and Henry LOVE that movie!

Even when we haven't watched any Toy Story movies for a couple of weeks, the boys are always acting out parts of the story. We have to get out our Mr. Potato Heads, of course. Will has been really obsessed with his army men lately. His soldiers are actually Revolutionary War figures but they easily take the place of the green Army guys in Toy Story. The soldiers go on missions and tag along on lots of our outings. There's one in my diaper bag right now and two came with us when we went out for breakfast a couple of weeks ago. Here Will's showing them how pizza dough is made!

And here they're all eating breakfast!
And if Will's not playing with his toy soldiers, he likes to play "Sergeant" with Henry. Basically there are lots of "sergeants" but Will is the boss sergeant who yells "Sergeant" at his brother and gives lots and lots of orders!
And it's probably no surprise that my space-loving boy's favorite Toy Story character is Buzz Lightyear. Henry loves to be "Buzz Wightyear" and fly through the galaxy saving toys. The boys sometimes fight about who will get to be Buzz, but thank goodness there are TWO Buzz Lightyears in Toy Story 2! Henry is showing off his Buzz Lightyear wings.

To infinity....and beyond!

National Pancake Day

Today is National Pancake Day! We are a pancake-loving family and had some leftover pancakes in the fridge, so the boys celebrated National Pancake Day at snack time this afternoon.

Yum-O!