February 12, 2003

Someone Turned 8!!!

Needless to say he was pretty excited about it all.  He kept saying all day that it was the "BEST DAY EVER!!!"  LOL

One of his first gifts that he got to open was from his Aunt and Uncle in New Jersey.  He was to funny and told me I better get the camera.  Always the little ham!  They did such a great job.  They got him a little handheld game from the movie Cars 

This was his really large big gift from us.  He saw this monkey at Toys R Us and loved it.  The thing is though that he saw it at christmas after we had already finished all of his shopping.  So we really surprised him on his birthday.  We even bought a couple shirts for him to dress up in.  My husband thought that the Donkey Kong shirt on him was to perfect.

Look at the size compared to him this thing is huge.

He is really into music and wanting to be a singer.  Sam got him a new guitar for his birthday to help along that dream.  Such a good brother.  ;)

Gabe even wanted to have his monkey Sam (yes he named him after his brother) play the guitar too.  He actually took this picture of him.

My two monkeys eating banana monkey pancakes.  We got an adorable pan at Target for the monkey pancakes. 

Gabe is really into the movie Cars.  His dad made this play set of radiator springs for him.  then to go with it we picked up some extra cars to go with it.

His cake.  O.k.  first go easy on me they were really hard to take pictures of  because of all the different angles.  Of course it is not the best job on the decorating either, but that is a whole nother story.  It was of this really cool ice cream and cake pan that I got at target.  Unfortunetly I did not take a picture of the pan to share with you and I can not find a link for you to see it.    The animals on it were a monkey (of course), an elephant, a lion, a gator, and a hippo.

We had a really nice lunch with family.  Gram and Harriet made a 4 hour drive just to have lunch with him.  I think he is pretty loved.

Getting a little sugar high from the cake. 

What always comes after the sugar high...the sugar low of course.  This monkey is so comfy to snuggle with...  seriuosly comfy.

even Rob got a snuggle in.  LOL

Later that night we had some friends stop by.  Which it is always fun to watch this little guy play.  He really loved Gabe's car that he got for christmas.

Sam used his uDraw to make brother a birthday card

Another entry of those crazy boys!

OK I did manage to get back here for another post this week.  Yeah!!!  I just had to share this with everyone.  It is the newest public speaking videos.  This week I let the boys do their own.  I told them that they could set up a stage and use props, they had so much fun.   I hope you enjoy what they came up with.  Sam is actually already working on what he should do for next week.  Lets just say it should be interesting.  One is more than likely going to end up dressed like a sumo wrestler.

Here are the poems that each of them read.  It came from a book called Someone Used My Toothbrush!  The poems are written in the order of the videos, so Gabe is up first.

BELLOWING IN THE BATHROOM

There's a bellowing in the bathroom

Like a mad moose on the loose

Or perhaps it is a rhino,

Or a loudly honking goose.

could it be a wounded bison?

A gorilla's mating call?

It bounces off the ceiling,

And echoes down the hall.

Could it be a brontosaurus

Roaring at full power?

No, it's just our dear old dad,

Singing in the shower.

THE MEDICINE CABINET

Our medicine cabinet is full of junk,

Squeezed-out tubes of nameless gunk,

Little brown bottles of ancient pilld

To fix some long-frogotten ills.

Sprays for noses, feet, and pits,

Half-a-dozen cures for zits.

Barettes and scrunchies, mousse and gel,

Ointments with obnoxious smells,

Thermometers and toenail clippers,

Rusty razors, nose-hair snippers,

Cough drops, syrups of all sorts,

Patches to get rid of warts.

Wipes and swipes and salve for sores,

Two small plastic dinosaurs,

Sunblock, sunscreen, sunburnlotions,

Tiny jars of mystery potions,

Bandages and dental floss,

Fake tattoos and old lip gloss.

Safety pins and dye for hair --

Open up that door with care,

For if you don't, then you will chance

A medicine cabinet avalanche.

I hope that you are enjoying the shows that they put on as much as they are doing them.  I am so proud of these two videos because they did them all on their own and are very funny serious and well done.  No all joking aside I thought that they did a great job.

Public Speaking

I am pretty hit or miss on my entries latley. When I do post it is very little about the schooling any more, so  I thought I would share a little public speaking today.  The boys have one day a week where they work on public speaking for English.  I pick out a different poem for each of them to do and then they read it aloud working on emotion and pronounciation of words.  Well this week I put each of them on video after they worked on it a little.  Please forgive the poor taping.  I had not used the video feature on my new camera yet, so a few things to work out still.  Enjoy it other wise though, each video is around one minute long.

I got the poems this week from A Burst of Firsts.  It is a great book of poems, make sure to check it out.  Just in case any one could not understand everything I thought that I would include the poems each one read, starting with Sam and then Gabe's.

First Person to Create Blue Jeans

Levi Strauss - San Francisco - 1873

First, coal miners wore the pants.

(Denim came from southern France.)

Cowboys followed, then came teens--

Half the world is wearing jeans.

You decide which pair you want--

Zipper-fly or button-front,

Loose-fit, wide leg, classic kind...

Half the world's been redesigned,

Sew it seams, on its behind.

First Time the Sound Barrier Was Broken

By a Brontosaurus -- About 100 million years ago

A Brontosaurus tail

Could cause a frightful gale.

THE SNEEZE! The sudden lash,

The wind -- and then the CRASH!

What first broke the sound barrier?

A Brontosaurus derriere.

I am going to video tape the boys each week for their public speaking so I will try and share it with you all.  I hope to get back here soon, who knows though.  Got a lot of work to do around here right now, a certian little boy around here turns 8 on the 12th.  Hope to see you all soon, hacve a good one.

Japanese Egg Molds

Alright I am so far behind on my entries it is not really funny.  I was meaning to show you some stuff that we did over the holidays but it is just way to late know.  I did want to share something pretty cool with you that the boys got for Christmas though, Japanese egg molds

They come in sets of two.  We got the one that has a car and fish.  As you can see they are big enough to fit one egg each in.  We were not really sure how to use them since the directions were written in Japanese.  Thankfully they did have pictures on the back so we could have some clue how to use it.  First we made hard boiled eggs like you normally would.  Then we quickly peeled them while they were still hot, put them in the container and sealed it off.  On the package it had a picture with the containers in a bowl of water, so we put the containers in warm water for about 10 minutes.

Once they were done they looked like this.  The car came out really cute.  The fish however had a hard time getting the tail working though, LOL.

Look how cute the car is.  It was alot of fun for the boys.  Hope you enjoyed. 

Thanksgiving 2010

Ok another really late post, please hang in there with me because I have another couple of these before I am caught back up.  On Thanksgiving we always head over to the west coast of Florida and celebrate.  The kids always have fun over there with the family.  This year was a big showing, 14 of us.

The trip is a long drive for everyone (4 hours)  so we make a stop at the rest stop on the way.  This was the morning of Thanksgiving, as you can see Gabe is very excited for the day to happen, what can I say he loves to eat.

Once we arrived his uncles were already there and he just had to take Gypsy for her walk.

My Grandmother lives in one of the many retirment communities in florida and this is of her back yard and several of her neighbors.  My brothers boyfriend took the shot on my camera using the panoramic setting.  I think it came out pretty well the yard just does bend the way it looks.  One of the great things about the park she lives in is there is always so much different things you can see when out for a walk.  So one time when Gabe went to play shuffle board with his dad, Sam and I went for a walk.  Here is some of the shots we got.

I love the bright red on the flower.  Also the fact that you can see the sun shining off the bee's back is pretty cool too.

There is a few of these spanish moss trees around the park.  I think that they are so neat.  These next few shots are of these two birds that would just walk around the park.  I just thought that they were so beautiful and we could get so close to them.  Hope you enjoy them, I experimented with the black and white on some of them.

We also had some fun at the park near by.  Unfortunetly the playground portion was closed for repairs so the boys could only use the swings. 

Gabe worked at learning how to through the frisbee.  His form is coming along really nice.

Got some more loving from Gypsy.

Listened to some books on tape with best friends.  (If you look close he put head phones on the monkey too.  He is such a cutie)

Well that was our Thanksgiving.  Thanks so much for letting me share it with you all.  I hope that you all had a great one too!

A visit with Grandpa

So this is a really overdue post (He visited just before Thanksgiving, oops)  Better late than never right.  I figured that since the big gap that I had on here was during the holidays I would try and share the fun things that we did during this time.  So what better place to start than Grandpa's visit.  This was my Father in laws first visit so it was really special for the boys.  We tried to pack alot into the week that he was here because of that.  They wanted to share all of the fun things that they love to do, this was such a small percentage of them that they can not wait for his next visit.  I thought that I would share some of my favorite pictures from the visit.

This was at the Zoo.  They loved taking him around and showing himall of the favorite animals.

Gabe got a chance to show Grandpa how well he is doing with his reading now.

Of course we got a chance to eat out too.  We ate at TooJay's deli, coconut mounds cake, yummy :0)

I think that my favorite part of the whole trip was our trip to the park.  It might be because it was my first chance to experiment with my new camera, yeah that could be the reason :0).  I mean check out these pictures of the kids.

I love the profile shots when they do not realize that I am taking it.  They are more natural, and I get so much better shots.

I have no idea on why this on tipped to its side.  It did it when I loaded it on to blogger.  Oh well, look at that face, love it.

To sweet holiding grandpa's hand on the nature trail. 

Gabe got daddy in on playing.

Enough room for all three of my favorite guys.

I wanted to share some of the nature shots that I got on that day to.  This was of the snapping turtle in the nature center.  I love how it came out you can not even tell he is underwater.

Just a body of water on the nature trail, really pretty.

One of the other ponds on the nature trail.

I was playing with the zoom on this.  It is probably one of my favorite shots that I ever took, and it was totally by accident.  I was trying to see how far I could zoom and take a picture of the bird house (brown blur in back).  Instead I got this shot of the tree.  I was impressed with how it looked on the camera but then I got it home and on the computer and happend to notice the dragon fly on it.  How cool is that, I know I get excited pretty easily. 

OK that is it for now, I know it was a long post.  I am going to try and get some more up this weekend of the other things that I missed.  Also look for some cool stuff coming from that talented husband of mine.  He got the book, 365: A daily creative journal, on new years and has been working on his projects from it.  He plans on sharing them on here, yeah!

A New Start...

(Picture from my front door on New Year's Eve)



I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  Ours was really nice, but glad things are starting to slow down.  I am looking foward to the new year with some high hopes.  There is going to be lots of changes and fun things going on around here.  I hope to share as much as possible with all of you.  Over the next week or two I hope to revamp the blog some, so please patient with any mess you see during this time.  It is a lot to learn.  Alright I did want to just check in a let you know we are still here.  Gotta run now and get some more work done.

Just a little ..... Jet pack!!!!

  I thought that I would share one of the new projects that I made for the boys.  A really cool Jet Pack!  What little boy does not want their own jet pack.  I have to admit this is not completely my idea.  While looking through the many amazing and wonderful craft blogs out there I came across this.  My only dilemma is that she made it out of recyclables (Gabe would destroy that in a heart beat),  So I designed it out of fabric so that it could last longer. 

I had problems attaching the two tubes together so I ended up hand stitching a panel in between.  This worked out, because it fit him better and now fits Sam.

To change it up a little I made wings for it too.  They are completely removable in case he does not want to have them on.  Which is a good thing because he does not like them on much, I think that I made them a little to small (oops!)

He had so much fun blasting around the park. 

So it turns out to be a great gift for the active kid in your life.  It would make a great present under the tree don't you think?