who is that under the hat?

Last week was like Christmas all over again in our house. A friend with three boys (4, 6, and 8) dropped off a load of hand-me-down clothes. Of course, many of the clothes have seen many hours in the dirt, but those are the kinds of clothes we wear most days around here. Scooter loved going through them and finding new "work" clothes.

One of the cutest pieces we got was this darling hat and mitten set from Old Navy. I put it on Roo this morning as we were heading outside to play and hardly recognized him. It's funny the way his hair really defines who he is.

Here is a picture of the boys working together. Scooter told me that they were "digging for dinosaur bones."

"Hi Cutie!"

Thursday is our day to go to Community Bible Study. This is a great outing for the whole family. I get wonderful "adult" time with other women, while the kids have a great time upstairs in the children's program. We all learn about Jesus and grow in our faith, while fellowshipping with other people our age. The boys also learn things to prepare them for school, like waiting in line and sharing toys. They are in separate classes, with teachers who love them and love what they do.

I always pick up Roo from his class first and then we head down the hall to get Scooter. As I arrived at Roo's room, his teacher came out laughing. She said that just minutes earlier, he ran across the room, arms wide open, gave her a great big hug and said "Hi Cutie." Where he learned that phrase is anybody's guess. But, who can resist that big smile and those blond curls? (Of course, last week he was aiming the ball at her head and giving it a great big heave.)

Oh, I also posted the snow picture from a few days ago. Scroll down to see it.

random thoughts

As I downloaded the pictures from my camera for my "sun/snow" post, I realize I have some more to share. These are just random events of the past week.

On Thursday night, we celebrated the end to our "M" week by roasting marshmallows in our fireplace. Well, actually Derrick did all the roasting. I was in charge of keeping the kids away from the fire and sticky fingers off of the furniture. (By the way...it is so much easier to do this outside, where you don't have to worry about the mess.) Look at these faces, though...pure pleasure. I don't think that "N" week is going to be as exciting. "Nana" starts with an "N" -- so if you are reading, pass along some good ideas!

Below is a picture of "Super Scooter." He loves the orange cape that the Howen's gave him for Christmas. It is a big silk cloth that they dyed with orange Kool-Aid. Alisa (who would never dream of serving her kids Kool-Aid) said she felt so funny at the grocery store with 30 boxes of the stuff, in all flavors and colors! It does seem kind of gross to ingest something that colors the scarf with such vivid colors. What does it do to your stomach? But, the cape looks great and makes for hours of fun play time. His favorite combination of costume is the scarf with his bright orange gloves and safety goggles. In the picture below, he was showing me how strong he was by picking up a large limb.

Yo-Yo Weather

Winter in the South is amazing. I've lived here my entire life and it still amazes me how funny winter can be. Wednesday last week, we had snow showers, but the ground wasn't quite cold enough for it to stick. Thursday was blah, but Friday was amazing -- beautiful, sunny and mid-60's. The boys and I had a picnic outside for lunch. We enjoyed rice cakes with peanut butter (a yummy treat) and apples. Farley enjoyed apple cores and any crumbs that we dropped. Of course, he asked for more. Here is a picture:

And, below is a picture of the boys just 24 hours later -- in hats, gloves, boots and playing in the snow! We drove to Atlanta for the day (just an hour away) and it snowed at my parent's house. The boys had a grand time playing in the snow. We read so many books about snow, ice skating, snowmen, snow angels, etc. and neither boy had ever seen snow. It was great fun. The best part was that the roads never froze, so we had no trouble travelling home. (Roo is definitely his Daddy's boy -- doesn't he look cold. Derrick does not like cold weather and Roo has inherited that characteristic. I don't see any Aspen ski vacations in our future.)

"Laundry Bunnies"

Derrick and I have decided that we have Laundry Bunnies living in our house. It's not unlike the Dust Bunnies that we have lurking in every corner. Both seem to multiply faster than we can keep up with them.

A typical bedtime conversation between Derrick and me is this: "Didn't we do laundry earlier this week?" "Yes" "Then, why am I stuffing my dirty clothes into the laundry basket? It is overflowing!"

Of course, when you have kids that come in with clothes this muddy...,

...Or a face like this after eating grapefruit (you probably can't see that he was tipping the rind up to his mouth like a bowl and eating everything he could out of the inside of the grapefruit. He had it all over his face and shirt), you should expect mountains of laundry.

The bonus about doing so much laundry is that if I forget something or don't want to disturb a nap to get a laundry basket out of Roo's room, it doesn't matter. I know I'll have enough for a new load very soon.

(Speaking of "Roo's room", we may not be able to say that much longer. Last night, he chose to sleep in the extra "big boy bed" in Scooter's room. We really hope that they will share a room soon, since we think it is such a good experience for both of them. He loved the freedom of being able to get up out of bed as he chose. In fact, he "chose" to get up three times before we finally convinced him that it was time to go to sleep. He was so cute running down the hall with this great big smile on his face...the "I've escaped from jail" smile.)

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The letter "M" is so much fun!

Who knew that learning letters could be so much fun. Instead of sending Scooter to preschool this year, we decided to do some "at home" learning. Throughout the course of the year, we have learned approximately one letter per week. If you do the math, you know there have been more than 13 weeks since August, but we took some time off and some weeks for review. We've started the New Year on the letter "m". And what a fun letter it has been!

Think of all the fun words that start with "M".

• Mother - of course, that's the most fun. We've talked about family and who is our family and who are everyone's mothers.
  
• Macaroni - we were at the grocery store yesterday shopping for some macaroni noodles to take home and color. I picked up the box and asked Scooter what letter it started with. He knew, but he paused long enough for Roo to exclaim "P!" When I said no, he shouted "E!" It's so fun to see what Roo picks up on just by listening to what Scooter is learning. He knew I was asking for a letter, so he started chanting all the letters he knew. When Scooter and I are counting, Roo will say, "One, Two, Four, Five, Eight, Nine...."
  
• We picked out our noodles (and the rest of the groceries) and headed home to shake some food coloring on the noodles. They are still drying, waiting for our glue project tomorrow. I'm still unsure what it will be, but anything with glue and scissors excites Scooter to no end!
  
• The best part about the letter "M" is all the fun food that starts with that letter. We picked up marshmallows (in hopes that we will have a fire in the fireplace this week and we'll roast them.) We also got some M&M's. Yesterday afternoon, we sorted them by color and variety, we counted each color, and divided them evenly into four bowls -- one for each member of the family. This fun math project had the greatest reward -- dessert! I told Derrick that Scooter had no problem learning the letter "M." His response was that if every letter had candy to go with it, he would be a whiz at learning all the letters.

The babies are here!

Jill & Geoffrey had their twins yesterday afternoon at 3:00 and 3:09. Reese Stevens weighed in at 6 lbs 15 oz and Charles Hollis came a few minutes later at 6 lbs. We went to the hospital last night to meet them -- so cute!

Here is a picture that Geoffrey sent last night.

Mimic the adults

I took this cute picture of Scooter yesterday as he was pretending he was welding. He took the basket that we keep balls in out of our toy area and placed it on his head to protect his face from the welding sparks. Then, he took the blocks and stacked them into his welding torch. He welded the kitchen cabinets while I washed dishes.

This morning, I noticed that Roo had a travel mirror in his hand. It is the kind that flips open to reveal the mirror. He said to me "phone" and opened it and held it to his face and started talking to daddy.

It's amazing to me how much these little guys mimic the world in their play. They just do what they see us doing. The most fun part about that is that next time we see a welder, I'll point it out to Scooter and he will love seeing someone really in action. Then, he will come home and play some more. (Not so much fun is that Roo will probably pick up my cell phone and call Timbucktoo, or just the last person that I called.)

Cotton Candy!

We had a great time yesterday. After the boys awoke from their naps, we piled in the car and headed to campus to watch the UGA Gymnastics team in their "preview" meet. For any of you who aren't from Athens, the Gymnastics team is THE team on campus to go see (outside of Football, of course). Derrick and I work on the floor during all of the home meets and have a great time doing so. The UGA team has won the past three National Championships and is a front-runner for this year.

Yesterday they had an exhibition meet, very informal and informative. We saw lots of people we knew there, including Uncle Geoffrey, Aunt Jill & Callie. In fact, Callie was on the big screen for a few seconds as they were "dancing for books." She didn't win, but I thought she was the cutest featured.

So, not long after we arrived, Scooter spotted the "cotton candy man" on the other side of the arena. The child has never had cotton candy before, so I'm not sure where he learned about it or how he knew what it was. Maybe it was some sort of instinct that he was born with. Well, he asked for some and I thought, "well, he is almost four...he can have his first cotton candy." We chased the Cotton Candy Man all the way around the arena trying to get his attention. Finally, I handed over my $3.00 for a bag full of sugar and we happily went back to our seats.

Of course, I didn't figure that Scooter's first taste of cotton candy (at almost four) would also be Roo's first taste of cotton candy (almost two). Roo also must have been born with that same instinct, because he started asking for it as soon as we got back to our seats.

It reminded me of a story my Mom always tells. To this day (30 years later), she remembers the very first piece of candy that my older brother had. He was at a birthday party when he was three and the little girl had a bowl of M&M's on the table. Geoffrey parked himself by that table and stayed there the entire party. When I ask when I had my first piece of candy, she doesn't remember. It was probably also at that same party!

Bedtime!

Bedtime is one of my most favorite times of the day. After the chaos of eating dinner (and treking to the kitchen at least 20 times during the meal), cleaning up, putting on jammies, brushing teeth, etc., bedtime is where we all get to relax, snuggle and read some good books. Generally, Derrick takes this "duty", allowing me to sneak away to do other things.

Roo has just recently gotten in to this routine. He is our little reader, bringing Daddy several books to read each night. Tonight, Derrick read Roo's short books and then started to read Scooter a chapter book. I thought for sure that Roo would lose interest, but he sat there the entire time. Even Farley enjoys hearing a good book.

As you can see, there isn't much room on the bed for all of them, especially with all of Scooter's "friends" joining them. When he takes naps in our bed on Tuesday and Thursday (when we have Noah), he insists that we transport all of them there. It takes two or three trips to get them all in place. I really think it is just a delay tatic from taking a nap.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008! We had a quiet evening at home last night. In honor of our friends who live in Paris, we decided to celebrate the New Year in Central European Time. So, at midnight CET, we gave our traditional "Happy New Year" kisses. The kids were even awake! (If you haven't already figured it out, the big bonus to doing this was that it was only 6:00 EST.) Once we were through celebrating, we had the rest of the evening to do whatever we wanted. We watched "Over the Hedge" with Scooter and all went to bed around 9:30. It has been years since I've been awake over three hours after celebrating the New Year! This may be a tradition we'll continue.

Of course, if we had timed it better, we could have celebrated with our friends who live in Asia (a 12 hour difference.) Then, the pork bar-b-que that we had for lunch would have counted for our "good luck" pork that we are supposed to eat on New Year's Day. Alas, we didn't think about it, so the menu tonight is Pork Chops, Black Eyed Peas, Collards and Sourkraut (a tradition from my Dad.) We'll also add a sweet potato and apple dish that I found in a recent Southern Living.

What a yummy way to start the New Year!