Cabazon Dinosarus

We went to Palm Springs for Nate to compete in the Odyssey of the Mind competition. That was fun but the highlight was probably visiting the Cabazon dinosaurs well known for their appearance in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. They now have a whole dinosaur exhibit walk through on the way to get into the big dinosaurs. The kids had a blast.

 

 Will had a little too much fun posing for the camera.

 

thirty something over par

Will is full of surprises

Will played baseball this year and really surprised us with his new talent! He went from not knowing a thing about baseball to being a really good player. He won the tough guy award. He took some hard hits by the pitching machine as catcher and didn't even shed a tear.

He came home from school one day and said, mom I need a shoe box. So I got one out for him and a bunch of art supplies and he made this whole diarama himself! The only thing I did was print out the title and photo for him. So creative.

His first grade class put on a play at the end of the year called "stone soup, a rock opera". He had so much fun with it! I was surprised at how outgoing he was, singing, dancing, and acting. Mike and I built the cardboard houses and pot. I took them into the classroom and let the students all paint them. They did a great job and had so much fun painting!

Nate's projects

Nate has been involved with a bunch of projects lately which is just his thing...he loves to create and build. It's just a little stressful when the odyssey of the mind competition, pinewood derby race, and due date for model of a California mission along with written report are all in the same week. For the Odyssey of the Mind competition his group had to make cars powered by mousetraps The cars had to complete certain tasks such as going up and over a seesaw and going a certain distance then stopping. The competition was in Palm Springs and covered a large area of schools. They came in 6th place!

For the expert fair he decided to do his project on Guatemala, where his Dad served a mission.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We had fun celebrating St. Patrick's Day today. Normally we just wear green and leave it at that but today I made green eggs and pancakes. Jimmy woke up after everyone was already gone to school and I told him a leprechaun came in and turned our pancakes green.

I volunteered in Nate's class today at their St. Patrick's Day party...a great excuse to do some fun math games, science, and crafts. This is a 50 ft. long wind bag.

And of course, we all wore green.

Leprechauns came into Jimmy's preschool too and made a mess of gold glitter everywhere.
Here he is in the hat he made.

And last but not least, corn beef and cabbage for dinner (with potatoes and carrotts). So Good.

Will's first book

Will's been getting better at drawing and is really into it. He also like's to make up stories. His favorite types of books to check out from the library are comic novels. So one day he just decided to make his own book. He wrote and illustrated it. He drew it in pencil so it's a little hard to see. He says he's going to sell his books for ten dollars :) I can't believe how well he draws for age 7.

I especially like the how to draw Max on the back page.

Coming soon... Max and the Robot Factory

Happy Valentine's Day!

We didn't have school today because of budget cuts so we decided to make use of our passes for Disneyland/California Adventure. It wasn't too crowded but we thought so since we were spoiled from our last trip when we were able to walk right onto rides. We went a week and a half ago on a wednesday and our longest wait was 10 minutes. Yep, even space mountain and Dumbo. But we still had a great time today...the weather was perfect.

Gotta Have a Party!

Will chose a pokemon party this year and wanted to invite only a few close friends. Fine with me! So we had it our house. I had my boys decorate using the many many many pokemon stuffed animals they own. As the boys arrived they played with balloons for almost 45 minutes! They made their own pokemon cards, we had a pokeball cake and pokemon pinata. I had other games planned but they had more fun just hanging out and playing. One of Will's friends told his mom it was the best birthday party he had ever been to.

Andrew played his Clarinet while we sang happy birthday to Will.

Andrew is 12!!

Andrew's 12th birthday happened to be on a Sunday so how cool is that receiving the priesthood on your birthday! Nani and Papa, Grandma and Grandpa, and Aunt Tracy all came for his big day. Andrew is such a good boy. He makes such good choices, is very responsible and successful in all that he does. I forgot to get a picture of him after church but here he is when we went bowling to celebrate his birthday a couple days before.

Here's another photo of his first trip to the temple in San Diego to do baptisms in March with all of the youth in our ward.