Random stuff from last week...

Not much has gone on since Halloween, just your usual everyday life. But, I've got some cute pictures to share about everyday life, so here you have it :)

At the end of September we took the boys to a Build a Bear store in the mall in Fairfield. Each boy made a puppy. We gave Nathaniel's dog the unimaginative name of WOOF, mainly because it's one of the words he can say and that's what he calls dogs. Then Joshua, boy of the huge vocabulary, etc. chose to name his dog SPOT. Yes, just plain old Spot...I was expecting Eragon or Hagrid or some Star Wars character name. But no, he wanted Spot. Each of these dogs comes with a birth certificate. And, scrapbooker that I am, I made scrapbook pages using these certificates. However, they are very large, so it doesn't leave much room on the page for pictures. So I decided to just use a wallet-size picture of each boy with their new friend. I have Nathaniel's done and you can see it here. But I still needed to get a picture of Joshua with Spot - without Spot's clothing on (we bought him a $1 Halloween T-shirt at Target out of their dollar bins...and also gave him an outgrown shirt of Nathaniel's.). I finally got that done last week. And as soon as Nathaniel heard me tell Joshua to go get Spot, he went running for Woof. He wanted his picture taken too, so I snapped this one. I love it! I about died laughing at the expression on his face...I don't know what he was trying to do or say, but this is one of those photos I'm going to love for years.

Also, that day I took pictures of Joshua and his sugar skull that he'd decorated at school for their Dia de los Muertos celebration the week before. With him being in Spanish immersion they are going to be celebrating different Mexican holidays. Hmm, I wonder if I can get them to do any Spanish holidays - fallas would be fun :) But bonfires and kindergardeners are the best combo! Anyway, he wasn't overly impressed with Dia de los Muertos...he said that the "dead bread" wasn't anything special to eat. The first I ever heard about Dia de los Muertos was in Trixie Belden (Brian thinks I can link anything and everything back to a Trixie Belden book...he's pretty close to being right about that!) #6 and the Mystery in Arizona. True, Trix and the gang went to Arizona for Christmas (I've done that!) and Dia de los Muertos is in November, but it managed to tie into the mystery and be informative also. So, between that and teaching a majority of Mexican students for 5 years, I had enough of an idea about Dia de los Muertos and how it's celebrated in Mexico to make Joshua think I knew everything about it. So nice sometimes when he thinks I know everything. The other day when we were doing homework and he needed a word (in Spanish) that started with ba, be, bi, bo or bu and, while doing a couple of other things, I pulled the first word out of my head that fit that category and it was babosa (slug). He was so impressed that I knew the word for slug in Spanish that it prompted him to ask me if I knew every word in Spanish that there was. Sadly, I had to admit to him that no, I didn't and that I've forgotten so many words, but still, he assured me, I knew more words than he did. And he drew a lovely picture to go with that babosa - a beautiful rendition of Jabba the Hut (because he's just a big slug, you know) and carefully (because of my insistance) wrote babosa underneath the drawing.