Fisherman Joshua

Joshua is spending the week up at Grandma & Grandpa's in Etna. We took him up Saturday and came back home yesterday. It was a quick trip that is kind of a blur to me because most of it was spent with a sick Nathaniel...who is finally feeling better today.

Anyway, Joshua FINALLY got to go fishing using Mommy's old fishing pole! He's wanted to do that for years. Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Lorrayne took him to Camp Eden today and he caught a trout! Here are a couple of pictures that they sent us today and the email he dictated to Grandma.

Hi Mom, Dad and Nathaniel, I got my mail today. It is on my dresser. I love you and miss you. I had fun fishing. Here are a couple pictures. I got the fish by myself. I am going to eat it for dinner tonight. Grandpa and Grandma say I am a real fisherman now, I got a hook stuck in my thumb! Will see you Friday. Love, Joshua

Zucchini...

Monday evening we had dinner with Brian's brother Terry & his wife Theresa. They're growing zucchini & tomatoes. Boy, are they growing zucchini!! We brought home 6 or so. Some are HUGE. I grated them all up yesterday and made 2 batches of zucchini bread (our favorite) and bagged up the rest for future batches and put it in the freezer. I got over 12 cups of grated up zucchini. Here's a picture of the largest one in comparison to Nathaniel...

Last night I had a scrapbooking class. It was nice...I got 6 more pages done. Finished my elementary school class pictures...yay!! Next I'm hoping to finish 2002...and Joshua's first Christmas. These pictures are Nathaniel trying to "help" me get my stuff ready to go last week in my new tote thing. Had to convince him that there just wasn't room for him AND all my junk!

Joshua is enjoying the summer reading program...and is loving the fact that wow, he can really read a lot! Here he's "chilling" in his car after lunch reading a book he checked out earlier this week. He's all excited because tomorrow we take him to Grandma and Grandpa's where he gets to spend a week - all by himself (well, all by himself after we leave Monday morning). He packed his suitcase (aided by a list from Mommy) this morning...I just have to check and make sure he got everything.

We still are pretty smoky here - smoke from several of the fires around here in Northern/Central California. Haven't seen blue sky since last week. My mom said they had blue sky yesterday...hope the wind doesn't shift and it's still blue tomorrow! I did see stars last night when I got home from Davis...if I looked hard, squinted and stared straight up :)

This afternoon, the boys decided they wanted to make necklaces with the colored pasta Aunt Carrie made for them last month...Nathaniel kept trying to eat it, but in the end did get some on his yarn (with a little help).

The Ants Go Marching...

Yesterday at Storytime we got to listen to bug stories. And for the craft (joshua was very happy that there was a craft this week because last week there wasn't!) they made ant head bands (they glued on the eyes and fit it to their heads...and if they so desired, colored the eyes.) I wasn't too sure if Nathaniel was going to wear his. I told him that Joshua was going to wear one and that Cole might wear one...but I think the clincher is when he saw our friend Jack wear his. Then he suddenly wanted his "hat" on.

After making the hats, they marched around singing, "The Ants go Marching (insert #), hurrah, hurrah..." Nathaniel wanted nothing to do with that part...he clung to my leg and let Joshua go join in with all of the other kids.

Today, when we went for the older kid summer reading program activity, Joshua insisted on wearing his ant head band. He was the only kid wearing one, but he didn't care. The theme is bugs this summer and he makes sure he's decked on in bug attire...usually his bright orange bug summer reading program Tshirt from Aunt Carol's library in Provo. But this week it was his gray shirt with spiders all over it (to remind us of the song we sang yesterday at storytime...Sippin' Spiders Through a Straw) and the ant head band. They made worms/snakes out of wool and learned how to "felt" (?) it. He had fun and has a cute little gray worm with bands of bright colors. I'm sure he'll let "LEX" (that's the worm's name...from our computer game BookWorm Adventure) pose for a picture.

We're tired of smoke!!! We haven't seen blue sky (or a non-red sun) since Saturday, I think it was. So not a good start to summer....wildfires.

Lee Family Drive-In

As part of "summer school" last week we made cars out of boxes...Nathaniel had fun creating his:

We made them right before lunch and the boys had to try them out...

Then that night, we had our own little drive-in. I fixed "drive-in" type food...corn dogs...

...and popcorn.

We have a ton of raffle tickets that Brian has used when he's done raffles at different events. So I gave us each a bunch of tickets - enough for "admission" to the movie and enough to "buy" dinner and dessert. The boys totally loved this. And we enjoyed ourselves also. Sure beats trying to go to a drive-in (there's one in Sacramento, but I think it's going to be closed) and is definitely cheaper than the theater! We've saved the cars...and we'll do this activity every once in awhile. Joshua asks at least twice a day if we can do the drive-in again.

I got this idea from my friend Melanie's site (sugardoodle.net). She also had a link to a cool website where you could create license plates for whatever state you wanted, etc. So I made the boys their own license plates that we stuck on the back of their cars. Very cool!

Finger Painting Fun

Last Friday, as our wrap up to our Creation/Solar System week, we had some good ol' finger painting (not finger licking, thank goodness!) fun! We haven't had finger paints out in ages...because they're such a mess! Thursday morning before work, Brian & Joshua ran to Staples for something for the computer...and came home with new finger paints and some paper. I was more excited than I thought I should be (since they're so darn messy) because I decided they'd be perfect for our cumulating activity for the week.

So, I read about each day of creation from the Bible, and Joshua painted it with his finger paints. Nathaniel, of course, was allowed to just do whatever he wanted with them...within reason, of course. He needed a little help to figure out what he was supposed to do with the goopy stuff, but had fun. Now I want to try and remember what I did with our old finger paints...not so much to get them out and use them, but so that I can find them and make sure they haven't spilled somewhere!!

Saturday was a busy day...Brian started out by going over to the church for Ward Clean Up day. I opted to stay home with the boys. I organized two of those days when I was activities person

...and one of them I did while lugging Joshua around because Brian was at a class. I didn't feel like doing the same with Nathaniel...he was too little to help and would've had too much fun trying to. After that it was time to go to Woodland for Michelle's (Brian's niece) graduation BBQ. After that with two relatively quick stops at Walmart and Costco, it was time to head home, wrap a birthday present and get to Nathaniel's friend Cole's birthday party. Luckily it was form 4 to 7, because we got there at 6! Then it was bathtime and bedtime. Busy day!!

M&M Math

They might not melt in your hands, but they sure do melt on your face!!








One of the activities in the "summer

school" lesson that we did this week was some M&M Math. There's a cute little worksheet to sort your M&M's on (I colored them the other day while the boys did the Play-doh Planets) and then a graph to graph your colors on.
Joshua has done a very similar activity in school, so this was old hat to him. I did have him do some addition & subtraction problems with it which I don't think they did in kinder.





Nathaniel, of course, couldn't quite graph his totals...and he also didn't get a full bag of M&Ms. But he did sort them by color. And he did a very good job of it too. I think it helped that on Wednesday, we sorted the end of the Legos from the huge drawer they were in into their compartments in the Lego table Brian had built for Christmas. I explained to Nathaniel what we were doing, and he caught on right away and had no problems sorting the Legos...until he got tired of doing it :) Anyway, with the M&Ms he only struggled a bit with brown - I think because brown wasn't one of the Lego colors that he'd dealt with the day before. He did pretty well for only be 21 months old! He only snuck a couple of M&Ms before we were finished and I told him he could eat them all up...then he gobbled them quickly!
















Tomorrow I'll post what we did today for our wrap up lesson. Next week we're doing Moses & the Ten Commandments/Honoring & Obeying the Law. I printed that one out today since I hadn't earlier and should've been getting stuff ready for it while Brian & I watched a movie tonight instead of crocheting. Oh well, there's always tomorrow night.

Tonight, Joshua got to go swimming at the City Pool. It was their first Family Free Night (or is it Family Fun Night...I can't remember) of the summer. I guess they're doing this the first Friday of every month for the 3 months of summer. Anyway, Brian was home a little earlier than usual tonight, so the two of them went over to the pool for an hour or so. Nathaniel was devestated that he didn't get to go...especially when he saw swim trunks & beach towels. But he's had a runny nose the past couple of days and I have a sore throat and earaches, so we stayed home. Maybe next month we'll all get to go...though the 1st Friday of July is the 4th, so I don't know if they'll do a free thing then or not...we'll have to wait and see.

Well, need to get this posted and get to bed....stayed up too late last night watching National Treasure 2. And of course, the boys were both up at 6 this morning...though that was good in one way...Nathaniel, who's skipped his nap the past two days, fell asleep in my lap while we played a computer game at 10 this morning and slept for an hour. And then he was asleep and in bed by a little after 8...yay! Tomorrow is busy...clean up day at the church (Brian's going...maybe Joshua...Nathaniel would be more of a hinderance than a help, so we'll be home doing clean up here). Then Michelle (Brian's niece) is graduating from high school and we have a BBQ to go to for her around noon...then a birthday party for Nathaniel's friend Cole at 4. Plus a couple of errands somewhere in there (Walmart and Costco for milk...thank goodness Woodland has a Costco now so we can do everything in one town).

Play-doh Planets

I'm trying to do some summer lessons that a friend of mine created for her kids last summer. She tied a Gospel/Scriptural event with a subject matter (eg. Creation/Space...Jonah/Ocean Life). We've started with the Creation/Space lesson...because, well, the Creation was the beginning :) and Joshua studied the solar system in kindergarten and loved it.

Well, one of Melanie's (my friend) activities was to make "moon cookies" - give the kids some sugar cookie dough and have them shape it into a circular shape and make craters in it with their fingers. Well, yesterday I thought about making sugar cookie dough...and didn't and today, well, Nathaniel never napped, so the kitchen didn't get cleaned up, so yeah, didn't happen again. But...we have PLAY-DOH!!! Just as good (well, you can't eat it - though Nathaniel did try once). So the boys made moons & asteroids and other solar system inhabitants...and then we got out the hair cutting toy (one of Brian's clients gave it to him for the boys last year after she got it as a birthday gift) and no matter how we tried, we kept popping the "baby"'s head off (Nathaniel insists that the guy/girl that is part of the toy is a baby and just wanted the baby and threw a fit until Joshua gave him the baby...yeah, he really needed that nap). I'd put up the camera by the time "baby" came out, but I did take a few pictures of them making their moons, etc.