Long Overdue...but I have a good excuse!!!!

Yes, I realize that it has been over a month since I last posted something here, but in my defense I have been kind of busy. I am now officially a teacher again - I'll go in to more detail later, but I spend most of my free time planning lessons (I am writing my curriculum as I go) or grading papers. In addition, to make our lives more difficult, The Boy broke our camera. But before we get to that, here is what we have been up to this month!

The boy loves Queen! We will watch the videos on YouTube and he will dance around, and even sing along!

Our local power company - PEPCO - decided to sponsor a "Back to the 18th Century Night" in January, so we had to find ways to not only keep ourselves warm, but also entertain ourselves. Luckily I had seen that snow was coming, and I had brought in some wood for our roaring fire! (It was so hot that it burned the hair off of my hands when I tried to put more wood in.) Owen and Beki used Owens flashlight lantern to play some puzzles and games, and we survived the 18th century just fine! (Thanks PEPCO!!! ...bastards...)

 Staying warm by the fire!

 This should give you an idea of how awesome the 18th Century is.

Since it snowed, the next morning there was a snowman to build!

I think that I have made it pretty clear on this blog that I am all about teaching the boy to fend for himself, and more especially, to do things that are beneficial to me! After seeing a post on my cousins blog about her son making his first Peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich, Owen was anxious to give it a try, so we had a little lesson!

 He had a pretty solid foundation of knowledge...he knew that you needed two pieces of bread, and that the PB goes on first.

 It took a little bit of time to get the mastery of spreading the PB around...

 But the licking of the knife came naturally! (And we then had to get a new knife...)

 Jelly is much more tricky to get out, so there was some supervision needed here...

 But once he saw what I was trying to do he took over.

 Look at the concentration!! (My oldest brother Todd used to always stick his tongue out like that when he was thinking hard...I wonder if it is genetic.)

 A little unorthadox on the method used here to put the two halves together, but it worked.

 A very important step...cutting out a shape, and cutting off the crust.

 These comfort-fit cookie cutters are awesome...I might have to talk about them more later!

And we have one sandwich!! (The next step in training is to teach him to make me one too!!)

I cannot remember why, but one night Beki came home with a can of ginger ale. The boy has a nose like mine, and so you cannot have food or drink without him knowing about it. He managed to finagle Beki out of her drink and this is what I see walking around the corner, just chugging away!!

 Unfortunately I turned the camera off right before the boy had soda bubble up and come out of his nose...it was awesome!! He decided that we should pour it into a sippy cup after that.

One of the things that we really like about Owen's school is that they celebrate holidays. Since it was Valentine's Day, Owen needed to make his Valentines for his class.

Mommy was there to supervise, but Owen did all the writing himself!

Good Job Buddy!

This is the last good picture that our camera ever took...

Last Sunday, while Beki and I were getting ready for church, Owen was watching Veggie-Tales, as he normally does. For some reason he decided that he would play with the camera, which he has done on occasion, taking a bunch of pictures, but never really doing too much damage. Now a normal 4 year old would break your camera by dropping it or possibly even hitting it with a hammer, but oh no...that would be too 3 year oldish for our son. Instead he poured an entire bottle of Lens cleaner on the camera in an attempt to "clean it." Beki and I took the camera apart and tried to dry it out with a hair dryer, but even though we were able to get it to turn on and even take pictures again, this is what they looked like...

So once again the boy has led us to upgrade our electronics, and we are now the owners of a Panasonic Lumix! Thanks Owen...grrr...

I will try to balance my work load so that I can update more often, but I make no promises! Also, if you want to see what I am ranting on lately, check below. (I should say that not all of them are rants, I will tell you about my job, cookie cutters, and my awesome cookie making skills as well!)

Maintenance Tuesday

So I like to play video games...in particular World of Warcraft. The only reason that it is important for you to know that, is that on Tuesdays the Warcraft Universe is shut down so that they can do server maintenance. Why is this important? Well it seems that every time circumstances work out so that I have nothing to do but play video games, it is a Tuesday. Take today for instance...

It has been 132 days since I last went to work, but I got the call last week that the Bureaucracy had determined that I could return to work on today. I spent all day yesterday getting my lesson plan in order and getting myself mentally prepared to go back to teaching. We knew that there was some freezing rain coming last night, but the school district had been a little more brave this year, and so at the worst I figured that we would have a two hour delay in the morning. I woke up at 6:20 and checked the school website, and sure enough it was a 2-hour delay. So back to bed I went (because you will get no better sleep than the 2 hours you get when school is delayed) and 2 hours later we all got up and ready for the day. As we were almost getting ready to leave I decided to check and see if I had any email or anything, so I went back to the school district webpage to log in. I was very surprised to see that the school status had been updated, and all schools had been canceled! So my lesson plans are done and the boy and I are stuck inside all day (It is one giant sheet of ice outside), but it is Tuesday...see how that works? Oh well, my sister Carisa updates her blog every Wednesday with her "Wednesdays with Weston," so maybe I will just start "Maintenance Tuesday" updates!

So we have been taking turns getting sick at our house, Beki is finally getting better, but that meant this last week has been my turn to feel miserable. While I was stuck inside drinking juice, Owen and Beki got to go play in the little bit of snow that we got last week. (I apologize for the blueness, I was inside taking pictures through the window!)

 Beki was giving the boy a lesson on using the Snow Shovel (This is come in handy later)

 Sure, you can ride your bike in the snow!

 They were going to build a Snowman, but there really wasn't enough snow, so they used buckets to make a little snow wall. (The flames you see are the reflection from the nice fire I had inside waiting for them.)

 Owen found his own bucket and doubled their production!

 And of course, the best part about building a snow wall is smashing it!

 Not sure if he was about to sneeze or what...

 A was a little late to catch the boy throwing a snowball at Beki, but check out the size of the one she is about to throw at the boy! That's right, we don't take it easy on the boy!

 "Take That Mommy!!!"

With Beki feeling better, she decided to clean the house a bit, which involved vacuuming. Owen is kind of like a small dog when it comes to the vacuum...he hides!

 Taking refuge in the closet...

 And he found something to play with, I'm sure it is something disgusting...

 It has been a while since the boy has walked around the house with the colander on his head.

 Space Captain Owen!!

And while we are on funny things that the boy does, check this out! As the title says, just wait until you see the move he does 15 seconds in!

Lastly, the boy got a Piggy Bank at Targets after Christmas sale, and so he has become very interested in coins, and especially putting them into his piggy bank.

 He found some pennies in my old childhood bank that was in his room for some reason.

They have been assimilated!!!

Christmas Lights, New Years and a Christmas Concert in January

If you recall - and I am sure you do - almost every Christmas Light display out here in the East charges you to look at them. Last post we discussed our trip to the Zoolights - but as unimpressed as we were, we decided that we would go to the one other free Christmas Light Display a couple of days after Christmas. Go Mormons! The Temple Lights were much more impressive than the zoo, and they had an entire room of nativities from around the world. (Did we take pictures of said Nativities? Of course not, I think we were overcome by the awesomeness.)

 This is typical of us going anywhere...by the time that we get there, the boy is asleep.

 It didn't take him long to perk up once we got his eyes open and he saw all of the lights.

 I always like pictures like this...

 Another typical picture of the boy, Beki has mad skills to hold on to a squirming octopus!

 Much better!

 This tree had musical instruments and bulbs filled with sheet music!

 Even better than a picture with the boy and me is a picture with the boy and his mommy.

 These are my favorite lights on the grounds...they look like flowers!

 While the Nativity was nice...

 The giant camel was awesome!

And we finally managed to get a good family photo!

For New Years we went to a friend's house and played "Munchkin" all night. (If you don't know what Munchkin is, go here: http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/game/) As a result, we kind of ignored the kids, who were playing on the other side of the room. We did get one picture however...

Unfortunately Owen had just taken the pot off of his head, but still proof that our New Year's Celebration included someone ending up with a pot on their head.

Lastly, back before Christmas we had a little snowstorm - which of course caused widespread panic and caused schools to close early and cancel all evening activities, including Owen's Christmas Concert at school. So we had it this week instead. 

 As you can see, the boy wanted to make sure that he was looking his best, even if it meant flinging water all over the place.

 We don't know what to make of this face, but we think it is funny!

 Owen's class up on-stage, apparently he and the boy next to him are peas in a pod, and we have no clue what they are up to here. (But it is the girl in the red dress with her hands on her hips that totally had the audience in stitches)

Take a bow little man!!

And yes, you can listen to their performances...(I am going to refrain from making any other comments.)