Thank You Presidents~

3 whole days of family time! Sunday we headed out to the park after church to hang out with the U's and Nana. The boys were pretty squirelly, but we had a blast. Ethan told me that his big goal for the weekend was to do an art project and to paint. And so we did. I grabbed a big piece of cardboard, paints, and q-tips...

We realized once we started painting that it looked like pieces of a house, so Ethan offered to make the floor. (the piece on the left). I loved his technique of painting and then smearing it around with a paper towel. It looked really cool.

At the end we taped it all together. Note all the names Ethan painted on the house - he did "mom" without any prompting first and then decided he wanted to figure out all the rest.

We had a great time catching up and then it was off to the video game store to pick up Wii Zumba for me. (Which is really cool). Ethan really wanted a game, but knew I wasn't wanting to get him one, so here's his persuasion techniques...

"We should look and see if they have the right stuff for a learning game. I really want a learning game."

He knows the way to my heart. Then we told him where we'd be going on Monday:

"Ethan, tomorrow we're going somewhere very cold."

"Ooh, we're going to Winter! We'll need a warm hat and a winter coat. It'll be freezing and there'll be penguins there!"

No penguins, but our friends were there! It took us forever to get there. I'd bought the boys winter coats on clearance the night before and we promptly left them on the couch. I figured we'd be able to find some on clearance somewhere else - it was pretty much a disaster looking. We took wrong exits, ended up in the boonies, and tried to laugh at it all. We finally got there and it was great!

Lucas was a little freaked out at first, but was won over at first run with Daddy!

Ethan and Nadia loved going together - crazy! My heart was in my stomache, but they did great!

Ethan also got to go by himself. He went pretty slow, since he was so light, but had fun doing it.

Both boys loved being towed up the hill. So cute.

By the end, Lucas was DONE. He was just in tears and shaking. I felt bad for him, but what he needed most was sleep. Once he got it, the world was all right again.

Such a fun trip!!! Ethan keeps talking about how cool it was to go "sledding!" We got home and the boys were in such a great mood that we got help cleaning the house! Ethan tagged along with me in each room and helped.

We don't really work on much school-type skills at home. There's just not a lot of time during the week. We read books and play games every now and then, but he works on all that stuff at school, so I worry more about getting exercise and just snuggling. So every now and then Ethan'll blow our minds with some new skill. In the car, Brian was asking him simple addition and subtraction problems (up to 10) and he could do it! Then Brian got creative and asked him questions like "If you have 4 and want to make it 7, how many more do you need?" He could do it (about 75% of the time.) He wasn't even using his fingers. Trippy! He told me (after prompting from Brian) that he was doing "albraga". Upa will be proud.

And now we're at meltdown stage. I better go help with bedtime. EERgh... All fun days end in a mess...