Climbing the Rope

On March 7th, I took the kids to the open gym at Success Gymnastics.  They had a great time showing me all the things that they have learned in gymnastics.  But then they found the rope and Avalon climbed it over and over again until she reached the top.  It was amazing to watch her perseverance to accomplish this task!  Yes, I was very nervous when she was up high on that rope as I knew that she was getting more and more tired as she climbed the rope over and over again.  After about 10 tries, she made it to the top!  Great job Avalon!




Here is one of the first few times she climbed the rope so you can see how great her progress was in such a short amount of time!



Archer also took his turn climbing the rope as well.  Here is the first time he climbed the rope!  I don't think he was doing much of the work.




But after about 5 tries, he started to get the hang of it!

Lunch date with Avalon

I went to school on Monday and ate lunch with Avalon.  What a treat!  I feel so lucky to be available to meet my daughter at school and join her for lunch.  It was so fun to see her at school and see what her lunch hour is like.  She was so excited to have me there!

After lunch, I joined her for a field trip to Stephens Auditorium to see the play "Fly Guy and other stories."  It was really fun to share the experience with her!  Her favorite story from the play was "Kittens First Full Moon."  What a fun day!  I couldn't get a great picture inside the auditorium, but we got a great one in the hall right after the show.

Archie's Games!

Archie loves board games!  We play them all the time and we have lots of kid games!  His favorite game right now is Robot Turtles.  It's a fun game where he learns a little bit about writing computer programs in a simplified way.  Archie's favorite thing to do right now is to make up his own games.  He makes up his own versions of games we play, like Robot Turtles, Chicken Cha Cha Cha, and Rat a Tat Cat.  And then he combines the games we have and makes up new games.  I'm not talking about changing the rules so that he wins, but rather he thinks through everything and comes up with a whole different game using the same pieces.   We are talking a game developer in the making!

A majority of the time, the games don't really work out as the purpose and/or rules are not always clear or don't make sense or he is changing them as we go in order to make his vision work out.  However, sometimes he does come up with a really fun new version of a game!  Here he is with a new version of Robot Turtles that involves the wizard, princess, and dice from another game.

Here's another fun puzzle game that Archie really likes.  He put the puzzle together and then order them 1 to 10.  He likes to make up games with this one too!

Some cool ideas that has had for Robot Turtles is his addition of sequences for each of the 4 turtles, warp tunnels that send you around the board, and dice that signify how many times a sequence will run.  He also came up with a fun version of Chicken Cha Cha Cha where the chickens were racing down two paths and one where the eggs made an 8 and every time your chicken comes to a split in the path, you can choose which way to go as long as you pick the correct match.

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess

Avalon made a cool cat in the hat hat for Dr. Suess's birthday!  And they did lots of other fun things to celebrate in school too!  Avalon got to bring her favorite Dr. Suess book to school:  The Lorax.  This was one of the first books that daddy ever read to Avalon when she was only a few weeks old and it is still one of her favorites!

In case you didn't notice in my last post, Avalon has new glasses too!

A trip to Ninjago City!

Last night, Avalon picked to read a Ninjago book before bed.  As soon as we started reading, Archie came over and listened.  And it's been all Ninjago since then!  This morning after cleaning up, they watched 2 Ninjago shows on TV.  And now they are dressed up as ninja's on a trip to Ninjago City.  Avalon is Cole, the black ninja, and Archer is Zane the white ninja.  Even though, as Avalon explained, he looks more like the green ninja, he can't be the green ninja because they are still kids when Cole and Zane were kids, the green ninja had not yet been born.  Here they are with their luggage getting ready to go....

Happy Birthday Daddy

We celebrated Daddy's 38th birthday these last two weekends with family, presents, and cupcakes!  And we are heading to dinner and a play with friends this week.  In celebrating Daddy's birthday this year, I have finally finished the scrapbook pages I started one year ago for Daddy's 37th birthday!  Hopefully the pics from this year will be posted a little sooner this time!  :)