Ezra’s All About Me Box

Ezra had vacation for the whole week of Thanksgiving and his teachers gave us an assignment: the Fall Family Project. The project is to create an All About Me Box, where the students decorate a shoe box any way they like and put some things in it that are special to them. In lieu of putting the actual items in the box, they can put pictures or drawings. Bruce, the creative mastermind in our family, was tasked with helping Ezra with his box. Ezra got to cut, paste and draw; Bruce got to use his hot glue gun. Everyone was happy.

Here are a couple of pictures of the outside of the box. He drew a picture of Lamby, a green light, and an experiment (which Bruce inadvertently glued on upside down). There’s also an actual light with a switch that turns it on and some springs from an old clock on the side. The back side is a hodgepodge of Angry Birds and pictures from magazines that Ezra thought were funny (a lettuce with legs, a superhero, and things of that nature).

Front

Back

The inside was filled with drawings of his favorite things: an Angry Bird and slingshot, Lamby, a shovel for digging, Iron Man (with his alter ego Tony Stark on the back side), and a calculator (he loves to sit and add numbers on my calculator). The ocean scene is Belize. Note the hanging thing and the wood inside the box.

Contents

Here’s a close-up of the drawings.

All his drawings

Also inside was a drawing of our family.

Us

I couldn’t love this box any more. And it was really fun to see the boxes the other kids brought to school this morning. We’ll be able to see all of them in a few weeks at Aveson’s Celebration of Learning, where all the kids show off their work since the beginning of the year. Can’t wait!

Angry Birds!

My boys (all three of them) are completely obsessed with playing the game Angry Birds on the iPad thanks to Aunt Vanessa’s introduction a month or so ago. Who can blame them? The animation is pretty cute.

The gist of the game is that the pigs have stolen the birds’ eggs and the player has to slingshot the birds into whatever structure the pigs have built. Yesterday, Bruce got the idea to build our own game and fun ensued.

Here’s the target.

The target

Here’s how the slingshot worked.

Loose Teeth!

Ezra and I discovered today that he has not one but two loose teeth! The bottom front two are wiggling around, although I’m not sure how long they’ve been loose because he didn’t notice them until I moved them myself this afternoon. I think he’s a little nervous about it, but he said he was OK.

I decided I better try to get some pictures of all of his perfect baby teeth. I tried to get him to just smile really big but here’s how that turned out.

Trying to get a picture of the loose teeth

Then I tried for the close-up, which is pretty good.

Close up of Ezra's soon to be not so full mouth of teeth

And this is my favorite.

Teeth

Of course, Finn wanted to get in the picture-taking action too.

Finn wanted to get in the action

Always the tongue. Oy.

Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving celebration at our house yesterday with Jamma, Grandpa Bill, Grandma Therese, Uncle Bob, Aunt Vanessa and Thomas. Bruce — always looking to switch things up in this traditional meal — spatchcocked the turkey and made a cranberry molasses glaze. It was really good. Here’s the money shot.

Nice work on the turkey, Bruce!

Uncle Bob, of course, made a little bread.

Uncle Bob made a little bread

The boys had some outside play time while the meal was cooking. Finn and Thomas played on the digger, while Ezra did his own thing.

They really like this digger

Ezra in his Grinch shirt

Finn, who had gotten the one-day random fever Ezra had the day before, started to fade just before dinner and ended up sleeping through the whole meal. Poor little guy.

Feverish Finn slept through dinner

The best moment of dinner came early. While Grandpa Bill was saying grace, Thomas (who was holding hands with Bruce and Vanessa) couldn’t wait any longer and put his face right into his dinner. He managed to stay pretty clean and just got a few bites of something delicious, while the rest of us laughed through the prayer. Sadly, no one had a camera ready but here are a couple of pictures from later at the table.

Thomas gets started on dinner

Ezra mugs for the camera

And then there was pie.

Pie time!

Schoolwork

Finn and Ezra have been very busy in school this year. Finn has only had a few things make their way home from Cottage, but then again, he’s missed several weeks of school due to the never-ending colds. His masterpiece, which is what Teacher Art called it, was this magic wand he made a few weeks ago. The picture doesn’t do it justice — it really is spectacular and probably took him quite a while to make.

Finn's magic wand from Cottage

Ezra, on the other hand, comes home on “take home” Fridays with arms full of papers, drawings, paintings, etc. from the week. Here are some of my favorites from the past few weeks.

Ezra and Finn Brothers

He’s not so concerned with the order or placement of letters — he usually writes them in the right order, but all over the paper. Here he’s got Ezra and Finn and Brothers (which is creatively spelled).

He also made some Indian corn and was very excited about the pattern of the corn.

Ezra's Indian corn

And a Happy Thanksgiving note complete with a handprint turkey.

Ezra's Handprint Turkey

Thomas Turns 2!

We had Thomas, Vanessa and Reba over last Sunday afternoon and had a little mini-celebration for Thomas’s birthday. I’d gotten cupcakes from Polkatots and Vanessa brought cupcakes she made, so we had a cupcake tasting extravaganza. The kids were pretty happy. Thomas was initially unsure of the candle and cupcake (or maybe it was our singing). I think I have a very similar picture of Finn on his second birthday.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Thomas!

He warmed up to the idea and had some of the cupcake, but really he just wanted to play with the truck.

It's all about the truck

Ezra and Finn enjoyed the cupcakes, too, but as usual pretty much just ate the frosting.

Ezra enjoys some frosting

Finn likes frosting

Later in the week we had another afternoon play date. The boys took the sidewalk on bikes and a scooter and did a lot of running around on the lawn. There was some chase and a pretty cute Moision dog pile.

Three Moision Pile-up

School Pictures

Ezra came home yesterday with his first school ID card and an order form for his school pictures. It all seems very official. And super cute.

Ezra's Kindergarten ID card

Ezra's K Pics

Out Sick

I’ve been too sick to have done anything blog-worthy lately — we canceled every single plan we had over the weekend, including a rare date night, a birthday party, and a school park date. With Bruce sick, too, we were a barrel of monkeys around here the last few days. But I feel like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel (although I’ll probably be coughing for weeks). This morning, not only did I take a shower and put on real clothes (no more sweatpants!) but I actually washed and dried my hair. It was no small miracle.

Finn and I hit Trader Joe’s after we dropped Ezra off at Aveson. He found Captain Jack and got a lollypop; I replenished our empty refrigerator.

After that we went to the mall (eek!) to buy him some new super running shoes. He’s got the widest feet known to man, so we went to the Stride Rite store. Success! We found a pair of 10.5W Sauconys that had orange on the bottom, so he was thrilled. And I no longer have to struggle to get him into his shoes. We got a snack and had a ride on the carousel, too. The picture is blurry, but he had a great time.

Finn on the carousel