Dinner

We took Ezra and Finn to Japon Bistro for dinner last night and ended up being blown away by the adventurous spirit of both boys. They’ve had and liked Japanese food before and they are generally pretty good eaters, but last night’s meal went beyond our expectations. It started with Miso soup and salad — nothing terribly unusual. Finn ate most of Bruce’s salad, and Ezra loved the soup.

Finn eats salad with chopsticks

Next up: deep-fried soft shell crab appetizer. They loved it. In fact, they were still talking about it today and asked if we could have it for dinner.

Finn eats soft shell crab

California roll.

Ezra eats California roll

Shrimp tempura.

Finn eats shrimp tempura

Tamago.

Ezra eats tamago

Something unidentifiable from my plate that looked so unappetizing to me that I wouldn’t even try it. Ezra ate the whole thing.

Ezra eats something unidentifiable

In fact, the only thing they didn’t eat was the white rice. I realized at some point in the meal that they hadn’t eaten anything since lunch except for a pear and an apple. Perhaps starving the children is a good way to get them to try new foods.

Christmas Tree

Much to Finn’s excitement, we got our Christmas tree this weekend. He had asked me every day last week when we were getting our “kissmas tree” so he’s finally satisfied. The boys went crazy looking at all our ornaments and loved putting them on the tree — generally in clumps along the bottom half. We couldn’t agree on what to use as a topper until Ezra made one from Lego. It’s a star.

Christmas Tree 2010

Ezra's Lego star

Bubbles!

There is something so extremely satisfying about popping bubble wrap, especially when it’s the kind with the giant bubbles. I like to do it with my hands. The boys have a different approach.

Santa 2010

I took the boys to see Santa on Thursday night, not really sure of how it was going to go. Ezra seemed excited but Finn was apprehensive. He wanted to go but wasn’t so sure he wanted to sit with Santa. Luckily, the Santa at One Colorado in Old Town Pasadena and his photographer are very patient. Finn initially balked at the idea, and stayed a good safe distance away from the sled.

Finn didn't want to sit with Santa at first

So, the first pictures were just Ezra and Santa.

Santa

But after a few minutes, Finn decided Santa was an OK guy and he cautiously climbed up on the sled. We didn’t get a lot of smiles from either boy, but afterwards they assured me they had a great time taking pictures with Santa.

Santa

Santa

Ezra was mostly concerned with making sure his Belize t-shirt showed in the pictures. And, after it was over both boys told me they forgot to ask Santa for anything for Christmas, but Ezra had told Santa he went to Belize. That boy is obsessed; I think I see a second trip in our future. Hint, hint, Jamma.

Oh, Finn

Finn’s gotten into the habit lately of sticking out his tongue or making some other face for most pictures. So, in an effort to capture an image of his regular face, I just called his name the other day at Amy’s Playground and snapped the picture when he turned around.

Happy Finn

Cute, huh?

Then he said, “Mommy, why did you call my name?” I told him I just wanted to take his picture, and he made this face.

Mad Finn

Grrrrr.

Gingerbread House!

The Christmas season has officially started for us with the annual construction of the Trader Joe’s gingerbread house. Bruce and the boys built it yesterday morning while I was at a meeting for Cottage.

Gingerbread house

Gingerbread house

Here the boys are admiring their work. (Finn was also having a conversation with the little people.)

The boys admire their handiwork

The systematic disassembly and consumption will probably begin today.

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

Trick or Treat!

After a long day of “Mommy, is it trick or treating time yet?” we finally went out just as it was starting to get dark. I stopped them at the edge of the driveway for a quick picture (knowing the Iron Man mask wouldn’t last long).

Everyone say Superhero!

Ezra decided he only wanted to go to houses that had decorations, so we started here. (They also had a very cool row of jack-o-lanterns.)

Skeleton!

Ezra was very excited to turn on the light-up triangle on his costume since he’d been saving it for Halloween only.

Ezra shows off his triangle light

We probably went to five or six houses, and then Finn got tired.

Trick or treat

So we headed home.

On the way home

I think they had just as much fun handing out candy at home.

Giving out candy

And raising and lowering the pumpkin spider to scare people. (Version 2 of the pumpkin spider has eyes that glow orange from Jerri’s cool flashlights!)

Pumpkin spider v. 2