Attention span

Should I feel guilty that my son has an attention span of a 10 year old? Recently I was sorting beads from my girls bead box and taking out the beads with letters on them so I could put the alphabet in a gel bag for my kindergarten students at work. As I started the project, Will came over and layed down on the floor next to me and started sorting the beads with me. He sorted beads for 45 minutes. As he sorted the beads, I pulled out the letters of the alphabet from his beads to put in each bag. Also, His coloring pages are pieces of art! I got him a jumbo size coloring book from Target last week and he spends at least a half hour to 45 min on each page. He used to like to stick to one color, but he has expanded his color pallete now and uses several colors in his masterpieces! He also is pretty darn good at staying in the lines. I have set up a little coloring table for him in the kitchen because my kitchen table was constantly covered with markers, crayons and coloring pages. Now he has his own little area where he just lets his creative mind go.....

Friday evening

Jacklyn won her tennis tourney last weekend and is playing in another this weekend. We had her conferences last night and we couldn't be more proud of our 7th grader. She maintains a 4.2 gpa and is well liked by all her teachers. She works so hard and is so dedicated to her studies. 7th grade sure seems a lot harder than it was when I was in 7th grade. Heck, her math homework looks harder than the math homework I had in college. Speaking of college, I'm taking my first on line course to clear my credentials for another 5 years starting the end of Jan. I am anxious to see how the on line course is run and look forward to not having to leave the kids to drive in the snow to class at night. Jacklyn is playing tennis with her dad now while Will, Jaymie and I wait at home for them to get home with dinner after they are done practicing ! Jeffrey is bringing home Chinese:) Will loves all kinds of food as you can see from this past Wednesday photo. That was a full on chicken enchilada with all the fixins and he ate the whole thing. He is getting heavy and the kink in my neck is telling me I have to not hold him as much as I do. He is just so darn holdable though!!!

Wordless Wednesday

Another Zoo trip

What does one do when her husband leaves for the day to go to the Packer/Cowboy game and will be gone through Wed. night on business? Take her kids to the Milwaukee Zoo. I have always been impressed at how nice our zoo here in Milwaukee is. Will had been asking to see bats as he had his interest perked through a couple of Halloween books. So we decided to bring him to the zoo for some live bat viewing! Jaymie got to bring a friend and we all had a pretty good time. No crowds to work around either!

Will got to see MOTO MOTO actually move out of the water and walk up his exhibit!

Running from the gorillas to the giant fish tanks!

Will checking out a long necked turtle. He was quite interested in him!

The aquariums in this building are awesome for viewing fish and other creatures. Will learned quite a bit from this exhibit today.

Warming up in the USBANK sponsered entrance building. Do you like Will's beret? We couldn't find his winter hat, so he picked one of Jaymies.

He is not so sure about the gorilla. He would not let me put him down in the monkey house!

Jaymie and her dairy cow!

Jacklyn sportin her NC hat. She is already planning on going to UNC or Duke. I would prefer UNC as the tuition is just a bit less.

They all had a good time at the zoo!

Mama and her little man

Will took time out of his busy coloring schedule tonight to come and sit by me at the fire. Earlier in the week Jeffrey and Will collected kindling wood in our woods and now I have a huge pile on our patio to start up fires in the house in. We had our first fire of the cooler season in our fireplace last night. The wood Will collected made starting the fire very easy. What a hard little worker he is:)

Our budding artist

Will's pumpkin

Another drawing and coloring picture of Wills. I am pretty impressed at the amount of time Will can sit and color for. He loves markers and colored pencils and has been going through a lot of paper in our house. He has some great skills for a 3 year old.

Another drawing, I think he said this was a fish

ooooops, he ripped it. No worries though, he has about a million more drawings to create at my kitchen table. I think St. Nick is going to fill his stocking with glitter markers and water colors and all kinds of drawing supplies to encourage his artistic abilities:)

Will and Jaymie

I can't say enough about the relationship that Will and Jaymie have formed over the last 9 months. There is something about Jaymie that Will just can't get enough of. It is precious to watch them interact. Jaymie rose to the occasion of being a big sister and giving up her position of being the baby of the family. When these two are together they can be cuddling reading a book or building with legos or coloring together. Or they can be whipping around the house playing hide and seek like a whirlwind tornado. On Wednesdays evenings when Jaymie has gymnastics after school, Will misses her like crazy as he has gone over 8 hours without seeing her. Their reunion from being away from each other all day is quite a scene. Will is full of hugs and running toward Jaymie like you would see in a love story movie! I look forward to watching this brother / sister relationship grow over the years. They have 5 and a half years between them, and they get along great!, Well, they do have their moments. But for the most part their bonding and relationship is priceless. Sure make me want to adopt again:)

Will is a sponge

I am often asked how Will is doing with his language and his learning. He has been home almost 9 months now and you would never know that he spoke another language before he came home. He is very fluent in English and picks up new vocabulary every day. I am also proud to say that he knows all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds! He will spot letters in signs and will even see letters in things like an "x" in a chain link fence or will say m is w upsidedown. His love of books has been a great contributor to this. Through the books, his vocabulary grows and he sure remembers what you read to him as he makes connections from the books to his life. Whoever is lucky enough to be his kindergarten teacher is going to have it easy:)

Jeffrey starts coaching Jaymie's basketball team tomorrow and Jacklyn has a couple of tourney's coming up! Jeffrey continues to work on Jacklyn's tennis skills and she continues to excell with her dad as her coach. We are happy about that as it saves $$ on private lessons:) So, we have some busy weekends ahead of us. I'm hoping Will will be the waterboy for Jaymie's team, but I doubt it. He is going to want to be out there on the court with her. It might be a challenge for us to watch her games if he keeps trying to get out on the court:)

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzz

Two of Will's new favorite sayings that I believe he has picked up from our vocal almost 9 year old,Jaymie Claire, they are geeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzz and whats your problem? nice!

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez, nice teeth Will! Gotta love what you find in the Halloween bin!

Friday evening

Jeffrey, the kids and some of their friends and I went to our churches "trunk or treat" where cars /vans had decorated their trunks and passed out candy as the kids admired the creative creations in the trunks.... It was nice having the cars so close to each other so the kids didn't have to walk so far from house to house so it was a nice warm up for what is to come tonight. After they trunk or treated the parking lot, we went inside for carmel apples, hot dogs and nachos...., then we went to a costume party. It was a fun filled day, and Im happy to say all kiddos are still sleeping:) A horse themed trunk...

A candy store themed trunk......Will was big into the sugar sticks...........me? not so much.

A graveyard... Once Will got candy from a few trunks he knew what was going on and had a good ol time filling his bucket.

I caught him eating his nutricious nachos. Yes, that was his dinner....

I am surprised we have not had our "DALLAS COWBOYS" pumpkin smashed here in WI. Big time hoopla going on now with Brett being at Lambeau Field tomorrow. The whole state will shut down at 3 tomorrow to watch the Vikings and Packers.... a good time for me to go grocery shopping...no lines

Wills bat pumpkin and Jacklyn's spider. Jaymie did the star cowboys pumpkin. She drew the star all by herself and came up with the idea. So proud of her creativity:)

Jacklyn in the bat ears and her friend Natalie enjoying the night together:)

Ms. Jaymie Claire and her friend Lindsey. I'm guessing there is going to be green all over her pillow case this am, as I did not wash her face after we got home last night.

Leopard on the loose

For some reason Will did not want his photo taken in the leopard outfit at first. He kept running away from the camera and I have about 20 photos of him running away from me... Im sure he is sick of me taking his photo now that I think about it.....

No Pictures MOM!.... but isn't that tail and butt the cutest?

He throws his arms up and the air and runs across the street to the middle of our Cul de Sac and hides in the trees........

We moved on to the trampoline, filled it with leaves and then, he posed for the mama:) and some encourgagement from Jacklyn. Yes I know, the hair keeps growing..........but I just can't bring myself to cut it or even trim it.

He is happy now as he bounces up and down on the trampoline making the leaves bounce all over the place:) Tonight we go to the halloween gathering at Jaymie's school. He should be all smiles running around with all kinds of kids dressed up. I was thrilled to wake up this am to see that Little Bill had run a Halloween special and our TIVO taped it. He learns a lot from watching Little Bill and maybe watching this he has a little better concept of why everyone is dressing up in these outfits. We have a busy week planned as no school after today until next Monday. We have trunk or treat to go to at our church, trick or treating, a couple parties, and lots of family time!!! I'm sure I'll capture some of it in photos:) Jeffrey left for NY today, but will return late Thurs eve.

Wordless Wednesday

fun fall photos

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Mail

When Jeffrey sees this pic posted on my blog, he is going to think I really lost it with my blogging, but heck I'm posting it anyhow. I was thrilled to see this envelope in the mail delivering my little man his social security #. It is official, he has his very own #. Just to add a little humor to this post..........I was walking up the stairs a couple days ago and Will was putting on his pajamas in his bedroom. I overheard him singing a song he had heard while watching Madagascar 2 in the car when we went to go pick up Jaymie from school. It was the song the big hippo moto moto sings.... It goes something like "I like em Round, I like em chunky" referring to his female hippos I believe. Well, Will was up there singing.......I like em Brown, I like em chunky. He just kept repeating that line while he changed. So Will likes em Brown and chunky:) Obviously he thinks moto moto is saying brown instead of round.

Feline Diabetes

We took our very much loved cat, Bagheera, to the vet this week as I had a hunch he had diabetes. My hunch was correct, and now I am giving insulin shots to him 2 times a day. We have to regulate it and I'm hoping it will go down to one shot a day.......but we will know over time. I have to give the shots 12 hours apart, so I get up at 5 am to give him his first shot, and then another at 5pm. So, I now have syringes and insulin in my life. Giving the shots are not so bad, and he really doesn't even feel it, so that helps me not feel so bad when I stab it in his neck. We are hoping he starts feeling like his old self as all the kids mangle him and just love him all day long.

Wordless Wednesday

Pirate or Leopard

Here is the first outfit we dug out of the Halloween storage container..... He loves the earring

Here is the full body shot. There is also an adorable leapord outfit that he is to die for cute in. He won't let me take his picture in it though. I have a shot of him running up the stairs in it, but I want to get the full look, so I'll have to bribe him to let me take his pic in it. You can help me decide what he should be for his first Halloween:) He has no idea what we are doing dressing him up of course, but he seems to think it is fun.

Gotta love thos pirate eyes. Watch out Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Will Googins is taking over the ship!

Here's Jack and Will enjoying their veggie corn dog lunch. Poor Jacklyn is just getting over a fever that I think resulted from getting the flu mist. It doesn't make sense to me that the side affects are the symptoms of the flu itself, except for the throwing up!

"...if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." Isaiah 58:10

Go Blue!

Can you guess who these two were watching on Thurs eve? Will was pretty excited that the baseball players on the TV were wearing the same color shirts. We've got ourselves another Dodger fan in WI:)