Monday, April 20, 2015

As easy as riding a bike

This past weekend, Sara Beth was at a friends house, and decided that she wanted to try riding the bike that did not have any training wheels on it. To everyone's surprise, she got on and began riding without any help from an adult. That afternoon, she got home and asked me to take the training wheels off of her bike. I proceeded to do that and she rode her bike up and down the side walk for about an hour. When one of the neighbor 1st graders came out, Sara Beth thoughtfully got off her bike and tried to help her friend learn how to balance on her own too.

On Wednesday of this past week, I took the day off from work and volunteered at Sara Beth's school as the "Watch Dog". We had a great time. I got to sit next to Sara Beth in art class and make my own art project; we ate lunch together. I also helped out in some of the other class rooms and helped to clean up the cafeteria after all the grades were finished eating their lunches.
 After school that day, I decided to celebrate my day off by getting some shaved ice. Sara Beth chose "Princess Flavor" which was pink with pink sprinkles in it.
 Hudson asked for the "Blue one". I assumed that meant blue raspberry, and that is what he got. It turned out to be the correct flavor of blue and he proceeded to eat it with only minimal amounts getting all over everything.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

The trickey tooth fairy

Sara Beth has lost her sixth tooth. Along with her tooth, she also decide to leave a note for the tooth fairy. There was a response on her bedside table the next morning. Sara Beth wrote back again that evening. The correspondences went back and forth for about a week until about a week later when  Sara Beth read that another letter would come when her next tooth fell out. 
Hudson loves the tractor that he got for Christmas. He will regularly want to take it around the block. One day, I got the idea to hook the wagon up to it. I had to build a trailer hitch, but it did allow Hudson to pull his sister around. Unfortunately, by the time he was done driving, stress fractures had formed at the point that the trailer hooked up to the tractor, so I decided to put the hitch away until I could come up with a more robust solution.
 One day, over spring break, Heather took the kids to the ice skating rink up in Allen. They both had a fantastic time and Hudson was able to nearly skate on his own.
 I have no idea what it going on here. I tend to discourage Hudson from riding in the street, and I figured that Heather is typically more safety conscious than me, so I have no clue what this picture of Hudson tootling around the street is about.
 Often on a Saturday, my Dad and I will take the kids off to Home Depot to do a wooden craft. This Saturday, once the kids came back home, they wanted to play with their scooters on the back patio. Below is a picture of Sara Beth taking a break and drinking her special weekend Caffeine Free Dr Pepper after a long morning of building and scootering.
 For my mom's birthday, Heather painted a large flower pot. While we were at Home Depot buying one pot, we got two smaller ones for the kids to paint. Sara Beth painted hers with pink and purple. Hudson used pretty much any color he could get his hands on and a large amount of sprinkles too.
 After painting the flower pots, we put them on the front porch with a single flower in each. The next day, while the kids were checking on their pots, Sara Beth found a toad in the front yard. She decided to name it Max and brought out a piece of Tupperware filled with water for her new froggy friend. I suggested that she also put something in the bowel for the toad to sit on in case it gets tired of swimming.
 Hudson definitely loves to help. Now that spring has sprung, I have been clipping back the bushes in the front yard. Hudson wanted to see the clippings that I had thrown in the trash can and so he simply climbed up the side and looked in. I'm fairly confident he would not have been able to to that last year. Next year, I'm planning on giving him the hedge clippers and he can do all the yard work while I sit back and relax.
 While it has been rather rainy this spring, the temperatures have been wonderfully pleasant. Heather let Hudson paint on the front porch one morning. Hudson decided that his favorite stuffed animal, Nice, was going to paint this picture, so he placed the paint brush in Nice's hand and then "helped" his friend complete the picture.