Box Tops for Education

The boys schools, like so many others across the country, collect box tops for education to earn items for their school. I'm sure you've seen them on products you buy!
Beckett's school is collecting them for about a week in October---the winning classroom wins a pizza party =) We cut them off of boxes and toss them into a jar until it's collection time. Tonight I trimmed, Beckett glue-sticked and Paxton plastered them onto the sheets he brought home from school. Grandma made a couple of copies for us to use, but we're going to need a few more!

Our little Poet...

Well, maybe not quite yet. On Fridays Beckett brings home his poetry folder that has 2 new pieces in it each week. They work on them at school and he is pretty much able to read them to us by the weekend. He got Arielle on Saturday night (when she pointed out that they are really more like nursery rhymes than actual poems) and Daddy heard them tonight.
He's pretty proud of his reading ability---as are we =)

Me and Boston

Tired of Bean-town talk yet? OK, this'll be it. Just me, enjoying my girls weekend!!

Absence make the heart grow fonder..

Kurt was never far from my mind while I was in Boston =) Brigette and I had to chase down Boston's famous Rescue 1 to get directions to "the Big House" so we could buy tshirts!

FOOD!!

LOTS of eating got done in Boston! I had Thai for the first time, tried deep fried alligator (super good!), I was introduced to bubble tea (2 differnt varities, but both had the needed big balls of tapioca at the bottom!), went to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time and introduced a couple of the girls to the Melting Pot. We also got a pastry at Mike's, which is a "must do" in Boston!
We had IHOP for Anna (no IHOP's in Canada, which makes one wonder what part of international IS this house of pancakes?!) Dunkin Donuts are everywhere and push carts sell practically anything edible. I was hoping to try falafel while I was out there, but it just didn't happen =(

BOSTON!!!

So no blogging for the last few days---had you noticed?! I had a great reason though =) I was fortunate enough to be able to slip away for 5 days to go to Boston with my baby momma friends (as I call the women I met on the internet who all had babies in October of 2005.)
We ate yummy food--I tried fried alligator, bubble tea, cheesecake factory and thai food. I was hoping for falafel, but that didn't happen. We did LOTS of walking and taking in just a few of the sights that Boston and Cambridge has to offer. I would go back again in a heartbeat!!!
This post just has a few of the tourist-y things that we did, I'm sure I can get several posts out of all the photos that I took!!!

Not as a big a helper as he thinks he is.....

Just more of Beckett during Parker's Sr. picture photo shoot....

Dairy Days 2011

Time to have my "Mommy of the Year" medal inscribed and sent my way. The annual Dairy Days celebration rolled into town this weekend. Or, as the boys so excitedly shared with me, "the carnival is here"!!! Fairs/carnivals SKEEVE. me. out. *shudder* No need to creep you out with it here!
BUT, the boys love the whole "ride til you puke" thing. And I mean that quite literally. We bought the $20 per kid bracelet that means you can ride anything non-stop for 4 straight hours. And we came darn close. At the end they chose to ride this thing that pretty much just spun around and then tipped as it spun. We didn't think it looked like they were enjoying it nearly as much as some of the other rides, but when they got off they said they wanted to do it again. So we let them, but voted among our parental selves that trip #2 was it for that ride and we were moving on when it stopped.
Well, as they staggered off, Beckett towards Kurt and Paxton towards me, I noticed evidence of the reappearence of his last oral intake (that's RN talk for breakfast), and he confirmed my suspicions. We fell 20 minutes short of the 4 hour window with both boys agreeing that they were ready to call it a day =)

He works hard for the money....

I don't sound a THING like Donna Summer, so don't spend anymore time imagining me belting out that little ditty in the title.
No no--Parker had his Senior pictures taken today after school. (Flashback to Arielle's turn: she had at least 3 sittings and what seemed like 27 outfits---which had to be accomplished the nano-second she stopped being a Junior in HS. Parker: oh hey, we should get your senior pictures done one of these days....) We are fortunate beyond belief that FIL is a professional PHOTOGRAPHER, not even close to a FAUX-TOGRAPHER--big difference peeps! Even MORE fortunate is that he keeps agreeing to use his skills to make this motley crew look good for things like yearbooks and wedding albums.
And it's not easy! Between Parker making faces NOT suitable for publication in a book that half of his classmates will not be able to locate by 2014, Beckett tearing around insisting that he is NOT in the shot and the Mamarazzi, it's darn amazing that Grandpa doesn't self-medicate as soon as we clear the driveway!!
Anyhow, these are a few pictures of Grandpa working his magic for those he loves (and thank you Kurt for that!)