Faces

From time to time, I like to take close-up pictures of my children.  In the past, this has been most successful with Joseph. 

 This time, though, Joshua was the most accommodating.

 Apparently, this is his go-to face.  I have several pictures of some slight variation of it:

 Jeremiah was not so much into the spirit of it.



Tony's Birthday

Tony requested a chocolate chip cookie cake for his birthday.  Jeremiah helped make the cookie and Joseph and Joshua helped decorate it.  Jeremiah had somehow become convinced that the dough would turn chocolate when we added the chocolate chips.  He was quite disappointed when it didn't.

We had a quick birthday dinner with Daddy before he and the big boys headed off to Joshua's baseball practice.  We had to do the cake pose before he even had a chance to eat his supper so that Joshua could have some before practice.

Coaching eleven 6 and 7 year olds doesn't exactly make for a relaxing birthday, but Tony made up for it the next day.  He ran a 5k (not what I'd call relaxing, but he enjoyed it) Saturday morning, was able to do some sporting goods shopping by himself, and then we took him out to dinner.  Then on Sunday our church community group had a surprise dinner for him, so he ended up with a nice birthday weekend.

James Madison

The third grade at Joseph's school had American First Family Hall of Fame today.  It was the culmination of many weeks of work.  Each student had selected a president or first lady to research.  In class, they wrote 5-paragraph reports about them.  Then, at home, they had to create a timeline and first-person speech about their president/first lady.  Today they participated in a living museum by dressing the part and presenting their speech each time a visitor to the museum pressed their "button" (a sticker on their hand).

Here is Joseph as James Madison before he left the house this morning:

And here he is in the school media center ready for his speech:

In his hands are the notecards for his speech and a replica of the Constitution (from a trip my family took to DC when I was a kid).  James Madison is referred to as the Father of the Constitution because he was the principal author.

I was quite pleased with how his costume turned out.  We paid $2.50 for the jacket (ladies' size small) at Goodwill.  I paid $0.67 for a white fabric remnant at Hobby Lobby that became the scarf.  The white shirt and black pants are regular Joseph wardrobe (though the pants were bought specfically for this, they are just black jeans that he can wear into the future).  The white hair was hair spray paint from the Halloween store.  Unfortunately, it would NOT spray this morning, so I had to dribble it onto his hair and then spread it around with my hand.  It was messy and made his hair crunchy, but it worked.

The timeline instructions said, "Be creative in designing your timeline....  Please avoid using paper or poster board alone."  That stumped us for a while.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but his timeline is a scale drawing of the White House after the British burned it in 1814.  The windows are dated flaps that lift to reveal the information for each date.

Joseph did a great job delivering his speech.  I'm sure he has it completely memorized by now, he had to deliver it so many times.

Spelling Bee

Last week Joseph won his class spelling bee, which earned him the right to compete in the school spelling bee this Monday.

(Let's all pause a moment and reflect how nice it would have been if his mother had EVEN ONCE thought to take her camera to said spelling bee.)

So, on Monday, Joseph competed against the other 3rd-5th graders who had won their class bees.  He successfully spelled "holiday," "cemetery," "mosquito," "pasteurized," and maybe some others--I don't fully remember.  The last three kids standing were two fifth graders and him.  It was funny to watch him count remaining people at the end of each round--he knew there were three trophies and gave a celebratory fist pump when it got down to three contestants. 

(It was also funny to watch him spell along in his head as the other contestants spelled.  He would nod his head with each letter until they made a mistake--then you could tell he knew they had messed up.)

One of the two fifth graders was eliminated, leaving Joseph and the other 5th grader in the final round.  And then it happened.  Joseph's word was "punitive."  The problem is, he had never seen that word before--once he sees a word he remembers it for life.  So, he spelled it wrong, and the 5th grader spelled it correctly.

Here is Joseph with his 2nd place trophy:

His parents couldn't be more proud!

Random Pictures On My Camera

It's been a discombobulating few weeks.  Consequently, when I downloaded pictures today I found quite an interesting assortment of images.

This was the first daffodil to bloom, 2 1/2 weeks ago.  It is old news by now, since all of the other daffodils sooned joined it and have been blooming for a couple weeks.

Early blossoms on the peach tree.  This tree has subsequently bloomed more fully and by now the blooms are gone.  There was a big windy rain storm that sped that process along.

Jeremiah posing by the peach tree:

Jeremiah's black eye.  He got in when he fell up the stairs by the lions at the zoo.  It is completely healed now.

Jeremiah asked me to take this picture of him with his bottom wedged in behind the couch cushion.  I know not why--why he was wedged there, nor why he wanted the feat photographed.

The cookies and strawberries my parents sent me for my birthday:

The flowers my sweet AM2PM (preschooler moms Bible study) group sent when my dad passed away:

I'm looking forward to life returning to more of a normal routine in which I download photographs while they are still relevant--and possibly even take time to blog about them!