Pilgrams & Indians

In my opinion one of the best units in kindergarten curriculum is Pilgrims and Indians. Mostly because my kids come home looking like this.

Noah sort of missed out because his teacher went with the Pilgrim hat. He didn't get a chance to make up an Indian name. For Ben and Zack, we were asked to come up with a name that combined one of their characteristics with a favorite animal. Hence Ben's Indian name was Laughing Penguin. Easy.  I think it took 2 minutes to come up with. I spent a week trying to get a name Zack liked but we didn't really follow the rules.  Every time I suggested a name, he would get mad and tell me that it was embarrassing. I am not sure what could be embarrassing about the name Strong Bear or Fast Cheetah. Goofy Monkey, well, he had a point. I enlisted his brothers to help me up the coolness factor. All their name suggestions were rejected too. We finally had to Google Indian names to see if we could find something that he would like. He was kind of tempted by Zackagawea but in the end he finally settled on Eye of the Tiger. I guess he wanted a name with an accompanying theme song.

It took awhile before he actually used the name and made his stuff. I was worried that he would be sensitive about it all. But he came home wearing all his Indian inspired fashions and was really excited. He learned all kinds of interesting Indian facts and was surprised his teacher knew the song for which he was named. He has a wealth of Indian knowledge like how they killed animals and used their skins for clothes. He thinks they are happy now that  we invented clothes so they don't have to do that anymore. He also told me that the Indians didn't always use animals for names. They also used body parts, like Squanto (toe).  

Did you see it?

Real Salt Lake-- 

MLS Cup Champions!!!

Hopefully this is a good omen for Utah professional sports. It's time for the Jazz to step it up.  Noah's team was able to participate in the "parade of kings" at a Real game a few months ago. He wears #23 like David Beckham, but maybe after this game he'll change to Rimando's number.

Do NOT change a thing

This conversation happened today:

Zack: "Mom, do you remember our old calendar?"
Me: "Yes."
Zack (sadly): "Me too. I loved that calendar. I miss it."
Me: "It was almost exactly the same as this calendar."
Zack: "I know. I just loved that calendar."

Zack doesn't like change. Not even change for the better. This summer we switched out the dining room light fixture. Even though the new one looks better (and is fancier) he misses the old one. It has brought him to tears a few times. I took the old one to the D.I. and told him that the next time we went, we could check and see if it was still there. We don't get to the D.I. very often but when we were watching Napoleon Dynamite the other night I pointed out that Napoleon was shopping at the D.I. Big mistake! That little fact reminded him of the light and how much he misses it and that we haven't been to the D.I to try to recover it. He nearly started crying. It's been 3 months!

Here are some recent changes that bother him:

the widening of Redwood road-- he does not believe in eminent domain

Albertson's becoming Fresh Market

his schedule since starting school-we had to write down a daily schedule to accommodate playing with all his favorite toys, friends and family members

the shelf I moved from his room to my bathroom-I probably should have asked first

my haircut

He pulls junk out of the garbage all the time. I am learning to be more sneaky when I get rid of things. Then I just hope he doesn't remember.

He can do it!!!

When the rest of the kids his age started riding bikes this spring, I thought for sure Zack would be ready to bust out the training wheel bike and start riding. He's the third boy and usually the most daring of my kids, but surprisingly he wanted nothing to do with bikes. Every time I mentioned it he said, "I can live my life without bikes." We couldn't even convince him to give it a try. Then this happened to Ben while he was riding Zack's bike.
That pretty much proved Zack's point and I didn't bother him about it again. But not being able to ride a bike started to bother Zack. At night he would get sad and tell me that he needed to learn how to ride his bike because he had been telling his friends that he knew how. His little lie and the whole not being able to ride a bike thing was pretty embarrassing for him, so we started practicing while some of his friends were at school so they wouldn't see him. He skipped the training wheels altogether and things were a little shaky at first but now he's doing pretty well. Soon he'll be able to go on a ride with the big boys and he's finally excited about it.

Halloween

Here we are in all our Halloween finery. Ben wanted to be a scary zombie, only he wouldn't wear the mask and we didn't paint his face so he's probably only mildly terrifying. Zack wanted to be a vampire. Then he upped it to a vampire/pirate/rock star. He ditched the vampire and went for pirate/rock star. We have a lot of pirate accessories but he wanted none of them. It seems like he would care more, but he didn't. Noah's original idea was to be a rich hobo. I know, that doesn't even make sense. Then he wanted to be a hobo who wants bacon. I know, what the heck? I really don't get 10 year old humor. I finally talked him into being a hippie. We went to the DI and he picked out this blouse (his word, not mine) and vest. Add the gigantic afro and he didn't give his beloved hobo idea another thought.
Matt & I were 1970s detectives. Matt's sweet 'stache cracks me up--although in real life it was pretty disturbing. I am wearing very high shoes so I look like some kind of amazon women which is one of many reasons I hate this picture of me. I was going to crop myself out of it, but I am swallowing my pride so that I can illustrate the tragedy of my hair. When I left our house I had a pretty darn good Farrah Fawcett feather going on. By the time we got to Ken's it was totally flat. I NEVER have that problem. NEVER. It bugged me so much that when we got home from the party I re-curled my hair and made Matt put on his costume again so we could get a picture. This is still not as good as it was and I have no evidence otherwise, but my hair does look a little bigger. This is not the first time my hair has let me down.
Anyway, the party was lots of fun and all night long I got to laugh at this:

We love tape

I am seriously considering buying Zack a whole bunch of tape for Christmas. He uses it for everything. For example, he was completely devastated that this Halloween sign was broken. I tried a few times to glue it, but it didn't work. The solution? Tape. He was really proud of his repair job. All he needed to do was cut a paper to fix the letter H and tape it on. Good as new.
He made a lovely paper rose, but how to affix it to the wall?
He picked out some festive skull straws at the dollar store and wasn't satisfied with simply decorating a cup to put them in. It's way more convenient when they are attached to the cupboard.
He isn't the only one in the family who loves tape. I've been having a little obsession myself. It started with a wall in Noah's room that was driving me crazy. I decided to paint a big diamond and Lynne made the vinyl graphic. She did an awesome job.
And since I had some leftover tape, I decided to stripe the boring wall in my bathroom:
Which led to my biggest tape and paint project. I had to enlist Matt for this one and it has pretty much cured my tape addiction because it was sort of a pain. I am happy with the end result although the color isn't exactly what I wanted (it really isn't as purple as it looks).

Ben Gets Baptized

Ben has been looking forward to this weekend for a long time.

He's growing up. This is one of the few times he was willing to pose for pictures. I just think he looks so handsome.

He was especially glad to have so many family members come support, play and eat yummy Costco chocolate cake with him.