Ben's 4th Birthday

We had a lot of fun celebrating 4 and Ben!!!!  His actual birthday was on a Thursday.  I felt a little weird not having Jim with us during the day to celebrate, but we still had a great time.  We did start the morning off with his #4 pancake, and singing happy birthday to him!  And then I let him pick what he wanted to do for his special day - and he picked the trampoline park, Flight!  For the first 15 minutes, we practically had the place to ourselves, I think there was 1 other family there!  But we had lots of fun running around & jumping.  After flight we went to Wegmans to pick up his birthday cupcakes, and I told him he could pick whatever he wanted for lunch - his pick was cereal!  So I let him pick out his own box, and he went with cinnamon toast crunch. We had a lot of fun celebrating 4 together! 

I let him skip his nap for his birthday, we went and got Jim, played outside for a bit and then when Mark got home we made our way inside for dinner (his pick was macaroni & cheese, hot dogs, and cupcakes!), presents, cupcakes, and trying out his new Monster Jam wii game!  All in all it was a great day!

Grandma, Papa, and Aunt Ali flew in Thursday evening, and the boys were very excited to great them Friday morning!  We had a fun day, walking Jim to school, running on the track, baking Ben's monster truck birthday cake, and just playing together! 

Friday night we did drinks with the neighbors.  Uncle Chris came up too to celebrate!  Ended up doing drinks in the backyard around the campfire!  I think a fun night was had by all!  We did sing to him and enjoyed cake together!  Love how excited he was about his monster truck cake! 

Saturday morning we took Papa to the donut store!  (We all went, but it's their special treat to do with Joe Bag of donuts!)  We went to Sugar Shack and then made our way into Old Town.  Just walking around for a bit. 

I think it's safe to say that Ben had a great birthday weekend and lots of fun celebrating FOUR with family & friends! 

Ben's 20 Questions at age FOUR

1.  What is your favorite color?  Blue
2.  What is your favorite toy?  My new flatbed race car truck
3.  What is your favorite fruit?  Pineapple
4.  What is your favorite thing to watch on TV?  Mighty Machines and Lighting McQueen and Lego City
5.  What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?   Peanut Butter & Jelly
6.  What is your favorite outfit?  My Paw Patrol Shirts
7.  What is your favorite game?  The Paw Patrol Game
8.  What is your favorite snack?  Fruit snacks
9.  What is your favorite animal?  Catty
10. What is your favorite song?  The one we did last night, they said frog  (not really sure what one he's referring to!)
11. What is your favorite book?  2 Old Fashion Cars ones and the snow plows
12. Who is your best friend?  Oisin
13. What is your favorite cereal?  Marshmallows
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside?  Run Around
15. What is your favorite drink?  Milk
16. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas?
17. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Marshmallows
18. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Catty
19. What do you want to eat for dinner on your birthday? Macaroni & Cheese, hotdog and cupcake
20. What do you want to be when you grow up?  A flat bed truck driver

12 Questions

This set of 12 questions was floating around on Facebook awhile ago, and I went ahead and asked Jim & Ben them.  You can tell the Ben started to get silly & decided to copy Jim as the questions got towards the end.  I asked these questions without any prompting - a great way to see what they think!

Jim - 5 years old

Ben - 3 years old

1. What is something I always say to you?
• B - We can't do anything
• J - Don't do that
2. What makes me happy?
• B - When we play by ourselves and are quiet.
• J - That we do good things
3. What makes me sad?
• B - Hitting & kicking & when we don't eat our food
• J - No punching, no wreking, no peeing your in your pants.
4. How do I make you laugh?
• B - Tickle Me
• J - I say something silly & I tickle
5. What was I like as a little girl?
• B - I played with Uncle Robbie's GI Joes
• J - I had lots of barbies.
6. How old am I?
• B - 10
• J - 25
7. How tall am I?
• B - 6 Feet
• J - 50 Feet
8. What is my favorite thing to do?
• B - Cleaning up
• J - Cook
9. What do I do when you're not around?
• B - You die (insert silliness from Ben here!)
• J - I take Ben to school.
10. What am I really good at?
• B - Cooking
• J - Cooking, taking good care of us.
11. What is something I am not good at?
• B - Cleaning up my crap
• J - I don't know
12. What do I do for a job?
• B - No answer
• J - I drive a work truck

A Look Back to 2015

I've done this the past couple of years - 2014 (there are links there 2013 &2012).  It is fun to see a summary of the entire year in one post.  And seeing how I am not the best on updating this it's a good overall picture to our year. 

January - Another New Year that we rang in with the neighbors - we went to Southside for dinner, and then came back  hung out here and across the street.

We officially went diaper free in our house! 

February - We took a trip to Pittsburgh to meet Brody & go to his baptism!

Spent lots of time outside - whether it's playing in the backyard, going over to the high school

March - Ben turned THREE!!!!  Grandma & Papa were here to celebrate with us & Ben's Paw Patrol Chase themed birthday!  Went into the city to the Air & Space Museum and lunch at the food trucks with them. 

April - Celebrated Easter - with an Easter egg hunt in Old Town with friends...

A visit from Aunt Ali (who drove with us up to NY!!!)

An Easter Egg Hunt & Brunch with neighbors!

 Then we made our way up to Buffalo - where we celebrated Jim's 5th Birthday!!!!

 Ashley & Kevin got married!!!!

 

May - Took a weekend getaway to Lake Anna with neighbors!  In the beginning of the month.

And a trip to Ocean City with the parents at the end of the month. 

We made a trip up to Albany for Papa's funeral, and getting a chance to visit with family. 

 Spring soccer season came to an end

...Just in time for the pool to open

 Of course we enjoyed lots of playdates with friends, strawberry picking...

June - The big event from June was Jim's fractured collarbone! 

 With my mom's group we did our own version of a summer camp - which was a lot of fun!  Got to go on a tour of the Firehouse, did a gardening themed day, and an under the sea day.  Our pool time was a limited with Jim's arm as it was hard for him to do any swimming, but we made up for it with lots of park fun & fun with friends!

July - We celebrated the 4th hanging out at home, Jim & walked over to Mount Vernon for the fireworks!

Enjoyed lots of time outside, whether it was out back doing jobs, hanging out with friends, or spending time at the pool!

And Jim attended his bridge to kindergarten at school.  It was a good preview of what's to come in September!

Ben had his little procedure done and was a champ through it all!

August - Was our trip up to New York, a great 2 weeks up there!  Niagara Falls, playing with cousins, a trip to the zoo, bounce house, a night at Kevin & Ashley's land, a trip to the fair, riding rides, tractor pull, fishing at the lake, just to name a few of the fun adventures!

September - Was a big month for us with Jim starting kindergarten!!!!

 And of course we kept busy doing stuff outside, soccer, playdates.  Ben & I adjusted to just the 2 of us during the day!  And we took our first camping trip - lots of fun, can't wait to do it again!

October - We made it to the pumpkin patch on one of Jim's days off of school...Ben started a little in-home preschool with a couple of other 3 year olds which is great!  He has fun going to playdates and playing with his friends.  And a Spiderman & Ninja Turtle had a lot of fun with Halloween, going trick or treating with the neighbors!

 C is for cat from his 'school'!

Making ghosts with his friends!

Jim's first field trip to a pumpkin patch!  Too bad he had a rough bus ride there and got bus-sick, but once he recovered from that it was a fun day!

November - We're settled into our school routines now - with Jim in kindergarten & Ben's weekly get together with friends.  November was also filled with soccer games, leaf fun, celebrating friends birthday, and get togethers with friends.  Mark & I took the boys to the National zoo for the first time.  They've been to the Buffalo zoo, we just never ventured into D.C. to that zoo.  Boys had a lot of fun checking out all the animals. 

We made our way up to NY for Thanksgiving.  Ended up taking Jim out of school on Wednesday & drove to Mark's parents then.  Spend Thanksgiving there, and then on Friday drove to Buffalo.  A short trip as we were back to VA on Sunday.  We made our yearly trip to see Santa!!!

December - December was all about Christmas time.  It's such a fun month with 2 little boys who are so excited about everything!  There was decorating, Christmas cookie swaps, gingerbread house making, wrapping presents, so much fun!

 

We made our way into Old Town for the Scottish Walk parade, and then later that night for the boat parade -

Christmas party with a  visit from Santa!

Christmas up in New York!

Family photo time!

All in all 2015 was a great year!

 

A quick update

Hard to believe that it's November, and Thanksgiving is next week. And before you know it, Christmas will be here. Things have been going good. Jim has really been enjoying school!  Seems to be learning lots, and he's getting better with reading!!!!  It's amazing to see how far he's come in just the first couple months of school.

We had parent teacher conferences the other day. We got a great report!!!  She really didn't have a bad thing to say. She was very impressed with his drawings, I loved looking through is drawing journal!  They do an assessment, and have a benchmark for where they want them to be. I think it was 65, and Jim scored 130+!  (He recognizes letters, beginning letter sounds, ending sounds, rhymes, just to name a few of the categories.). She also said he's a very friendly person, and his classmates look up to that. Mark & I were both very impressed with his good report.

It's so cute to see him pass his classmates. We will cross paths when we walk over to the playground after pickup. Everyone is saying 'bye Jim' giving 5s, giving hugs!  Really does show that he's a likable person!

Mark, Ben, & I went and had lunch with Jim on Veteran's Day!  Mark had the day off, and the school had their Thanksgiving feast. Was fun to see the lunch room environment!
********************
Halloween was a lot of fun!  It fell on a Saturday this year. We went over to Steve & Renees first, had pizza for dinner and then went out trick or treating. The boys loved it!  Made it to more houses this year. And the boys came home with a ton of candy!
********************
Enjoyed a visit from Grandma & Papa after Halloween. They were in Pittsburgh so they drove here on Sunday & stayed until Wednesday. The timing was perfect because Jim had Monday & Tuesday off!  We went out to dinner to Southside Monday night & Ben was not feeling well, and proceeded to get sick in the parking lot. So I was a little bummed out Tuesday plans (donuts & Old Town) were cancelled. But we all had a great time hanging out together!  Lots of time spent outside.
********************
I'm updating this on my phone, and I'm hoping if I get around to it I will add some photos to this post. We shall see though.

Kindergarten

How is it possible that I have a kindergartener now?!  It's hard to believe that Jim is off at school everyday - and he seems to be really enjoying it!  There really aren't many complaints, so that's always a good sign! 

He has the same teacher and assistant he had over the summer for the Bridge to K program - and I think that really helped him with the transition!

We enjoy walking him to school every morning, and picking him up in the afternoons! 

Can't wait to see what this year has in store for him!

Summer Overview

I really wish I was better at keeping up with this.  I love having something to look back on.  But I just never can seem to find the time to keep up with it.  So here's a brief overview of the Summer of 2015:
*********************
We spent our fair share of time at the pool this summer, having lots of fun there.  It was a little limited, first with Jim's fractured collarbone...then Ben's procedure...and Jim's Bridge to Kindergarten program.  But everyone seemed to have lots of fun when we went!
*********************
Jim attended a 3 week Bridge to Kindergarten program at his school.  He got to ride the bus, which he absolutely loved!  I think that made the first day pretty easy for him because all his excitement was about the bus & not about going to school.  He had a great teacher/assistant, met some new friends, and did great!!!
*********************
We spent 2 weeks up in New York. Aunt Ali flew down here for a couple of days & then helped us with the drive up to Buffalo.  Lots of fun there including a walk to Pautler's for ice cream, Paula's donuts, fun in the hot tub, a trip to Niagara Falls, car show with Papa, a bounce house place, playing outside, water balloons, the zoo.  We attempted to go downtown to the food truck Tuesdays, but we got rained out & had to settle for Anderson's instead.  Mark flew down on Thursday, and we wanted to go to canal side, but Friday was a rainy day.  He did get to enjoy wings @ anchor bar with every one!  Jenna spent the week up in Buffalo too, so it was a lot of fun having the 4 boys playing together!

Saturday morning we drove out to Kevin's land & spent the night there.  The boys loved it, gators, tractors, fishing, campfire w/ marshmallows, it was perfect for them!  Sunday we drove to Mark's parents & had a great week there with hiking @ Letchworth, splitting wood, visiting the fair for the fireman's parade, the tractor pull, riding rides, sitting on tractors, seeing animals, we took the canoe out again!  All in all it was a great 2 weeks. 
*********************
Lots of fun with our weekly drinks in the driveway with the neighbors!  Love that it's become a weekly tradition with everyone. 
*********************
Jim learned how to ride his bike with no training wheels!!!!  He's a pro at it now.  At one point we took the pedals off his bike to make it a balance bike...he was doing great with that, but then fractured his collarbone so he took some time off from riding his bike.  Then he got back onto it, and one day I told him we should try putting his pedals back on, it took him about 10-15 seconds, and then he was off!!!!
*********************
Lots of playdates and fun with friends, whether it was at a park, playground, or going on a nature walk. We were busy, busy, busy & definitely enjoyed our summer!!!