I Wanna Monkey Around

Occasionally we do something right as parents!  I know, hard to believe, but one of those things has been encouraging Benjamin to participate in our elementary school plays the last two years.  It has been such a great learning and developing experience for him. 

This years performance was Seussical, the Musical Jr.  It was a great compilation of Dr. Seuss stories, based mostly on Horton Hears a Who!  Benjamin was cast as a Wickersham Brother, or one of the monkeys.  When he got his part, he came running up to the car and said, "I'M A MONKEY!!"  I was a little less than thrilled.  I'm quite biased and think that my son could do any part in the play (I think he did have it all memorized by the end...) and thought a monkey wasn't quite good enough for him.

Well, Ben proved me wrong.  One of his New Year's Resolutions was to be the best monkey Adelaide Elementary has ever seen.  And he did it!!  He dressed the part, played the part, and sang the part.  I'm still a little biased, but I loved when he came out in his sunglasses and rapper necklace and sang his little heart out. Thank you Ben for showing us that any job worth doing is worth doing well and that we can make the best out of any part we are asked to play in life.  Love you monkey boy!

 Ben had a great fan club of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents that came to support him.  We love you guys too!

A person's a person, no matter how small.

~Dr. Seuss

 

The Lego Room

I love our new home.  There are so many thing I love about it.  Don’t get me wrong, it has its share of quirks (squeaky pipes, weird plumbing and terrible landscaping!), but overall, it has been a wonderful place to be. 

 

One of my favorite spots in our home is “The Lego Room”.  Those of you who know me well, know that in our previous home I had a constant battle with legos.  Having three boys, two of which requested legos for the last 7 years of birthdays, Christmases and all their spending cash, we have acquired approximately a bagillion legos.  I was always trying to come up with some way to organize, contain and even use legos for decoration, but could never get them quite under control.

When we moved into our new home, there were four bedrooms upstairs, which meant that each boy could have their own room.  Micah and Benjamin still wanted to share a room, so we decided to make a play room out of the last room.  The obvious choice was to have them share the biggest room…but I was smart!!  I encouraged them to share one of the smaller bedrooms and make the bigger room into the play room.  Plan worked great.  They hardly spend any time in their bedrooms, but they spend a whole lot of time in the Play Room.

It is wonderful!!  They have as much room to play Legos as they want.  And they fill the space!!  It is amazing.  I can walk into the room and the entire floor is covered in Legos!!  How the?  What the?  I don’t know, but one of my favorite things to do on Sunday afternoons is to listen to those boys build.  They sing, they chat, they play, they create and they are happy.  It is so fun to hear and I try to take the time to soak in their complete contentment.  I hope they will always be such great friends and spend time together whether it’s building Legos or playing basketball or eventually double dating.  Their happy place is my happy place.

I don’t know how long the Lego Room will last, but for now, we’ll just enjoy…and sometimes, I might even catch a glimpse of the floor.

I also love having a spare bed for family sleepovers with cousins etc!!  Makes me happy!

 Current Lego Genre: Pirates

Pi Day

I'm not sure how many of you ate pie on 3/14/15 at 9:26
(pi ~ 3.1415926.....), but we sure took advantage!

The Abengers

I have been looking through blog posts the last few days and realized just how much I enjoy looking back at the boys...especially in their younger years.  It is great to have a record.  So I need to keep it up and do better at recording what we have been up to.

We have such creative boys.  I love when they draw and create.  It makes me very happy.  Each year I have had them draw their valentines, then scan them in and copy for distribution.  They are treasures.  I think Ben's this year are very high up there as some of my favorites.  He has created his own comics this year and his classmates have encouraged him by continuing to ask for drawings of "The Abengers".  They are Super!  Ninja Penguin, Steve the Magic Taco, Dinosaur Chicken Nugget, and Dave the Apple. Since they are true heroes, they made them the Stars of his Valentines this year.  The kids in his class loved them. 

Add a Steve the Magic Taco Valentine's Box and you're ready for a crazy adventure.

 Here is Ben's "brief" description of his Abenger's series:

"The Abengers are the best possible heroes for when you want to get absolutely nothing at all done. Sometimes, they will even do more damage then good, even when they do nothing good, although it is completely unintentional. The first hero I am going to discuss is Dave the apple. For any of you questioning, yes, he is the apple falling in the following picture. He used to be a normal apple. Then he upgraded to Dave, which featured an apple with big eyes and a small mouth, a straight line expressing no expression. Only till early December did he once again upgrade, this time to Dave 2.0. This Dave had smaller eyes and a big wide happy, (somewhat creepy) smile. This smile is the only thing he can do, though he is perfect for rolling down a hill toward terrified enemies. He is what you call, "unorganic" and is 3 feet tall. This is the apple shown in the poster, but in the soon approaching Abengers graphic novel, it will mostly show Dave 3.2, who has a big jet pack.

Next is Steve the magic taco. He is a magic taco who flies floats around thanks to his small pet stars. What else can I say?

Then we have the Dinosuar Chicken Nugget, who is famous for...uh...nothing really. He tries to protect and defend chicken nugget's rights, until he realizes that they have none. The team considers him the team stunt man, a position that he is unaware of. Like most super heroes, he has a catch phrase, "oh dear". He uses this catch phrase in times of danger, which comes all to often for the poor piece of chicken.

The last person   Abenger considers himself to be the leader of the team. He is Ninja Penguin, an Adelie penguin who wares a small grey mask. The only thing he really cares about is flying. #he`s-a-penguin. His well known poem is written on one of these posters. "Humans say I can not fly. But that's okay to me. For I know that I can fly, Just as well as thee. The Abengers are...okay. "a quote by me"