Charlie's 9th Birthday

Happy 9th Birthday Charlie! We had two parties this year. One at Jumpstreet with 21 of his closeest little friends and another on his actual birthday at home with family. Charlie says his favorite gifts were a remote control lightsaber-nightlight and a lego dragon (of course). Charlie received a room "reboot" from Mom and converted the airplane theme into a star wars room! Cousin Ryan helped celebrate and passed on his love of skateboarding by giving Charlie his first ever skateboard and pads. Unfortunately the next day brought a blizzard... so skateboard practice will have to wait.

Click here to see pictures. https://goo.gl/photos/3LntSUgcfAfDSVqa7

Daniel-ism for the Day

On the car ride on the way home from school:

Daniel: "I made this for mom.  She has been a good mom, so I made this for her."

No response from Dad.

Daniel: "Dad did you hear me?  Your wife has been good, so I made this for her."

Started Decorating for Christmas 2016 Early

Do you think he can stay there for 339 days?

Ghost of Christmas Future

We just got back some work the kids did at school before Christmas break.  One of Charlie's activities was to tell about a Christmas in the past, Christmas presently and a Christmas in the future.  I assume this task was a part of a unit on A Christmas Carol.  For his sentence on a Christmas Future he wrote:

"When I am 35 years old, I will spend Christmas with my cousins."

I sure hope so, buddy . . .

Craziness Revisited

In case you thought that yesterday's video was just a fun occurrence, you have to understand that our house is like this at least 50% of the time that all four of them are present and conscious.  That may actually be a gross understatement . . .

I suppose we should count our blessings that they love to play together and enjoy each other's company half the time.  However, we see friends and family with kids who will just sit and read or play quietly and we wonder . . . "What's that like?"

As a side note, the interactions contained in the above video were followed by more "train" action that was depicted in yesterday's video, a rousing game of duck-duck-goose and rounded out by a game of their own devising called zig-zag tag which is played on the multi-colored, checkerboard rug that is in our den.