Mowing. At Five!

Blink.

Yes, you are seeing that correctly. Alec really is moving the lawn (notice the lack of pattern)

This kid is a worker and mowing at five years old is apparently just another notch on his tool belt. He didn't just do a line here and there but the entire backyard. No pattern, just willy-nilly around but he did it all!

Oh, yes, I totally agree he should be wearing better shoes for this but Ave assures me that the mower safety bar will protect him.

hmph.

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The Shultute.

This was so fun to make, easy, and packed a big punch. I intend on doing this every year at the start of school.

We started by rolling two sheets of poster board into a cone. Then we cut off the pointed top and decorated it with various stickers, glitter glue, and markers.

You can see, Averill really got into it. We then stuffed in everything I had collected for Alec for the start of school.

The cone contained...
Books
Batman Crocs
Stainless Steel water bottle
Star Wars Undies
Backpack
The word cards I made this summer
Playdoh
Markers
a YoYo
a Batman folder
a crayon roll that I sewed this summer
and lastly, 2 backpack tags that we made out of shrinky dink paper

Here it is all stuffed in.
A little green tissue paper to close it up

and the kid loved it!

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Starting and Finishing.

I know we have been slacking when it comes to posting but we have been busy. We are still adjusting to homework every night and getting up and out of the house every morning. On top of that we have been baking.

Starting projects like tackling the "landscaping" in the front of our house.

(before)

(after)

And finishing projects that we started over a year ago.

(before)

(after)

I know I promised a post about the school cone that we made for Alec and it is coming... just have to find time to download all those photos.

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Dentist

Another great trip to the dentist, Alec loved it again and had a clean bill of teeth.

What this picture does not show is his first loose tooth! My boy is growing up. First kindergarten and now a loose tooth, this is going to have to stop.


-- Posted from my iPhone

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Alecism #365: Poor Yoda.

"Mama, I thought I pooped in my pants but it was just Yoda's ear"

Really. What do I even say? Turns out it was the Yoda on his underwear. And yes, I know one day he might just hate me for publishing this.

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First Day of K.

Today. First day of Kindergarten for Alec. He was so excited and so ready to get in and play and meet new friends. Today is only a partial day and tomorrow will start the full (half-day) routine.

I was apprehensive not because I he would not have a great time but because of concern about his safety. As you know last year we did an exhaustive search for a school that we A. liked and B. would keep him safe. We really thought we had found it with this one. Now, I am questioning our choice.

In the spring when we chose the school we were under the impression that we would be picking him up before lunch. This is true but for the fog delays, which are a plenty, and will mean that he stays for lunch. We were also under the impression that they would be willing to ban peanuts for lunch. Apparently that is not the case. And, when we requested an additional time to sit down (yesterday) and go over some additional questions we had, we were met with distinct hostility. Snarky, this -is-not-rocket-science like comments, eye rolls and a couple of comments about our over protection left me wishing I made a different choice.

Through fake smiles and gritted teeth Averill and I carried out the conversation nicely (you catch more bee's with honey Averill keeps telling me). Overall, I do believe he will be safe - I would not send him otherwise but will the powers-that-be loose the "I ate peanut butter all my life so these kids should be able to as well" (yes, she really said that) attitude? Probably not.

Interesting that I have never run into a single parent that was not totally willing to adjust lunch for the safety of a child. Weird that the administrator and teacher are so opposed. On the playground after I picked him up a Mom came to me and said, "you know my kid will not eat anything but PB for lunch, is there a good alternative?" this is the kind of thing I love, a parent who understands and is willing to consider that there ARE alternatives. I wish I could say as much for the conversation I had at school. Oh well, I have a year to assure them that it really not the end of the world not to have PB around.

As a side note... we had a "going to K party last night". More of this to come...

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Summer List Revisited.

Well, it is official - Summer is over. Boy that went fast didn't it? I look back and in a blink it was gone. We spent the summer alternating between the pool and beach,

nestled in between vacations, and interspersed with our good friends.

There was even a bit of time set aside for relaxing...

Our summer list was long and full off good ideas. We didn't get to everything but did manage to play with most of the ideas on here. Here it is...

50(ish) SUMMER THINGS...

make pinwheels
tie dye shirts
make rain sticks
make ribbon streamers
paint pet rocks
make a pinata for Alec's birthday
make goo-blec or homemade playdoh with sparkles in it
make plant pot wind chimes
create mini-me art work
work on a family summer scrapbook
have and host game night
play with sprinklers, slip & slide, & squirt guns
have a water balloon fight
fly kites
ride bikes - hopefully get Alec's training wheels off
bake colorburst cupcakes
build a lego table
play with sidewalk chalk
have field day games
go to the free movie festival
go bowling
learn to swim without swimmies (Alec that is)
join the summer reading program at the library
play tennis & rqt. ball
visit cape may
visit the baltimore planetarium, imax and science center
ride go carts
go to frontier town or killians water parks
celebrate a 5-year birthday
read my camera manual again
have a scrapbooking day/evening
go golfing
build a trellis planter
finish the kitchen
finish the outside of the house
go to bush gardens or water country

have a "going to kindergarten" celebration (soon to happen)
visit with friends
participate in muffin-tin-monday
make ice cream & have a marble slab party
break out the sewing machine and make a camera strap and cloth napkins
learn elements (preferably before my class starts)
celebrate our 7-year anniversary
start practicing with bento lunches
make a book list for paperback swap
have play dates
Go Jet Skiing

Not too bad! It was fun making the list and fun crossing things off as we did them - with no obligation at all to get to everything.

I am sorry to see summer go but fall in MD is my absolute favorite time of year and I am looking forward to what is coming down the pipeline. This week Kindergarten starts and I am sure it will add it's own excitement and complexities to the coming months. Sayonara Summer. I welcome the next four months with open arms.

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It's in his genes...

A few months ago we watched Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It is the story of young Anakin Skywalker and how he eventually becomes Darth Vader (undeniably the best of the first three Star Wars movies). At the end of the movie there is a big fight scene over and through a river of lava.
Now granted, probably not the best movie to let a five year old watch, but he is so into Star Wars we thought it would be OK. Well, not surprisingly that scene started something here in the Anderson house. Since that movie Alec has been completely memorized with lava, volcanoes, magma, and how it gets to the crust of the earth. We have had endless discussions about volcanoes and how they work. Regardless, he is constantly worried that the floor of his bedroom is going to suddenly sprout a lava flow or that a volcano will pop up here on the eastern shore, or that somehow magma will find its way up through the road and burn us all.

To quell his fear we have had some really cool science discussions that would rival any of my intro-level geology courses in college. We have watched geysers on youTube, learned about the ring of fire, looked at extinct volcanoes, and talked about just how far away magma actually "lives". None-the-less, he is fixated on how hot lava is and how we could all be melted away at any moment.

In a last ditch effort I asked him if he wanted to hold some lava. After lots of reassurance that it would not be hot we high-tailed it over to Rite Aid and bought ourselves a Pumice stone.

You would have thought I just put the winning lotto ticket in his hands. He was psyched! He kept saying "But Mommy, it's NOT HOT!" We broke out one of the few geology books I actually hung onto and compared it to the photo of pumice.

He carried this stinkin' stone around with him all day talking about the little holes and how they got there, how hard it was (as in not a liquid), and how crazy it is that lava can be COOL (as in temperature)! Unbelievably this finally settled the notion that he would eventually be swallowed up in a hot pool of molten lava.

Maybe now we will not have to remove the volcano book every night before bed. It really is built right into his genes.

Happy Labor Day all!

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Before and After the door.

Most of you will remember that back in the day (a year and a few months) we had a door that led into the kitchen. When we remodeled our kitchen said door was removed and plywood placed in the hole. That plywood along with a lovely sheet of plastic covering it has been up there now for over a year.

You see, our house has aluminum siding that is old enough that it is no longer made. So replacing the siding would take a lot of money and would consist of, at the very least, replacing and repainting all the siding on the back side of the house.

So, we decided to get creative. Some thicker plywood, sealer and a few supplies from the hardware store turned this....

Into this...


Clearly there is some growth that has to take place but once the vines grow up and around the lattice I think it will look pretty darn pretty. And, oh so much cheaper!

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