The Artist

Porter busied himself with a big painting project yesterday morning. 

He absolutely loves to use huge quantities of paint, especially when I give him free reign with the paint bottles. 

After a time, squirting paint onto the paper wasn't satisfying enough so he moved to painting the driveway. When I suggested he should paint on paper, he replied, "But I'm making ART!" I cannot argue with that. We then took the puddles of paint everywhere and made prints onto paper. For a final step, he was very pleased to drive a scooter through the whole paint field and make rainbow tracks. 

We are now completely out of paint in our house!

Phone Dump

Check out my new toy. It's a hand me down from dear friends who moved away and left me sad and highly caffeinated.

Matilda's annual school jog-a-thon fundraiser was today. She did great running, but even more impressive was her mad math skills figure out her pledge per lap totals! Sneaky school raises money AND strengthens multiplication skills all at once.

Porter enjoys the motor bike at school.

Some after school play leads to the creation of a new Olympic sport! Helmets optional.

Storming through the neighborhood on our walk to pick up Matilda.-

We met friends at the park adjacent to a driving range this weekend and found a massive amount of golf balls. We were also probably playing in the danger zone for head bonks.

T-Ball Begins

Porter had his first t-ball practice today and was super excited about it. I was amazed to see how quickly he picked things up from the coaches. The team has three dads as coaches and they were all super encouraging and great with the kids; it was a blast to watch. 

Tim and Matilda went to visit family in NC for the weekend so Porter wanted me to make sure I took extra pictures and video to share with them. He is clearly his father's son in wanting adequate documentation! 

Happy Valentine's Day

Both the kids came up with creative homemade Valentine projects that were a little labor intensive but turned out quite cute. Thankfully they both stuck with it to help making them, so it wasn't quite a mommy-Valentine-sweat-shop around here. After a trip to Legoland and a viewing of the Lego movie (Go see it right now if you haven't! Really.) this month, Porter was set on a Lego theme. We got creative with a new mold and a old box of busted crayons and made some really fun looking lego crayons. 

He hung in there to label most of the 40 packets for school friends, a giant task. 

Matilda, renowned by her classmates for a love of reading, settled on making bookmarks.   

She wrote "Love Your Books" on the back of each one and signed it. Only slightly silly when you think about how she chopped up books to make them!  

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Ralph

I forgot to put this one for you last month, Mom! Glad you guys made it up the tram without having to use that nice sun hat!

Farm Diorama

Matilda's class got a really fun open ended assignment this week to create something. It could be anything really, just so long as it was creative and told something about yourself. Matilda chose to create her grandpa's farm. It was fun to see all the methods she used to create different aspects. My favorite part is the donkey ears I think, although the orange tractor that looks like a school bus is pretty awesome.

 I love seeing all the kids so excited to arrive at school and share their projects. She was beaming the whole walk to school!

Cheetah Trim

Porter's shaggy hair finally got long enough that he was willing to consent to a haircut this week. His hair stylist was not phased by the preschool make-over he had already had that morning. 

Here's the final result, sans cheetah disguise. 

Classic Roller Coaster Pic

I don't normally go for this type of purchase, but I couldn't pass up such spectacular kid faces documented on the roller coaster at Legoland yesterday!