Matthew's 5th Birthday

Our sweet Matthew turned 5! He was lucky enough to have three small birthday celebrations, one with Mama Mickey, one friend birthday and one with just us as family.

Matthew wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday. We don't know when he started liking them but that's what he asked for. For the kids fifth birthday they are allowed to have friends over for a small get together. Matthew invited a few friends from his primary class, Caleb F. and Lacey B., they all had a fun time just hanging out and playing together.

Trying to keep with the TMNT theme we served bagel bite pizzas, pretzel rods (to represent a bo), green fruit punch drink, and TMNT fruit snacks.

Although we said on the invitations that presents weren't necessary, they brought small gifts anyways which Matthew loved! A stuffed turtle toy and a chocolate bar. He was a happy boy.

 Later that day we had Matthew open the presents that we bought him.

He got his own turtle action figure (Leonardo, his favorite since he's blue), Darth Vader action figure and an Iron Man book. He was so happy with all his presents. The next day he asked if he was going to get more. He sure loved having multiple celebrations.

Matthew is growing and becoming such as sweet little man. His speech is still getting better and he's been learning lots in homeschool. He enjoys art time the most but also really enjoys writing and math. For Ipad time he likes to use the Mandarin app where it teaches you numbers, he does really well! Usually he has to use the speech app before he can do Mandarin and if he does his final sounds well enough I let him play Mandarin. It's just funny that he drops his final sounds when speaking English yet can count, understand and speak Chinese numbers in the correct tone! Matthew still is a good eater and  willing to try new foods. I recently starting having him help prepare meals and he's really excited to be helping in the kitchen. He is a wonderful brother and really looks after Samuel and Rebecca.
We love our Matthew boy!

Boat and goats

We met Mama and Papa in Moses Lake to go for a boat ride and fishing. The boys enjoyed the short ride in the lake though they were cold. Eric and Papa didn't catch any fish but Mama and I did score some good finds at the local Goodwill :)

Samuel "helping" comb the goat
(Look close at his shoes. He put them on all by himself.)

Mama has three baby goats that she has to bottle feed. The boys and I had never bottle feed goats so we offered to help.

I also told the boys that they had to pick up a goat. William was a good sport and carried two of them. Matthew, who's more timid, had a harder time and ended up almost dragging the goat, after he let it go and we had to go catch it again.

Rebecca's first tractor ride. She wasn't afraid by the loud noise and sat there like a pro.

Space and Geoboards

This month has been all about space. Fitting since we did the moon last month. We all had a great time learning about the planets, how they are different, what makes a planet, space travel etc. We also watched a Discovery series called When we left Earth on Netflix. William and I were captivated. It talked about the first space missions, going to the moon, Hubble, and the International Space station. Very informative! Fun time learning.

One of the things I wanted to add to our school supplies was Geoboards. I remember using them in school and teaching with them. My mom generously gave us a gift card to be used to buy school supplies and so I was excited to add these to my checkout cart.

The boys really enjoyed them. It took the younger two a little bit of time to figure out how to stretch the rubber bands to get them to stay but they got it and had fun. If you look close you can see that Samuel did his rubber bands horizontal and most of Matthew's went vertical. It was interesting. William also discovered that the board was labeled in faint numbers on the x and y axis. He begged me to come up with a game that we could play using them. We ended up playing guess that space where we called out coordinates and we had to listen and mark them accordingly to create the same shape as the caller. It went good. He came up with some creative shapes for me to make too. Wonderful purchase!

Sleeping beauties

 Matthew sleeping in the crack between the bed and the wall.

Samuel sleeping on his pillow sideways.

Why do we buy big beds for these boys when they don't use them?!