Family Fun Day at the Park

What a better way to spend a Saturday morning that at a park as a family?!?  Jonathan has a new favorite park, Owl's Nest.  He can do the monkey bars at this park and he is obsessed!  I am actually quite proud of him as this is something he has been trying all summer long to do at other parks.  I think these monkey bars are not quite as high and that helps him.  The picture of Diana sums her up well these days...on the go!  She is a busy body.  She definitely keeps me busy.

Zoo

Today GB and Grandpa Weeks came down and we went to the zoo. We claim it was Grandpa's first time going to the Cincy Zoo (although there was 1 other time when Brad was little). It was such a fun day at the zoo! We saw lots of fun things and different things than normal. For instance, Jonathan wanted to go down the rhino path which we don't normally do and we saw a baby camel. Then we went to the new cat exhibit and the tigers were pacing back and forth right by the window...Jonathan was so close to the tiger it was unbelievable. Then we saw the baby manatee going #2, which was so weird but gross. We then stopped in to see the polar bears and while we were there, the one decided to take his ball down to the pool and play. A bunch of kids, including Jonathan and Grandpa ran down the hill (along with giggles) to get a better view. Next stop, the bird house because Jonathan wanted to see the penguins. It smelled a little in the exhibit so we went through it pretty quickly until we got to the penguins. One king penguin looked like it was going to jump in for a swim but he was being hesitant and the next thing we knew, he slipped and fell in. It was pretty fun. Jonathan said that was his favorite of all day. Somehow I got talked into going in the Lorikeet exhibit, which I would have been fine with but then Jonathan wanted to feed them and the next thing I know, I had 3 birds on me. I don't think I need to experience that again. We picked up lunch on the way home, Diana fell asleep and ate quickly. GB and I went shopping for furniture...she has been a life saver. I would have totally given up on trying to figure out furniture for my living room by now. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing outside and enjoying our time together. GB and Grandpa stayed for dinner. It was a great day!!

The Gang

Shonda and I are still swapping days once a week of watching the kids so the other one can get some things done.  Today was my day to watch the "gang."  The kids were so well behaved today, aside from Diana who was a little fussy.  We played a spiderweb game and painted fall trees, of course I didn't get pictures of those but I did get pictures of Jonathan and Alex putting together an Alphabet puzzle.  They matched all of the letters and then put it in alphabetically order.  It was fun to watch them and how they helped each other signing the ABC's.  They were also busy coloring for awhile.  I loved the concentration by all of them.  Diana enjoys dumping the crayons and putting them back in the box.  Drew was busy helping me clean up.  Fun day!

Jonathan's School Work

Jonathan seems to be taking pride in his school work so I decided to make a place for him to show it off.  Unfortunately it is up in the hallway by his room but it was the only wall we had long enough for the wire and a place I didn't think Brad would actually kill me for doing this.  Notice Jonathan's concentric circle painting and grids?



Concentric Circles

This week at school, Kandinsky's Concentric Circles (picture below) was introduced.  Since all of the kids in Jonathan's class knew what a circle was, Mrs. Riccardi decided to take the lesson one step further and discuss concentric circles.  I am a little embarrassed to say that I didn't know what that meant and had to have Jonathan explain it to me.  He did quite well explaining it and has been talking about it non-stop.  He also has brought home more "school work" this year than I think he did all of last year.  Amazing!  They are also talking about grids at school.  He made a tic-tac-toe board out of one of them, which I thought was clever but I guess no one wanted to play with him and that made him sad.  Another new concept introduced at school, is voting.  So far Jonathan is NOT a fan.  Apparently there has been two days where the weather hasn't been fantastic so the class voted on whether they should play out on the playground or go to the muscle room.  Both times Jonathan wanted to play outside but the muscle room won 5-4 both times.  He is still saying he doesn't like school, he loves it!  Makes my day!

Fun Dad

Brad randomly decided to make chocolate chip cookies tonight after dinner.  For those of you who don't know Brad very well, this NEVER happens.  It's rare that he actual eats sweets let alone bakes them or have them be his idea.  The boys were super cute about it!



Trouble

Trouble with a capital T!  How cute are these little guys?!?  Evan, Alex and Jonathan hanging out at the Bluegrass for Babies event.