Christmas 2012

I am so glad the world kept spinning a few days ago because, and even though I say this every year, this has been my favorite Christmas. Ashton rarely gets excited about anything we do (year 11 is upon us. According to my mother in law I have about 5 months left before all hell breaks loose and my pre-pre teen is amplified into a fire breathing pre-teen. I've been trying to enjoy year 10 as much as I can so I can remember the rare moments of joy when they start to disappear.), Talan is so overly into Santa that he nearly came unglued with excitement when Santa sent him a special video message, or that Syphr said that every present was his favorite thing and just about beamed with excitement until he crashed. Mostly this Christmas is great because Brad is here to celebrate with us. I know someday there will be another Christmas that he has to be away, so we try to always enjoy him as much as we can. 

This year Santa's family gift was several Wii and Playstation 3 games. Santa can never go wrong when video games and boys are paired up. 

 I think Talan makes the absolute best excited faces.

Even though Santa brought video games, if you are a 10 year old two extras might be the icing on the cake.

Talan might have nearly died of excitement when he pulled a sprite out of his stocking.

 "What! I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED THIS! I KNEW I WOULD GET THIS! WAHOOO!" Once again, best excited face ever!

Two of Syphr's most favorite things are backpacks and Mario. That makes this his most favorite present:

These are apparently not stacking blocks, but Syphr has been making towers with them all morning. All three boys are pretty sure they have the best aunt ever, and also, that toys from Thailand are the best.

After much excitement, we found Syphr curled up in an empty box with his two Mario guys pretending to sleep. 

The two big boys rigged a Mario kart track (can you guess we like Mario in this house?) with the train tracks. Pretty awesome actually.

Merry Christmas! 

Love, B.R.A.T.S.

In case that wasn't enough of us, Talan insisted on singing for 8 minutes. His teacher told him he had a beautiful singing voice. It has gone to his head. Enjoy.

I think it is awesome that Raphael fights with a sai, or "two forks" as Sy calls them

Every day Syphr is obsessed with one of the three following things: 

Lightening McQueen

Mario

Ninja Turtles

I just never know before I go to bed if I should find the ninja turtle dvd, locate his red car that he thinks is Lightening McQueen, or have his mario costume ready for the day. It is always a mystery and heaven help me if I am not prepared.

Today, we watched 5 episodes of TMNT on Hulu to feed the addiction, dug the Michelangelo mask out of the abyss that is Talan and Syphr's room, devised a holster for Donatello's bo staff so he would stop sticking the pool noodle in his underwear, fought a million bad guys that looked a lot like Ashton and Talan minding their own business, and Syphr made me call him Raph for most of the day. Today we were the ultimate Ninja Turtles.

Overflowing with awesomeness

I'm not sure if it is possible for Ashton to contain any more academic awesomeness. 

A few weeks ago Ashton was re-routed to the gifted math class. He was insanely bored, and could multiply decimals in his sleep so his teacher kicked him out to give him a new challenge. In a matter of three days he went from doing fifth grade math to sixth grade honors math. All I can say is I am so glad Brad is home to help with math homework, and I do not have enough patience to be a teacher.

Other than Ashton's huge excitement over being introduced to graph paper, and extreme fractions and decimals, he is also thrilled about his new seat in All City Band. All City Band is basically like honors band. It is comprised of kids fifth through eighth grade who audition, and if accepted, meet once a week for a 90 minute practice, and several concerts throughout the year. It is kind of a big deal, and he is so excited he was sitting at the door 2 hours before his first practice started. 

I hope the academic/musical awesomeness always continues!

Talan's Christmas list

Mrs. Cox is encouraging all the kids to try to spell words themselves by sounding them out. Talan loves to do this more at school then he does at home, but I figured he wouldn't complain if he was having to sound out words for his Christmas list. I was wrong. He complained, took several days, and even more breaks, and might have added more to his list if he didn't have to write it.

In the end, I think he pretty much did a great job.

Talans Christmas List

remote control car

hex bug

remote control helicopter 

poke-bol and guy

toy story claw

vet medicine bag

stuffed spiderman

After writing 'hex bug' Talan stared at his paper for a bit and got a discouraged look on his face and said, 

"Santa is just not even going to read this because my letters are so good he will think it is from an adult."

I assured him this was not the case and I would even send Santa an email to let him know that the author of this Christmas list is 5, not 25. 

Thanksgiving Kindergarten style

Right before school started I found out Talan was not in the class with the teacher I requested I was livid. I felt like I had a really good reason for requesting this certain teacher. I wasn't just requesting her because she and Talan both have blue eyes. I wanted her because I knew she had experience with allergies in the past.

Three months later, I am so glad I didn't pitch a fit with the principal about it. I am so in love with Talan's teacher. She, not only, can handle Talan's allergy, and take it seriously even when the principal doesn't, but you can just tell she loves what she does. If you have been doing the same thing every day for 33 years and still love it and go the extra mile, you know you're in the right profession. 

Mrs. Cox not only planned a fantastic Thanksgiving program, which included running up to the middle school to bring her own teenage son back to play keyboard so the kids could have some music to their songs, but also planned and I'm sure purchased with her own money refreshments for after the program. She even had the class make their own butter to serve. She is seriously amazing, and the only teacher to do this. 

Sometimes I can't believe this guy is in Kindergarten which is already almost half over:

Happy Turkey-Day

Happy Halloween!

This year we met up with good friends for some trick or treating fun.  Things are always more fun when you do them with friends. 

I can't really remember the last time Brad was able to go trick or treating with us. It was such a relief to have him watch out for the older kids who go at a completely different pace than the younger ones. The older kids only want to get as much candy as they possibly can. They sprint from house to house as fast as they can go. Mario (he makes us call him that when he wears his costume) on the other hand, waddles to the door, knocks, says a mario catch phrase in a high pitch Mario voice such as: "It's a me! Mario!" or "Lets go!" followed by "Trick or Treat" or "Happy Halloween", then fumbles to get his bag open, then a "thank you", 2 minutes to get back down the steps, and we are waddling to the next house. Much different pace than the big kids, but by the end of the night they were all dragging their very full bags all the way home. And we are very happy to have achieved one more year of safety on the holiday most likely to kill Talan.

In other news, Ashton would like to share his joke:

Oh what fun it is to have a 10 year old. We are overloaded with sarcasm, one liners, fake british accents, and scientific facts.

Character Counts

Character counts is a monthly award at the elementary school given by each teacher to one student in each class. It is also the same award Ashton received last year, and "forgot" to tell me about. I found it, completely crushed, at the bottom of his backpack on the end of the year clean out your backpack day. Apparently he was unaware parents like to attend the ceremony for their good charactered child. 

This year, since Talan has a folder required to be checked every night I was able to read the newsletter which contained the names of the Character Counts award members. Mrs. Thornton's class: Ashton Coates. Last year I wasn't even aware there were regular monthly newsletters available because they had been lost in the abyss of Ashton's backpack. 

 Last week was the ceremony. As we walked into the school Ashton was walking to the ceremony. We made eye contact and Ashton quickly turned his head as if he had not seen us. He thought he had avoided the worst of the embarrassment, but he didn't take into account Syphr. As soon as Syphr saw him he pointed and yelled, "hey mommy! That's Ashton!!""hey mommy! Look! Its Ashton!!' Ashton responded to this by picking up his pace. Like that would solve the situation. 

Once seated, Syphr began to wave and yell, "HI ASHTON!" A slightly mortified Ashton quickly waved and turned his head. As the ceremony went on I noticed Ashton is just really annoyed to be there. He had a 'I can't believe you took me out of my class for this' face. Actually a lot of kids had that face:

Once most of the kids cleared he permitted me to take one photo of him smiling.

Love having a 10 year old boy who is worthy of an award for being caring and understanding. Those two words and 10 year old boy don't always go hand in hand.

That letter F is trouble

This week Talan's kindergarten homework is focusing on the letter F. Talan had to think of five words that begin with the letter F and then make a sentence using one of those words with the added challenge of also using the words I and am. 

Since Talan is five, the very first word without hesitation was fat. He then giggled that he was able to write the word fat on his homework and we moved on. Then we got to the sentence writing and this is what Talan came up with. 

"I am going to visit my fat grandpa."

Also note that Talan now draws stick figures wearing underwear and pants.

Hey, I am just glad his writing is great, and he came up with his own sentence. 

That is some spot on fake sleeping!

Basically this is what happens if I flip the camera around on my phone so Syphr can see himself while taking a video.