Grandma Joanie's birthday

Grandma Joanie's birthday matched up with the boys' last day of school before spring break. Beckett's class celebrated by making "dirt cups" with chocolate pudding, oreo crumbs, and candy. Beckett's thoughtful teachers even let us make one for Theo so they could both enjoy the treats when we got home. Joanie and Stu helped out and then we enjoyed a nice dinner at home to continue the celebrations.

Museum of Play

Grandma Kathy came up Monday to stay through Wednesday to help me out with Jeff being gone for work Tuesday night and also being gone for a campaign event Monday night. So Tuesday we took the kids out of school (it was sanctioned by their grandmother, a teacher!) to go to the Museum of Play, which was blissfully uncrowded.

The butterfly garden was a snooze-fest for the boys, but Kathy and I enjoyed it a lot!

Theo checking out all the cocoons and chrysalises hanging and emerging

The boys enjoying playing Wii

The boys at the new Hot Wheels exhibit. AWE-SOME!

President Clinton

Saturday at 2:45 Jeff checked the website for the Syracuse paper and found out that Bill Clinton would be speaking at Fowler High School, just down the road from us, at 3:45. Theo was with Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu for an overnight, and so we had Beckett and Reed. We packed up the fam and headed to Fowler. It was surprisingly un-packed, given the all-star lineup of Mayor Stephanie Miner, US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and President Bill Clinton.

The extra Ergo carrier for Beckett was a last-minute hasty addition to the pack but I'm so glad we brought it. Beck had strep throat all last week and is still recovering, so he needed a rest and a nap on daddy's back while we were waiting for Billy C to arrive.

Senator Gillibrand and Mayor Miner. Sen. Gillibrand was in especially fine form.

Our two boys napping during the wait.

A couple weeks ago Theo was invited to his classmate Tahje's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. Jeff had taken Beckett to his friend Jaya's birthday at CEC a few months back and it sounded pretty terrible to me, so I was not eager to go, but Jeff refused to be chivalrous and go with Theo. I ended up going and having a pretty good time, mostly because Theo enjoyed himself so thoroughly. His best friend Johnny was there, with his mom, and so we hung together and played a ton of games. I was impressed by how quickly Theo picked up the games, since he has never played anything like them before. His driving skills were especially amazing, since he went from not knowing how to use the throttle and steering wheel (he was driving a boat) to racing around and anticipating curves and obstacles. It was fun to see him developing such a great friendship with Johnny, too.

Friday afternoon we returned to the "tree slide place" (aka play area in the food court at Great Northern Mall). Reed conquered the steps up to the slide. Beck and Theo easily climbed up every play structure and ran all around. After being the little kids on so many visits, we finally had some of the biggest kids there!

This is one of the cutest things that Reed does: when we are sitting next to him, he looks up and grins at us, then collapses over in giggles with his head in our lap. He and I play the game a lot, and here is he playing it with Theo.