Gearing up for Thanksgiving!

"I"m thankful for my mom and dad and my toys. What are you thankful for?"

This is what Frankie said to a few people we came across today in the grocery store and on the sidewalk. My guess is they all shared what they were thankful for at daycare today :)

By the way, The drawers are in and the bunk beds are officially done!

5 months old!

Best assignment ever!

Elena is studying percents and fractions in math class. Her teacher is super creative and often gives unique assignments.

Yesterday's assignment has been my favorite so far. Elena came home and said, "Mom! I have to clean out the fridge." Her homework was to clean the fridge and, in doing so, count every item in the fridge. She then had to count how many items were rotten and throw those out.

I assume they will use this information to calculate what percent of food in the fridge was good...probably finding out in the process which family has the grossest fridge. It took an hour, but she cleaned the whole thing, wiping down shelves and drawers in the process without even complaining! I think our total was somewhere around 120 items with 11 rotten (or past-their-prime) foods.

Normally I dread homework. Homework never bothered me growing up, but it turns out marrying a man who is not academically inclined has resulted in children who likewise hate reading, writing and doing math problems at home.

I have drastically changed the amount and type of homework I assign in my own classes after seeing how much stress one little worksheet can create in a student's (and subsequently his or her entire family's) daily life.

That being said, I will take homework like this again anytime :)

Mr. Bourbon

Frankie tonight as we were driving home:" This is our Mr. Bourbon."

My best guess is that he mistook "Suburban" for "Sir Burban" and later confused the "Sir" for "Mister."  At any rate, our vehicle has an official name now.

Here he is singing a song he learned at daycare.

And a few recent selfies. 

Costume season!

Between trunk-or-treat,  trick-or-treating, and the saints day contest at school, we went through quite a few costumes this last week. Here are some of them.

Sam as St. John the Baptist. He took 1st place in his grade and was given a Gatorade by one of the teachers who said his costume was her favorite of all the years they've had the contest. 

This was Frankie's costume for daycare.  He was a giraffe in the evening,  but not a very happy one. He got tired of trick-or-treating pretty quickly, but kept trucking along anyway. The result was a sobbing giraffe walking up to every door getting extra pieces of candy because people felt bad for him.  Not exactly what this sugar-tooth with no self-control needs!

Charlie was Padre Pio for his saint. Elena was st. Apollonia, but we didn't get a picture of her (once again).

Toothless the dragon for the evening! I dropped the ball and did not get Charlie's dinosaur costume in time. To be fair, he wasn't real clear about what he wanted.  At any rate, we found this for $1 at the local thrift store on Halloween. Just in time!