We took the boys up to the Eagles for the Easter egg hunt. Ran into cousins Jett & Ruby. The boys had a great time and we only ended up with a couple pieces of candy. It was mostly money & toys! We let the boys take their money up to Granny's to buy a couple more toys and they were super excited about it.
Then we went to Jim Palmer's birthday party. To keep the kids busy I brought some hard boiled eggs and some egg dying kits. Tom and Lena had a good time doing eggs. They they took off to the races and didn't stop until it was time to go to bed. They were exhausted.
Opening Day already! It is the earliest I can remember it in a while. Fortunately it was too cold like some Opening Day's are. It was a pretty exciting one. New player to learn about and cheer for. And of course ICHIRO! The Safe was rocking and the Mariner's got a win. The boys will be excited because I got video of the hydros and also a flyover by a huge military plane.
The Vashon Theater was had a fundraiser for one of the preschools. All island kids where invited to dress up as a animal and watch the movie Sing for a donation. The boys had a great time. There were lots of kids there. And it is such a fun movie. There was lots of dancing happening.
Tommy really wanted to do bowling for his birthday this year. Every since we went bowling for our office party he has talked about it. We invited his cousins to go along and they had such a great time. And West Seattle Bowl has angry birds bowling which he was so pumped about. I think the adults had fun too.
My boys and I cheered on the #MarchForOurLives as it went by through Vashon today. Not something I really want to have to think about because it is so devastating. But it was a something I was forced to think about when my kindergartner did a safety drill at school. It can happen anywhere. We can make reasonable changes to our gun laws. My husband owns guns and locks them up so I don't need a lecture from anyone either way on the right for law abiding people to own guns. But there is no reason for anyone to own an assault weapon and high capacity ammo. I will be showing off MY biggest weapon every November. My right to VOTE. I hope you do too. #enough
Tommy turned 6 today. He took fruit and pudding cups with a special angry birds ring to class today. He was super excited to assemble them and also to get to put the whip cream on them in class with dad. After school Grandma and Grandpa were waiting for him at our house. He ran right past all of us without saying hi because he saw the swing that dad had put in. He also got a pitching machine which he tried out. And then we put together his angry birds lego set. Angry birds has been Tommy's favorite lately after he got the Angry Birds game at Christmas. Small legos are still a bit tough for Tommy to have the attention span to finish. But this was a pretty small set so we managed and he loved it as it came with a bird launcher. We celebrated with a small cake. Sunday we are taking him bowling per his request.
Tommy has had such a growing year and had to learn some hard lessons this year. About how to behave at school. About how to follow directions, even if he doesn't feel like it. To attempt new skills even when they seem impossible. To learn not to react to other kids bad behavior, which has been super hard for him. It seems like so much for a Kindergartner to be taking on. He has had days where he has had frustration, anger, exhaustion.
But I think after a small glimpse into the real world, Tommy has finally gotten to a place where he gets how school works. How to recognize the difference between a friend and someone giving him bad attention. To push through failure, to keep learning to get a to a point where he succeeds. He has worked super hard at things and really felt the sense of accomplishment. He is still learning to settle down as he has tons of energy, but I am not sure if he will ever have less energy. He is like his dad, non-stop till he drops.
He is also too cool for mom now. Mr independent. He wants to do everything himself and try any activity he can think of. The sky is the limit for Tommy. He wants to be the fastest, strongest and the best at everything and is determined to get there.
Tommy got an assignment from school to make a leprachaun trap. It was a little difficult starting since he didn"t know what a leprachaun or even what a four leaf clover was. So we did a lot of talking about it. He still wasn't sure what to do with this project. So we we went on the internet to get some ideas on the trap mechanism. Tom liked the one that he could understand. Cut a hole in the top of a box and the leprachaun would fall in. So I found an old styrofoam cooler he could use. I cut a hole in the top for him. Then I asked him how he would convince the leprachaun to get up to the trap. The instructions said the liked coins so Tommy said we should put some coins up there that it will try to get and then fall in. So then I asked him if he should camouflage the trap so the leprachaun will want to go up there. So he started by painting it green. I asked him for any other ideas. I reminded him from the instructions that they like 4 leaf clovers. He said, "so we should add trees to it?" So I said he should go outside and look for some stuff to put on his trap and that we would have to make 4 leaf clovers because they are very hard to find. So he went out with dad and his clippers and found some stuff to camouflage his trap. We have lots of moss out in our woods so they found a lot of great moss. The styrofoam made it pretty easy. I held the moss on there. Tom clipped off a peice of his stick to poke into the styrofoam to hold it in place. Then he cut some clovers out and taped them to sticks. And the final touch we stuck the coins to a paperclip and then he poked them into the styrofoam in a trail.
We stopped by the park while running errands up town. It is nice to have a place you can just drop into right there an your way to do everything else. And the boys really like it too.
Since we knew it was going to be such a nice weekend we decided to ask Grandpa if he would like to go to Dockton Park with us. He was not really sure who I was when I called or when I picked him up. He asked me if I had kids and I pointed to the picture of Tom on the wall. He wasn't quite sure what was going on but seemed happy to be going on an adventure. He didn't remember the roads we were driving on or anything like that. But after sitting at the park for a while and talking to me I think he figured out who we were. He had fun looking out at the water and watching the kids play. We drove him past our property. After seeing it I think he understood why I said we couldn't really have him come visit our house. But we did let him know we would take him out to visit at the park again some time. I think he had a good day.
The boys have been so excited that the weather has been nice enough for them to get lots of outside time. And they are pretty excited that baseball season is coming up. So they been having some back yard Spring Training. And this year Jake gets to play too so he has been doing a little practicing. Although he tells me he doesn't need any help. He already knows what he is doing :)
Then we went to Subway and got lunch to take for a picnic at the shelter at Island Center Forest. And after our picnic lunch we went on a little hike. We had never been there before and I wasn't sure how long the boys were going to make but they did pretty good. It was a fun and eventful day.
Eric and Tony did some cleaning up of dead trees in the woods to use for firewood today. The boys just had to be involved. They loved watching the chainsaw and piling firewood into the wheel barrow and stacking in the back of the truck.
I asked the boys what they wanted to do yesterday. They were insistent they wanted a picnic. So we had a picnic. We took them to Pt. Robinson. They threw rocks and looked at the birds. And Tommy was obsessed with the drift wood forts. He had to go sit in every single one. Then we had a picnic and did some bird watching. They had a good day.
