Gum Wall

Last weekend we took a trip up north to Seattle/Bellevue to visit the cousins! We haven't been up there to visit them since before the boys were born so it was well over due. We really enjoyed seeing everyone, thanks for putting up with us : )

Visited the Museum of Flight which is right next to Boeing.
It's a really cool museum, it's worth checking out if you can.

Eli on a firetruck at a coffee shop in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle

Fremont Troll with cousin Molly

The boys had a blast with Molly!

Grilling with a view : )

All the littles before meeting

Checking out the gum wall next to Pikes Market

Eli amazed by all the chewing gum

ETC, the gum wall was really cool and really gross all at once!

4 yrs and 8 mo!

Today was the boys last day of preschool and it just so happened to be their mirthday as well!
CET are 4 years and 8 months old!

Just to compare.
First day of Preschool!
ETC

I've fallen a bit behind on my blogging. We were away on a mini vacation then we came back and I was super busy with something and now I've got a cold and feel terrible, ugh! Hoping I feel better and have a little time tomorrow to catch you up on our adventures!

I Love Sand

Lots of random pictures from the week!

(Caleb) I love catching a genuine smile on camera!

Armed and ready to fight spiders!

Chalk art

ETC

(Caleb) I asked him how old he is, wrong!

This picture made me laugh maybe cause it looks like a mirror image!

Thomas just before I shot this was scooping up sand with his hands and saying "I love sand, I love sand, I love sand." I think this is his 'I love sand' dance...

Slides can be so fun when you have a brother to ride down with!

Big hand illusion!

Strawberry Season!

Strawberry season came very early this year!

Ready to go pickin'

10 lbs of fresh picked strawberries!

Caleb

See all the dirt on his face?
Guilty of gleaning!

CET

Can't you guys just wait till we get home so I can rinse off all the dirt?!

Thomas was the only one brave enough to jump off : )

These were the sweetest strawberries ever!
Sooo much better than grocery store berries!

Lego Creations

Shortly after the boys turned 4 we got them a bunch of Lego's and it has become their main form of entertainment when they're indoors. They love Lego's more than their cars, trucks, and trains. The boys hardly play with their trains and train tracks anymore, which is hard to believe because they were so obsessed with them just a year ago. Lego's are such a cool toy because there are endless combinations and you can really build anything you want with them. The boys mainly build vehicles with them and call them their "Lego cweations." Sometimes I'm pretty impressed with what they've built but other times their Lego creations are so funny they crack me up!

The boys built these all on their own with no help from anyone.

I couldn't stop laughing at this one!
Police officer on a Segway maybe?

Eli called this one family day at the beach : )

The boys are not yet able to follow the directions for how to assemble the store bought kits but they totally get the concept and they make their own kits. They build them, take them apart, and build them again!

This vehicle comes with a remote control!
I recently thought it would be a good idea to buy the boys real remote control cars but after looking awhile I realized they only come in two frequencies (at least at a reasonable price point). I asked my fellow triplet mommies if this was a big deal and they all agreed that if two or more have the same frequency it would drive them crazy! So this Lego creation is as close to a remote controlled toy the boys will ever get. So to add to the "triplet problems" category, RC toys are not for triplets : (

Champoeg State Park

Life was starting to get a little repetitive so we decided it was time to do something new. We heard that Champoeg State Park was pretty cool because it used to be a small town that got completely washed away by a big flood. There are wood posts that indicate the names of the streets that used to exist but other than that there is not much else that makes you think a town existed here (although we didn't explore the entire park). It seems like a great park for riding your bike and we'll definitely be doing that next time we come. They also have campgrounds and it's only about half an hour south of Portland!

The boys "reading" together in the morning.

The boys brought their sketch pads just like dad.

Eli drew a map so we wouldn't get lost at the park.
After watching The Goonies the boys have been pretty obsessed with drawing maps (and looking for treasure). 

With dad.

TEC

The Willamette River

Eli

Caleb

The boys thought the sticky weeds were just too funny!

Scrunchy face

Caleb showing off his muscles

Thomas' muscles

Reading & Writing

This whole school year I've been home schooling the boys on days they don't go to preschool. It's nothing too heavy just twice a week for about 1 hour each day. They've been working mostly on reading and a little bit with numbers. It's been slower than I had anticipated but I guess I have to cut them some slack since they are only 4 years old and not 5-6 when most kids learn to read. Currently they can read close to 3 dozen words. They are mostly 2 and 3 letter words and a few 4 letter words. The boys are getting really good at sounding out 2 or 3 letter words (if they forget a word I make them try to sound it out) but the 4 letter ones they get kind of overwhelmed so they tend to give up. But I am so relieved that they've caught on to the concept of sounding out words and joining the sounds together to make one sound (the word as it's spoken). Also all of a sudden their penmanship has gotten so much better. I kind of gave up working on writing letters because it would frustrate them. So I just left them to their own devices and they have all just started writing stuff on their own. Thomas was my only boy who had any previous interest in writing letter and numbers so I'm glad all three are showing improvement. We still have a few hang ups like getting our b, d, p, and q's mixed up but we'll keep working on it.

 I'm so thankful for Pinterest because that's where I get a lot of my ideas for teaching. We work strictly in Spanish so I get kind of frustrated too because there are tons of work books available in stores that teach reading but I can't use any of them because they are all in English. Gosh it would be so easy if only they were in Spanish! So I pretty much make our own worksheets in Word or Excel using clip art and such. Our lessons would definitely be longer but it takes me so long to prepare that we have to keep them shorter. The boys have great attention spans and could totally go longer but alas what can I do? I only have so much time in the day : )

Here is an example of a lesson we did recently (notice how Thomas elongates the 'm' in his name, he thinks that doing this will make his name will sound really loud. I think I need to work on teaching them punctuation because an exclamation mark would be much simpler to write out, ha!)

Caleb did this all on his own unprompted (top says 'mommy' and bottom says 'bear' in Spanish)

The boys have learned to draw something new! This kitty was by Thomas : )