5 years 4 months!

Even though it's only been about 2 months since our last vacation, I'm feeling like we really need a vacation! With the exception of two snow days it's been a very warm winter; however, it's been the wettest winter since I've lived in Portland. That coupled with being sick so often this winter I'm really starting to feel cabin fever. January isn't even over yet and I'm already day dreaming about summer plans...camping, the beach, visiting family in Cali. It all sounds so good! I need to snap out of it or better yet, the rain needs to cease a bit and we need to stop getting sick every other week!

CET are 5 years and 4 months old!

Silly Eli

more silliness

Loving their kitty baby : )

Drawings

The boys love to draw as is evident by the fact that we never have paper in this house. I buy a big stack and within a week it's gone. Thomas is especially good at it and many times figures out how to draw something and his brothers learn to draw it from him. I can only hope they've inherited their dads artistic talents but I guess time will tell. For now I try to take pictures of the stuff they draw so that in the future I can see their progression. Here are some samples of their work : )

The Titanic, drawn with 4 smoke stacks as in real life.

I love Caleb's dinosaurs

Grumpy cat?

Police double propeller helicopter

Another great dinosaur : )

Toy rocket ship ready to launch (I think by Eli)

The Titanic, drawn with underwater propellers like in real life.

Love the claws on this dinosaur

A tiny submarine

Still love drawing trains.
And check out the Titanic in the background, it's sinking : )

Thomas not only draws a side view but he also draws the front view

The Sickening

Sorry for the lack of updating, we've all fallen ill to the sickening (possibly the flu). I don't ever remember feeling this terrible before. At one point I questioned whether or not I was dying. Caleb started first one morning and the other two plus myself started the next day. It was two days of really high fevers, which I should add my boys hardly ever get fevers. I also got fevers and I too almost never get fevers. Those two days were spent under the covers watching tv for the boys. I spent it in the dark with my eyes closed listening to NPR because that's all I could stand to do. That was a couple days ago and we still aren't 100% but at least we aren't ravished by fevers anymore, ugh!

We went through this much of a brand new bottle of children's Tylenol in two days.
Our last bottle lasted us over two years!

I'm used to at most 101 not 103!
At what point do children start convulsing?!

Caleb getting ready for a haircut two days before the sickening struck him.

Looking so handsome : )

Caleb drew this adorable portrait of Phil and I.
I love the way he drew my hair!

Little Reader

A couple of weeks ago I was working with the boys like I like to do twice a week (our little home school lessons if you will). We've been working hard with blending two letters (for example: ma, me, mi, mo, mu) and let me tell you it's been quite the challenge! Although it's most likely because I'm heading into this blindly and I'm figuring this out all on my own (can you believe there is no Hooked on Phonics in Spanish, sheesh!). Thank goodness for the internet and Pinterest, I would have never gone past letter sounds, ha! Anyways, so like I said a couple of weeks ago we were having a lesson and I was showing the boys flash cards of site words we've been learning. Eli knew them so well this time around that I got the idea to lay some flash cards out into sentences and you wouldn't believe it but Eli was able to read them! Right after I tried it with his brothers and while they know the words (like if I just showed them the flash card they can tell me what it says or they'll attempt to sound it out) when they see multiple words in a sentence, like I had them, they just get overwhelmed and can't read it. So anyway I'm very proud of Eli. Thomas is not too far behind while Caleb still needs some more leg work because he's struggling a bit more. My boys, like most identicals, always catch up to each other so I know the other two will get there too!

 Here is when I first tested him out (technically his second time reading this, so I could record it, ha!):

 

I still remember the first book I was able to read. It was a book I made in kindergarten about ladybugs (my thumbprints were the ladybugs) and I remember being so proud of myself. So that's were I got the idea to have to boys make their own simple books with words they are familiar with. Here is Eli reading his first book which he made himself :

 

Snow Day!

We woke up Sunday morning to a layer of snow on the ground and it was still coming down steadily. It's so beautiful when it snows so I took a quick picture of Thomas with the snowy background as proof. Then we all started getting ready for our meeting. The boys had all their clothes picked out and Phil was getting out of the shower when he announced that he had just gotten a message saying that our meeting was cancelled due to the snow. It was now officially a snow day! So we all got our snow gear on and headed outside.

Mr T is the only one that wanted the lions mane on his jacket : )

Kisses for my boys!

With papi ready for our walk in the snow!

They found a "mountain"

We thought we'd be too cold but we made it to the bluff and played a while here.

Overlooking the bluff.

Finally convinced them to try out making snow angels.

Then couldn't get them to stop making snow angels.

When we got home I was very ready to go inside and warm up but the boys stayed out and did some sledding for like another 45minutes!

Later at home... this is not Caleb, it's Puss In Boots!