Updates on the year

(Here are the boys in the Santa Suits that their Nonna Donna made for them)

Hmm

Let me see: Mom came for Christmas. Sorry to say I was a grouch. Tom had been shipped off to Singapore for a week plus prior to her arrival (He actually returned several days after she got here) and I was at the hair pulling point. At any rate, a day or two after she got here, we took the boys to the McDonald's playspace in Issaquah (opps, almost spelled it with an 'a' -- Jason has given me grief about that in the recent past:>). The space there is large -- to quote one of the boys' friends 'it is as tall as a sky scraper!' While we were there, Mom and I sitting below while the boys played in, around and above, the following event occured... Xander, who had been charging around, came down to his grandmother and, with his hands on his hips, said 'Did you see how I stood up to that bully? I don't like bullies and I never have!' Mom was slightly confused. Then Jason came down and the story was explained. It seems that a slightly older boy got angry at Xander. I am not sure what precisely occured but it offended Xander's sense of self. Being Xander, though, he was proactive. He went down and collected a group of other children then set off in search of the boy. When Jason came on them, the kids were 'confronting the bully' with Xander in the lead. Jason intervened, explaining gently that just because someone gets mad doesn't necessaryily mean that they are a bully. Apparently this intervention took because a short while later, I saw Xander playing with the boy in question... go figure.

More recently I was informed by my successful negotiator that when I sing (in the guise of Missy Coyote) I sound 'like a sheep with discomfort' -- a bad play on words around the idea of 'distemper'... yes, he kknow what distemper is. He has heard about it via Hank the Cowdog. Amazing what one learns from the series. We are planning to do a Texas/Cowboy unit centered around the book. Should be fun, with lots of possibilities.

Right now, however we are deep in Egypt once again. Jason has become fascinated with Indiana Jones (there is a fourth movie coming out in May) and archeology. At the moment, he is building a legos 'maze' pyramid. I have found, on the web, instructions for making mud bricks (to scale) and for using them to build a scale model of the Great Pyramid at Giza. I know what our weekend project is going to be!!!