Tuesday, November 17, 2015

The fair and James soccer party

Last Tuesday night we went to the county fair. Usually we go on the free admission night, or we are able to get free tickets from somewhere, but this was the first year we actually paid to get in. I discovered that you have higher expectations when you pay for admission! We still have fun though :)

Rett and James really loved the corn box this year. Last year Rett just tried to eat all the corn kernels, so this was a big step up for him!

James didn't have patience to see any of the exhibits, so we headed straight to the rides! James wanted Anthony to go with him on most of them, so they did the bumper cars first. He loved it!

James had been talking about going on the big helicopter again and he even wanted to bring his toy helicopters so that he could compare sizes. Rett was big enough to go on this one with an adult, so all the boys went this time. Anthony said that once the bar came down over their laps, Rett started yelling, "No! No! No!". He was a little scared and definitely didn't want to go on any more rides after that.

Next was the crazy bus! Rett just watched from his stroller this time. Someone saw him watching and said, "He wants to go too!". If they only knew! He might be interested, but if we tried to put him on he would cry and want to get away.

For his last few rides, James rode the little kid rides by himself. He would run on and strap on his seat belt all by himself and wait for it to start.

The next day was a school holiday, so we didn't have to get up early to take James to school. However, without thinking I scheduled my chiropractor appointment (who I've been seeing for some hip pain from carrying around a 30 pound 2 year old. Thanks Rett!) for early in the morning, so we still had to get up and out of the house. I ended up having to meet someone from boy scouts to get some forms for cubs in the same town, so I had to decide if I wanted to drive the 30 minutes home and then come back or if I could stretch out the day with the boys. 

We went to the park and James found a little boy to play with for the first hour and then for the second hour, we discovered this large sand pile away from everyone else. I couldn't believe we survived for so long at the park without some kind of incident! 

Saturday James had his end of the season soccer party at a park down the street. He was so excited to play with his friends! They had pizza and snacks and then it was time for their medals.

His coach gave every kid a medal and a certificate with a specific title. James' was "Winning Spirit Award" and his coach told the story again about James running off of the field two years ago in his very first season and the assistant coach running after him, picking him up, and bringing him back. He always points out that he would never do that because he makes the parents do that. Every time I want to defend myself and say, "I was on my way to get him, but I was all the way on the other side of the field with a 6 month old baby in a carrier all by myself!! (This was when Anthony worked Friday nights)" I know he tells the story to be funny (and he has told it many times over the years) but I always look so bad in the story!

His coach pointing to how far away James had run :)

Eating cupcakes after the awards. Both of them just ate the icing and were done.

James had his first homework project assignment to take an outline of a turkey and make a disguise for him so that he wouldn't get eaten on Thanksgiving. When I sat down to do it with James, he wanted it to be a Zebra and he scribbled a bunch of black stripes all over it and insisted he was done. I was going to leave it at that because I figured this was his project. Then when I volunteered in his class on Monday and saw the other kids projects I realized how wrong I was! The parents are totally doing most of the work!! So elaborate!! So many props! And since I volunteer in his class, I know each kid and what their drawing/cutting/coloring skills are. I was kind of floored, like I somehow didn't get this memo that everyone else got that you needed to do more than let your kid color it. So I sat down with James and tweaked his a little bit...

Honestly I didn't want him to feed bad or embarrassed if his was the only one just colored since they present in front of the class. I have mixed feelings about this. It was fun for us to do it together, but is this just the beginning of class assignments at school where some are done just by the kid and others are obviously done by the parent?

James had a substitute in his sunbeam class at church and she sent me this cute picture of all of them. Don't they look like sweet little angels that would never make you want to pull your hair out? :)

James has really been working on sounding out words and usually he doesn't want to attempt to read or practice sight words. For some reason, he really liked this book I got from the library and he wanted to try to read it with me. After a few times he memorized the words and he loves that he can "read" it (although he does try to sound it out to remember which one it is if he forgets). I definitely need to find more books like this for him with only a few small words to a page!

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