End of January

The kindergarten kids dressed up like 100 year old men/women for the 100th day of school. Rett borrowed my blue light filtering glasses and wore his church clothes to school. While I was putting them on him he said, "Why do old people wear church clothes?". I didn't know the answer, so I told him just because! He also let me put flour in his hair to turn it gray. Such a cute old man!

In the afternoon they had rotations around the different classrooms with different 100 theme activities. This was counting how many 100's of licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop:

More karate:

James started playing basketball on his school's team. This is the first year that they have been able to have school sports, so it is really exciting for the kids who play. They always get to wear their jerseys on game day (instead of their uniform) and they have so much fun playing each other. James's age group has 4 teams, so they rotate playing each other each week.

My mom got a video of him making his first goal:

This is right after he made that basket!!

A few of the kids are 4th graders and are really good, so they really have to work hard when they play against them.

I made posters for his first game so he could watch us cheer him on. Every time he would look over at us, we would wave the posters at him. We are that family in the bleachers :)

Rett had a great accomplishment this month: he learned how to ride a bike with no training wheels!! So proud of that boy!

My mom took the boys to their first Christmas/Grandma activity: a trip to build a bear! They loved picking out their animal and then selecting what sound to put in them. There were a lot of options. Rett chose Chewbacca and put the Chewbacca sound inside of him.

The kids get to step on the pedal to fill their animal with stuffing:

James chose Pikachu and got to fill him up on the other side of the stuffing machine:

Then it was time for the heart ceremony. Before they put the heart inside their animal, they repeat a little poem and put the heart all over themselves and give it a kiss. So adorable!

Rett took it very seriously:

James is wearing his shirt backwards because his class discovered it was the official "backwards" day while reading an article online and they all turned their clothes backwards at school.

Strapping their new buddies in for the ride home. Grandmas are the best!

Universal Studios Family Trip

After rescheduling our Universal trip a few times because of sickness, we finally got to use our tickets! I bought Anthony a ticket for Christmas so that he could go with us too. We had the best time!! We got there 30 minutes before the park opened and stayed until it closed. A full 13 hours of fun!

Waiting for them to let us into Harry Potter world:

Our first stop was to Ollivanders for Rett to get his first wand (he missed it last year from being sick). James was using my wand because he somehow lost his TWO wands from last year!

Hogwarts!!

Doing more magic:

Rett chose to get a replica of Harry Potter's wand for his interactive wand.

Making the chocolate frog open and croak:

Once Harry Potter world got a bit crowded, we walked over to Jurassic Park world to go on the King Kong ride. Rett was so scared of the line that goes through a dark and spooky cave, so there was no way he was going to get on the ride. My mom waited with him in the child swap area where they got to watch a movie while they waited. He loved that part!

Getting eaten by dinosaurs:

Rett's face cracks me up!

Waiting to ride the Hogwarts Express:

After we arrived in Diagon Alley, it started to pour down rain! So we ran to a nearby restaurant to eat lunch and wait for it to let up. I downloaded the Universal app on my phone that tells you the wait time of all the attractions (which is really helpful when deciding where you want to go next), but it also lets you "virtually" get in line for certain rides. After lunch we were able to walk right up to the Fast and Furious ride with zero wait time since I checked us in while we were eating. Best thing ever!

Checking out the muggle entrance to the Ministry of Magic:

Kreacher peeking out of the window at 12 Grimmauld Place!

James loves doing this spell that makes it rain. This time Rett did the spell while James stood in the middle, trying not to get wet.

James going through platform 9 3/4:

We rode the Men in Black ride. Rett was worried and scared the entire time in line (he really was nervous about every single ride and it was so difficult to get him to do them), but we kept telling him it was fun to shoot things like a video game. Anthony took a picture of our final scores:

We caught the celebrity trained animal show. It was so funny!

Checking out spongebob's house:

We got a few small bags of candy in Diagon Alley and then my mom and I took a break with Rett while Anthony and James rode the Transformer ride. We were so cold!! The rain dropped the temperature more than we thought it would and we didn't bring jackets. I even considering buying a sweater there but they were ridiculously expensive! So I suffered through with some hot butterbeer :)

James had a long conversation with the magic fountain:

We found an arcade and the boys played almost every single game:

On our way back to the car, we walked through Dr. Seuss world and rode the carousal.

As we walked back through CityWalk to get to the car, we stopped at a pizza restaurant and got pizzas and salads to eat in the car on the drive home. We didn't get home until close to midnight, but it was so worth it!