Valentine's Day 2013

Valentine's Day started out with some pre-partying at Thatcher's preschool at Dad's night where Thatcher and Todd made some fancy Valentines.

 

 

All dressed up and ready to go!

 

 

For once, he loved getting his hair combed,

 

 

and something on other than jammies.  He was pretty excited!

 

Right about here, Todd said he started acting up a bit, mostly being shy and not really participating.

 

And here is where I can tell it must have been time to go home ;)

 

 

 

They did come home with some sweet artwork though.

 

 

 

Flashback: Here is Samantha with Todd when she was the same age as Thatcher on her way to Dad's night at school.

 

 

Here's what we came up with this year for the kids' Valentine's Day cards.  Let me rephrase...this is what I came up with after a quick search on the Internet ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both were looking forward to the V-day festivities at their schools.

 

 

 

Thatcher and his best classmates, Tierney and River.

 

Thatcher came home with lots of love, candy and cards from all his friends but his favorite was the pink paper airplane :)

 

 

Here is Samantha and her buddy, Mara.

 

 

And her other friend, Kaya.

 

 

Sam's class spent the day doing different V-day crafts where all the parents were invited to help.

 

And her class ended the day singing with the Kindergarten classes at the Valentine's Day Sing. (Sam is in the upper right-hand corner.  I had a great seat until the music teacher literally stood right in front of me....).

Random January Photos

 

Playdate with Luke (Luke looks scared....)

 

Typical Thatcher

 

New roller skates!

 

Dinner with Mason

 

Movie date with Leila

Princess date with Bella

 

 

Thatcher has been drawing on his face a lot lately.  This one in particular looked sort of like Mike Tyson's tattooed face...

Such a sweet and peaceful sleeper

 

Road trip to Grandma's house

 

COSTCO!

 

Nerd.

 

Mirror Mirror

School Days

 

Thatcher is absolutely LOVING preschool.  He asks every single day if it is his day to go to school and squeals with delight on the two days I say yes ;)

 

They have been working on their colors this past month and were assigned a different color to wear each week.

 

Thatcher's side of the refrigerator is always decorated with fun artwork.

 

 

AGAIN, River and Thatcher wore the same shirt to school. 

 

Samantha is really thriving in TK.  On this particular day it was Pajama Day.

 

 

The TK and K classrooms celebrated their 100th day at school last week.

 

 

Samantha's side of the refrigerator doesn't rotate with as much artwork as she used to do in preschool.  :(

 

 We had Samantha's parent/teacher conference last week where she was retested to assess how much she has improved from the beginning of the year.  I was one proud mama watching her take the test and know she is more than ready for kindergarten next year.  Also, we just found out that Samantha got into Peabody Charter School where she will attend kindergarten.  Even though we are within the school boundaries to attend Peabody, due to the amount of kids in the zoned area and priority given to other students even before those in the district for various reasons, they are forced to do a lottery.  Peabody has a great reputation here and we feel lucky to have Samantha attend there.  We know several families who attend there already and some that are starting kindergarten next year including 4 students in Samantha's TK class.

 

 And finally, below is an update from Ms. Trainor on what is going on this past month in TK.

 

 

Dear Parents,

            I hope you all had a great break!  We had a fun and productive first week back from break here in TK.  We are continuing to work on letter recognition and letter sounds and are focusing on the letter Pp this week.  The students are working on building simple sentences with sight words and consonant-vowel-consonant words.  They are also working on identifying words that rhyme as well as producing their own rhymes.  In math, we are working on number sense.  The students are identifying groups that have more or less/fewer.  We have been working on and continue to work on writing numbers in different ways (showing a number on a ten/twenty frame, drawing pictures, writing tallies, and identifying what number comes before or after a number). 

LEGO Birthday Party

 

Mason turned SIX and had a LEGO party and of course his mom, Meredith, made the coolest LEGO cake!  Remember the Rex cake she did for Thatcher?  Side note: Thatcher is already asking for Meredith to make his 3rd birthday cake.  Mer, are you taking orders?  He's into Super Heroes now. :)

 

The party started off with a LEGO movie.

 

Every single kid was enamored with this movie. And yes, Samantha was the only girl ;)

 

 

Meredith's family room is separated by a glass fireplace so we could keep an eye on all those boys with Samantha, no really, we were making sure they were alive, they were so quiet and good for almost an hour! 

 

 

Next up, LEGO construction.  I have to admit, this was my first foray to the land of LEGOs.  Samantha is not interested in them and Thatcher is too young.  I'd say it definitely is a 5+ year-old boy thing and they are into it!  Like REALLY into it.  It is the equivalent of girls with the Disney Princesses.

 

 

 

With some help from others, we were able to get his LEGO-guy made.  Fast-forward to when we got home and it was already pulled a part and the pieces were scattered throughout the house.  I now see what parents are talking about when they are discussing how to store and organize LEGOs.

 

 

This photo is all washed out but Samantha's LEGO project was a heart. Very sweet of the hostesses to think of something girlie for Sam ;)

 

 

 

Cake time!

 

 

 

And making new friends ;)

 

Thanks Mason for introducing us to LEGOs.  Not too much longer and I am sure we will all be pros when Thatcher gets a little older. ;)