Second Art Day

Wednesday's are art day at our local museum. Today we met some friends at the park to eat lunch before hand. Anyone know who this big boy eating the hamburger is?

Today's project was an underwater sea. Lawson did a great job! Barrett enjoyed coloring his fish, face, arm, and his entire leg purple. 

Transportation Day

Lawson's invention took a spin; as in transportation. Specifically an airplane, helicopter, and then a double airplane.

Helicopter- there was a lot of fussing on this thing. The propeller was hard to stay up. "It won't stay balanced." was the constant whine. 

So then he made the airplane because the helicopter wouldn't stay balance. He would yell, "Mayday, Mayday, I'm going down"  because basically he was too lazy to hold the swords (wings) and twist the grabber to make the propeller spin. 

I could hear him from the other room saying I know you can fly this thing without doing anything. He used masking taped to tape the swords to the grabber. So basically he was making an auto pilot with understanding what that is. He decided then auto pilot was best when the propeller was taped on and the wings were removed. Little bro wanted a ride after nap time.  

And then little brother got his own plane. 

If you build it, they will come...

I keep some boxes for Lawson's projects. I don't like keeping them because I enjoy throwing things away or taking stuff to my hoarding place (my classroom). But I keep them. In the mornings, he usually watches TV and then by 7:30, he's wanting to make "sompthang".  If it keeps him busy while I get the day organized, I'll keep the boxes even though it completely drives me nuts. So this morning, he built a frog house. It's more of a frog mansion. It has two main buildings with a connecting passageway, three doors, there are windows, an upper sunning deck, a lawn chair, and of course a flag. 

The connecting passageway is at the bottom. 

You can see the sunning deck here. The bottom has a lawn chair. 

He set it out on our back porch around 2:00 today. We have a lot of regular frog visitors out there at night. Our two regulars are Zippie and Doo Dah. I promise I didn't name them. But tonight when we got home from the pool, look at what at moved it! 

Sooo I guess if you built it, they will come, right?

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art

It's the month of family art at our local museum. This is Lawson's fourth year and Barrett's first year to participate. Today was all about Van Gogh's sunflowers. They got to make one for home and another for the museum's artwork.

 

Tupelo Days

We went to Tupelo for a few days. There is always a million things I want to do and people to see. It's a good time but until you live in the middle of nowhere and live away from family on both sides which lives in the same town, it would be hard for you to imagine the party hopping that goes on. Part of the craziness is the fact we never go home. We've only been home twice since Christmas and one of those was about a 36 hour trip. I always have a list of places that I'd like to shop because the closes town to any real size is an hour away. BUT this trip was much more laid back, and we had a great time! 

The Woodmen of the World insurance dudes hosted family day. And since my cousin is the Woodman Dude, we went. IT WAS A BLAST! Perfectly orangized, with music, magic, fun, food, and air conditioner. 

Lawson and Barrett had the best time. This Spider Jump inspired a catapult that was built with papa. 

Lawson has saved his money for months to buy a Transformer Dinobot. Twenty-five cents a chore takes awhile when 1. you don't always to your chores. And 2. The thing you want is $25. It is really cool though. 

Too much fun is hard work.

This is the catapults that they built. It is the neatest thing- I think papa might have something going on here! Plus the bullets are sweet gum balls. Everyone likes to get rid of those. There is a video on Instagram.

Barrett also said his first sentence. He repeatly told us that Misty, my parents crazy rescue dog, was a "baby puppy wolf wolf." Misty is a medium size dog but in compare with our horse dogs, I guess she looks like a puppy. 

Foam, slits for hands and rope make late night wings.

Papaw mentioned that the pine tree in front their house was dead. Lawson went to investigated and quickly told us the problem- longhorn beetle. He told us that we needed to remove the bark in order for the woodpeckers to be able to save the tree by killing the Longhorn beetle. Who knows if any of that information is even true or not. But he and Papaw worked on that for about 30 minutes.

I'm going to end with Barrett's fancy way to sit. Spoiled and relaxed.

Running Man- not the dance

Lawson has his first race coming up next week. He has been seriously practicing for two days. When we were in Tupelo, we did three a days. He only stop a hand full of times- to look for turtles in the culvert, to save a worm on the street, to walk up two hills, and to pick me flowers. 

So proud of this little boy. He ran a combined 3.75 miles. 

Today he ran 1.86 miles at Family Art day. He's enjoying the running so it is making my runs a lot easier. I don't have to wait on Shad to get home; I can bring him along; and I can get more serious with myself in the early morning hours when the world is still asleep. 

He does have the idea that you're suppose to play defense when running and block people which is kind of dangerous. He must get that from his daddy. He does this "Turkey Shoot" where he yells the phrase and veers offpath and then quickly back on. It's funny. Shad said he thinks it's from the movie Planes Fire and Rescue.  I also love that today he yelled back, "Mom, look it's such a beautiful day." 

Highland

Highland Learning Center. That's were Shad and I dropped off our 4 month old and where we have now watched L grow and complete his final year. It's nuts that it's over and this coming school year, I'll have a passenger the entire way to school. He has had the most amazing year under the instruction of an amazing teacher, Mrs. Reesa. I can not complement her enough. They didn't just to letters, and numbers- she had a bible story each week, scripture for them to memorize weekly, and science experiments to learn. We adore her.  

For graduation, their program was Eric Carle themed. They did an amazing job. The kids, sang, quoted scripture, did sign language, and retold the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

We have no clue what the picture above was about- every time they finished something, this is what he'd do. 

The Inventor

Inventions. That's what he likes to do. Constantly building, designing, talking about what he could make and reuse. I try to let him explore as much as possible, but sometimes he does ask for help. Today when he made a weather tracker, I told him cars don't ride upside down. He quickly responded, "In my world they do." And I'm glad they do- we shouldn't do something just because others do it that way. Otherwise, we might miss something new.

Weather Beamer

Checks weather and saws power lines. It has a tracking device. He built it on his remote control car which flips on its roof. This kept making the weather vane part fall off. So he build a stabilizer which won't let it flip- or at least that was his plan. 

The Crane

This was built on the first rainy morning of summer. It took him about 2 hours including the rebuild after Captain Destroyer got a hold of it.  It also has a grabber, like used to pick up trash with, on the side so it can clamp stuff. He designed it alone and cried and cried until I helped him make it work better. Video below- if you don't see it, sorry. It shows up on my computer not not on my iPhone. Pointers please. -I did post a video on Instagram 

 

 Did I mention that he built me a forklift complete with a vacuum system for Mother's Day? Yep. And incase your wondering, he still booby traps the house with masking tape. Five nights ago when his dad asked him who was he trying to catch, he said he was trying to slow us down- only he B could get through it easily. That was the truth. He had the dining room, foyer, and the hallway leading to the garage booby trapped. It really doesn't help that Lovie and Papa send him tape in the mail and gave him a couple of rolls for preschool graduation. 

Turtle Adventure

Lawson loves the PBS show Wild Kratts. It's really educational, and I have honestly learned a lot! For real. Well, the dogs had been barking and throwing themselves at the windows and after investigating we found what all the crazy barking was about..... And thankfully daddy pulled up a few minutes after our discovery. 

As you can see, the snapping turtle was very large! And Wild Kratt Lawson had to save it and release it back into the wild at a safer location that doesn't have 2 100 pound bulldogs. 

Fresh Start!

No excuses for the three year gap. I'm starting over, folks. And if I have time,  I might backtrack a little.  Or at least stay caught up!