Boys Will Be Boys

Thank goodness Billy has someone to play Power Rangers with besides me.  How boring that must be for him!  For a couple of weeks he has had a friend come over to do preschool with him.  He has loved sharing his in-depth knowledge of volcanism and Power Rangers.  And, lucky him, a fellow 5 year old Power-Ranger lover lives right across the street!

The last few weeks in the preschool have been pretty busy.  We've dropped raw Humpty Dumpty eggs on a variety of surfaces, mixed a lot of solids/liquids, mixed colors, pendulum painted, gone to story hour, made a lot of volcanoes, painted with cars, fished for letters, and played a lot of. . . you guessed it!  Power Rangers.

So you think you can dance?

Can YOU dance to a good beat?  How about the sound of water?  A passing train?  Alexa can!  She loves to dance to everything.  My favorite dance is the one she reserves for the alphabet song.  She's busting one of those moves above-the finger dance.  The whole thing is pretty similar to The Robot-with her arms and fingers making goofy, jerky motions.  Super cute!

If friends were flowers, I'd pick you

Alexa really looks forward to Monday mornings when her friend Alex comes over to play!  She wakes up saying "Alex.  Fun!"  She loves to pat her hair and is more than willing share everything with her.  She's teaching Alex all of her daredevil ways, probably much to the dismay of Alex's mom, Allison!  Alex is settling in fantastically too.  She loves to watch Billy, and Billy loves to take care of her.  When I tell Billy that Alex will be here in the morning, he enthusiastically thanks me so much! 

Yesterday Alexa was invited to her first (non-family) birthday party, and had a blast celebrating Alex's first birthday with her!  I think she's just excited to visit Alex and play with all of her great new toys.

Bicycle Queen

Alexa adores her trikes.  Just not the pedals.  Pedals are strange, unstable, frightening things that are not to be trusted.  She's ready to ride, then the pedals move, her feet go flying in the air, and she says "UH-OH!" 

My Little Monkey Jumps on the Bed

A few weeks ago, our precious little daughter hit the terrible twos!!!  And, now being such a big girl and all, she had decided that naps were optional and that she would be talked to, played with, fed, and touched on her terms.  So, we decided to go with the flow and convert her crib into a big-girl bed.  She now runs into her room to show everybody her "bed big", loves jumping on it, and most of all, loves her new giant-sized comforter.  It took a few nights and several dozen trips back to her bed, but she'll now take at least one good nap and has no problem climbing in bed for bedtime stories just like her big brother.

And that pink blanket-that's her best friend Blankey.

Billings or Bust

Billy is a big fan of Billings.  We spent a week there last spring while Rocky was going through some training, and we did just about every fun thing you can imagine.  So when we mentioned a trip to Billings last weekend, you can bet he was on board.  While we definately did not do the grand tour of Billings this time, the kids did get to go to Chuck E. Cheese's, which is way better than the Hangaburger Store (as Billy calls McDonald's/Burger King).  We spent the day with Grandma Schery and Papa Bill (and Sasha, Missy, and Tessa, of course) at their new(ish) place up in the hills.  I'm not sure which was more fun: the mountains or Chuck E. Cheese's!

OK, so this moment was not so fun for Alexa.

 Finding out swinging isn't as terrifying as he thought!Exploring!

 Catching giant bugs and feeding them to the dogs.

Lounging in the washer-box playhouse.

Launching clay pigeons with Papa.

Oh no! Still not a happy camper!

That's better! 

The real Chuck E Cheese!

Happy 70th Birthday, Grandma Ba-wa!

Friday we celebrated Grandma Barbara's 70th birthday at the Apollo Room (sounds fancy for Winston, doesn't it?!)  The kids kept us all entertained, or busy at least, while we waited for ninety minutes for our food.  Alexa showed off her monkey skills while she was swinging from the table.  Billy talked Cathy's ear off the entire time and later both kids joined her for dancing to some good 'ole karaoke.  Welcome to Winston!  At lease the food was good and the company was fantastic!  However, we were missing Rocky as he got called out for Search and Rescue.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

GOOOAAAAL!

Today Billy played his first game of soccer.  He collided with another little guy early in the game, and he was a little bummed.  But every time he'd kick the ball out of bounds, he'd get very excited, thinking he'd won!  We have a little work to do on the basics, but overall I think he'll enjoy it!

Museum of the Rockies

There is no denying that one of the kids' favorite places to go is the Museum of the Rockies.  At first Billy loved the dinosaurs, but now he's the expert on pretty much everything there.  Alexa is fascinated with the dinosaurs.  She loves them!  Now it is even better!  They recently opened a mini-Yellowstone children's center.  Today we went to their Tours for Tots to learn about the animals of Yellowstone (already the kids' third trip in a couple of months).  Billy was so excited to share all of his knowledge of Yellowstone-it was hard to keep him quiet. They got to make recycled animal masks like the display animals made from recycled objects.  Alexa spent most of the time whining, but Billy wanted to do her a "big favor" and made her mask for her.  He also sang to her while we were shopping to calm her down, and shared his apples with her in the car.  He'd do anything for his sister!

There were some pretty exciting new exhibits at the museum today, too.  They are currently housing the Morrill Act, which created land-grant colleges.  They also changed their dinosaur room to reflect a new discovery of Jack Horner and Mark Goodwin (paleontologists at MOR) that the torosaurus is actually an adult triceratops, rather than another species!  There were scientists working on a triceratops fossil, too.  Makes you wonder if this is what they were working on?! While neither Billy or Alexa really understand any of this, it is neat that they get to be in the middle of such neat history!

My Little Crumb Cake

I miss my Crumb Cake (Skippyjon Jones, of course)!  Today was supposed to be our first soccer game (his first to play, my first to coach in a long time).  He is at Amanda's, and because it got rained out I didn't get to see him.  So between that and the Thomas the Train stories below, I got to thinking about little Billy and the Billy-isms I'll always remember.  Like:

Instead of "Chaaarrrrggge", he'd yell "Georrrrgggge!"

One day he asked for Barbie-yuke sauce (barbeque sauce).

When he was three, anytime something bad happened "a dinosaur did it."

When he'd get excited, he'd make a humming/growling noise.

He introduced himself to everyone: "I'm Billy Hamilton, and I have brown shoes."  Now it is "I'm Billy.  Know what I'm going to be?  A Scientist!"

When you ask if he needs help, he is so independent and says "I'm fine.  or Got it, got it, got it."

On autumn Sundays, he'd always nap on Daddy's lap while watching football.

I was video taping him once and I asked him to say "cheese", and he got up and ran to the fridge for some cheese!

I'll have to keep adding to this as I think of them!  Feel free to add any you remember in the comments below-it is amazing how fast I forget all of these funny stories and I want him to have them to read someday!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

When Billy was two, he LOVED trains.  Then he loved Papa's truck.  Recently, I think he wakes up every morning just hoping that today will be the day we take a plane to Disneyland (despite my repeated explanations that we have to wait until his sister is bigger-which means that if I mention she is growing even once, it must be time to go!)  I was happy that he moved on from trains to dinosaurs.  Frankly, I was happy not noticing every time the train went by; however, a two year old is sure to bring it directly to your attention.  Oh, and the wooden train whistle!  Boy, have I NOT missed that!

Guess what?!  Surprise!  Alexa LOVES trains.  And Papa's truck (and Papa and any big piece of equipment that reminds her of Papa!)  And today she noticed her first plane in the sky.  She loved that too!  Why, oh why, did I think that because she is a little princess that we'd get to skip it? Not that it is all bad.  I could just go without the Northern Pacific running through my house and I had better find that whistle before she does!  Today we stopped into a thrift shop on a book-hunt and the woman at the check-out was buying this GIANT ride-on Thomas the Train engine and car (you know, the $200 one that Billy begged us for for years).  Thank goodness I had decided to grab dinner first, or we would have gotten there just in time for Alexa to cement herself on the seat and never let go.  As it was, she walked up to the lady in line, sat right down to look at it, and spent a good couple of minutes entertaining everyone with her version of the Thomas song and saying "Please, mine?!" and trying to butter me up with kisses (her new ploy to get what she wants.)

She may be a clone of her big brother, but she'll still always be our little princess! 

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me

Alexa got to go to her second Montana Shakespeare in the Parks performance on Labor Day.  She was very good and loved the fighting scenes.  She provided a little entertainment herself dancing to the drums and reenacting the death scenes by pretending to get killed by a sword and saying "ouch, ouch" (must be all of that pirate play with her brother).  As dark as that is, at least she's getting an early understanding of the tragedy of Shakespeare! 

aych-eye-kay-kay-elmo-pee (H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P)

Billy's been working on the alphabet for three years now, and hopefully we'll get it conquered in the next year.  I'm not sure Elmo Pee is acceptable in kindergaten!  For the last couple of days we've been working on a town-wide scavenger hunt for letters.  The result is this poster - he's pretty proud of it! 

Like a good big brother, Billy is teaching his sister letters as well!  She joined right in the fun today as we drew S's on the dry erase boards.  She'd color her "letter", say "E" "A" "O", jump up and down and cheer, then run over to Mommy for a kiss!  I'm sure Dodger was a little confused by all the senseless jumping around and cheering going on in the preschool this morning.

Bugs, Ice Cream, and Bill Nye - Billy's Trifecta

Most days we keep ourselves occupied with pretty simple fun.  Yesterday is a good example:

Great-grandma Barbara and family friend Marji came to visit.  Then Grandma Barbara took us out for ice cream at the Cowboy Coffee Haus.  Of course, the kids loved it!  We checked out some Bill Nye the Science Guy (for Billy) and Elmo (for Alexa) movies from the library.  Then we went to Grandma and Papa's to catch some bugs and watch Bill Nye.  Alexa loves to try to sing everything, and she ran around the house singing "Guy Guy Guy Guy!"

Billy's First Day of Preschool 2010

Today we kicked off Billy's year of home-schooled preschool!  This week is all about bugs and spiders and he's pretty excited!

Alexa likes to be a big kid and play in the preschool, too!  I can't say she's too far away from being able to join right in!

We are going to have a GREAT year!