Swimmers

Ryan is starting to enjoy his swim lessons. He has been giving me his big lip a lot during lessons, but this month he has started to smile and laugh. I think his fear of the water is starting to go away. Miss Patty was a great teacher for David and she is doing a great job with Ryan too. Ryan's favorite part of lessons might still be setting all the chairs up and playing train while David has his lesson. He pretends to give me a ticket and then yells "All Aboard". David's doing great too. He's spending some time in the big pool and working on his back stroke. He really doesn't need lessons at this point, but he's having fun and his friend from preschool, Sam, is taking lessons at the same time. This week at preschool they had to write a sentence about a friend from class. David wrote "I would save Sam if he were drowning." Same wrote the same thing. The preschool teachers wondered what was going on until we explained they were in swim class together.

Maple Harvest at Shavers Creek

We went to the Maple Syrup Festival at Shaver's Creek on Sunday. All you can eat pancakes! Yum! Ryan loved the syrup, but David prefers Log Cabin. He gave his pancakes to Ryan. We learned about migrating hawks and salamanders. They boys did a really good job sitting and listening for the whole 30 minutes. She kept the hawk in its crate until the very end of the presentation. The little boy beside David kept answering her questions about migrating animals by shouting "Giraffe!". Not so sure they migrate. :-) We walked along the trail to learn about how maple syrup is made. The first stop took us back to the 1800's. The actors were all PSU students. They get a college credit for participating in this festival at Shaver's Creek. After the tour we went to the frog pond and found some salamanders.

"I NOT TIRED!" (Maybe you are!)

Ryan is NEVER tired. He tells us all the time "I NOT TIRED!" He stopped taking naps when he was 18 months old. Today's nap was a surprise. I found him sound asleep in the family room with his pillow pet and psu blanket. I had to capture this very rare moment. I thought it was cute that he brought his pillow pet and blanket downstairs.

Dinosaur Movie Playdate

We had a Dinosaur Movie Playdate this weekend. We invited David and Ryan's friends to Videon for pizza and then watched the Disney Dinosaur movie in the theatre. The kids all sat together to eat their pizza.

After lunch we got the theatre ready and they all ran in to find their seats when I said "Showtime!". They were so excited. They each had a popcorn. They all looked so little in the big chairs.

The little ones lasted about 20 minutes in the theatre room. It was really dark in there. We had a dinosaur craft for them to do. They colored in a dinosaur coloring book and then decorated a foam frame. Ryan liked the craft better than the movie.

Kelsey and David helped Paul organized the letter stickers in alphabetical order.

We had dinosaur toys and puzzles for the kids to play with after the movie. It was a fun afternoon with friends. After their friends left, David showed Kelsey how to get the Mountain Dew from the soda machine. I think that turned out being Kelsey and Kaitlyn's favorite part of the day! :-) I'm sure Shelby and Bob were very pleased to have the girls delivered home full of Mountain Dew!

St. Patrick's Day

We had a really beautiful St. Patrick's Day! We spent the afternoon at the park enjoying the sunshine. Ryan was so excited to go to the park. I tried to convince them to play on the swingset, but Ryan kept repeating "No, we drive to park!"

The boys loved the "spider web" climber at the park. David was able to climb all the way to the top. So brave!

After burning all that energy we headed to McDonalds for Shamrock Shakes! Yum!

Alphabet Afternoon

We spent the afternoon putting together an alphabet train. David was really into

it and kept telling me he was ready for kindergarten with all this alphabet practice. Ryan was a little bit frustrating to David. Ryan kept pulling the letters apart and David had to redo his train.

This was how Ryan felt about our afternoon project. I see this face quite a bit.

Very Happy David with his alphabet train.

Basketball Show

David and Ryan have been very interested in basketball this year. We've gone to lots of Penn State games and they've been playing with their little tykes hoop all winter. We made a Basketball theatre to announce the scores of the men's Big Ten Tournament on Friday. They used puppets to tell me the score of the games. A month of basketball!

Rocket's Red Glare

Rocky joined our family on Tuesday night. He's 2 years old and full of energy and lots of love. We always knew we wanted to add an Irish Terrier to our family and he has been a wonderful addition. The boys love having him at home during the day and have been playing lots of basketball with Rocky providing some tough defensive moves (sometimes knocking David over!) :-).

He is non-stop action. It was really difficult to get a picture of him standing still. He's very interested in the squirrels that live in the woods behind our house.

Twix has been happy with the addition too. She plays with Rocky and then when she's had enough finds a place to lay down. Twix and Henry are both 9 now. I always thought Twix was nuts, but after a week with Rocky I think she is very calm in her older age.

Henry has yet to meet Rocky. He's been away enjoying a vacation at the Nana Sharon Spa. He'll be in for a big surprise when he gets home. I think he'll be entertained by Rocky's energy.

Lobsters

Our Mothers & More group toured Red Lobster this week. It was a really great tour. We watched a video that showed all the ocean animals and then the kids got to get up close and touch a live lobster. Two years ago when we did this tour David was terrified of the lobster.
http://davidplusryan.blogspot.com/2009/01/lobster-attack.html

The kids had to wear hats and gloves in the kitchen to tour the wash room and the freezers. The big freezer was a huge hit with all the kids.

Each kid got to bread their own shrimp and then they gave all the kids fried shrimp and french fries for lunch at the end of the tour. Yummy Fun!