The Mindstormers

Thursday night Ty spent some time at night building a robot that holds a pen with dad. While they were building they came up with their team name "the Mindstormers" (like transformers since they transform things).

They didn't get it completed so this morning they met up again, this time with New team member Kevin. They completed a robot that holds a marker and then after a basic lesson in geometry, Tyler was in charge of writing a program.

His goal was to get the robot to draw a circle. It took several attempts and he became dubbed the team "observer" since he was in charge of observing what was going wrong and troubleshooting. Eventually they got it pretty close!! And Ty wanted a video to share of their creation and his program.

Ignore the mess please in the background!! We had a lazy Friday and this room is just a mess.

After seeing Ty's program, Kevin sat down with dad and wrote his first program complete with a roar and some karate sounds. :)

Now he's brainstorming how to use the pen with his robot. We will see what he figures out. A fun lazy morning here as The Mindstormers work.

Thirty week belly pictures

Adam took some thirty week belly pictures for me!  Hard to believe that we are already at the 30 week mark!!  Time is really moving quickly this time around as we try to keep up with the boys and work on getting ready for this little girl.  Hard to believe that we are getting so close to meeting her!  

Snow Day!!

Today was a snow day for T and K.  They eventually convinced me to go outside and play even though it was super cold outside.  I lasted about two whole minutes before retreating back inside.  They worked hard moving some snow around and then decided that it was very cold too and they needed some hot chocolate!  

The joy of a snow day besides getting to play in the snow and drink hot chocolate is that we treat it like a weekend day.  This means video game time!  This morning I listened to K and T try to turn on the t.v. to get started by shouting out spells. I thought it was cute that they had a wand and kept trying different ways to use the wand while shouting out spells.  T eventually gave up and just asked me to help him turn on the tv. 

Jacob's First Lost Tooth

About 18 months ago Jacob fell walking through the kitchen and hit his mouth on a dog bowl.  His tooth bled a lot and the dentist told us that odds were high that his tooth would turn grey.  He also gave us some things to look for to tell if he has an infection.

We took him to the dentist every six months after and the dentist was starting to feel very confident last August.  Yes, his tooth was grey but no abscess or other sign of infection.  Well, come January he had his next regular checkup and sure enough they found he had developed an abscess high up on his gum over his injured tooth.

Jacob let his dentist take some xrays and sure enough he had developed quite the infection.  The advice was to take the tooth out as quickly as possible.  So, the next day, Jacob went in to get his tooth pulled.

Before we went I took a few pictures of him because I wanted some last shots of him with all of his baby teeth.  

Adam and I went to the appointment with Jacob.  We figured that with as queasy as we both get at the dentist, we should work together to help soothe Jacob.  When we got there though the dental assistant asked us to just let her take Jacob and wait in the lobby.  He was not happy and left in her arms crying.  We got a report back a little later that he was perfectly happy.  They turned on cartoons and gave him some nitrous oxide and all was great.

Afterwards he was in some pain and was for a few days.  But below is a picture of him waiting in the car at school pickup.  He was excited to show off his missing tooth to Tyler.  And Kevin and Tyler were anxious to see if the tooth fairy would come (the dentist gave us back his tooth in a small treasure chest).  Sure enough, the tooth fairy did visit him.  He didn't get money because he is to small (which Tyler thought made sense) and got two rolls of Smartie candies (which all three boys thought was awesome).

It's now been a week and he is doing much better.  He had a few rough nights of pain but actually slept through the night the last two nights!!  And he loves telling you about how he has lost a tooth and the tooth fairy came.

Pine Wood Derby

Tyler had his first Cub Scout Pinewood Derby the Saturday before Kevin's birthday.  Adam was out of town, so Grandma Thimmesch and I got the fun of going for the two hours it lasted.  He had a dad in his den help him cut his car at a workshop, and then he worked really hard to paint it himself.  His car was Harry Potter versus Voldemort, which is pretty much perfect since he has become obsessed with Harry Potter.

He was pretty excited to go the day of, but after registration the night before he was upset and worried.  Looking at everyone else's cars and hearing that his was underweight (and I didn't know what to do to fix it) he felt as if he would have the worst car ever.

Thankfully, the day of he was full of excitement and once there was super excited to be with his friends.  His car managed six different rounds and placed anywhere from 3rd to 6th in each round.  We were very shocked and he was very excited that he wasn't always last.  After the race when he got his car back we discovered that someone had glued quarters to the bottom of his car!!

He was super shocked and I couldn't have been more grateful to whatever kind soul did this.  I tried asking around but no one would fess up, so I couldn't thank the awesome person that helped give our son such a great first experience.  Hopefully word got back to them about how much fun Tyler had and how much we appreciated their kindness!

Tyler and Kevin were pretty much on their own for the two hours.  There are no pictures of Kevin because once he was allowed to sit with the cub scouts and watch the races close up, he never moved.  Jacob ran around and hence some silly pictures as Grandma and I worked to keep him entertained.

Kevin's Fifth Birthday!!

It was really hard accepting that our baby boy Kevin is turning five!  I think this hit us harder as parents than having our oldest turn seven.  Something about turning five just seems old.  Like he's really a kid now rather than a toddler or preschooler.

Kevin could absolutely not wait for his birthday.  He wanted a Minecraft birthday cake with lots of spiders and bad guys.  This is a video game that he plays with Tyler on the Xbox.  He just loves making buildings or other things and then filling those buildings with spiders or bad guys to do karate on them.  So, for his birthday, this is what we attempted.

Adam was in Arizona for a work conference so Grandma Thimmesch came out to help keep us company and have some fun. She was also a lifesaver when it came to designing his cake and helping me get a bunch of craft projects done for various school events coming up.

The day he turned five, we took a few quick pictures.  He wanted pictures of lots of different faces.  So, we took a lot of pictures and he made all the faces he could.  Here are a few that we took.

He really had a rough day as much as I didn't want him to, but he was tired and exhausted from a couple of late nights and early mornings.  We started off with chocolate chip pancakes in the shapes of "K" and "5" and Grandma found some candles so we could all sing him happy birthday.

Around lunch time we all headed out to the airport to go get daddy. Kevin was melting at this point, so he earned a special walk with me into the airport so we could talk about behavior.  That time alone seemed to help him a lot, and the excitement of getting to see daddy come down the escalators was great.  Especially when he realized that they matched with red sweaters!

Everyone was hungry and tired, so daddy took us out to lunch before heading home for naps and quiet time.  We went to Red Robin because Kevin's lunch request was french fries and ice cream.  Since it was his birthday, we figured why not and off we went.  His brothers were pretty excited because they scored some ice cream too since it was Kevin's requested lunch.  

His present requests this year cracked me up.  He really wanted a roll of easel paper, 72 pencils from Office Depot that he saw a couple of weeks before, and some crayons.  For weeks all I heard about was whether I had already purchased or would be purchasing his pencils.  I really thought this kid was losing it but we got him the pencils he kept asking for.  It turns out that they are his new best toy.  Every day he plays with them like they are action figures and refuses to let us sharpen them.  

He hasn't done much with the easel paper as he keeps unrolling and then rerolling it, but he tells me he is just thinking up his plan. So time will tell what he comes up with.  But for now, he is thrilled with his pencils and it was such an oddball request I thought I would write about it.

For dinner we had pizza and cake!  He didn't have a party per se this year but we did invite two of his friends over so they could play.  It had been ages since we had seen them and he really wanted to play with them.  All of us adults were just exhausted but thankfully the kids were able to entertain themselves for the most part.  All five of them just play so well together!

And now pictures of his cake lighting and his cake.  He loved it and I am glad he got the theme he wanted.  And lots of creepy spiders.  :)