You've Had A Birthday Shout Hooray!

Happy 3rd Birthday to Issac. His birthday was last Thursday. The Tuesday before that we had an impromptu family reunion in Fillmore with my family and we had a small birthday segment for him. He got a got imaginext dragon that walks. He loves it. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! He also got some fun little toy trucks from Great Grandma, THANKS!

Then last Saturday we had some of his neighbor friends over for a play date party. The kids played and made a thorough mess in the play room upstairs. I then fed them some lunch before letting them gorge on cake and ice cream. KC and I got him a Radio Flyer scooter and helmet and his friends gave him a cool batman toy. They would have played outside a bit afterwards but the weather turned almost winter like with the cold and rain.


Isaac is a fun and sensitive kid. He loves to play with his brother and he LOVES our cat Leo. He loves all animals for that matter even when they bite or scratch him. He still loves his duckies and often tells me how cute they are. He is still a cuddler which I love, but he is getting a little big for it. We're sure thankful for him and his energy in our family. I can't wait to see what kind of person he turns out to be.

Kindergarten Here We Come!

Yesterday we celebrated Andrew's 5th birthday with some of my family visiting. Last year we had a friend party for his birthday, this year was just a family party. Grandma and Papa came from Southern Utah to visit for the day and they brought Andrew's cousin Dean with them. We had a great time bowling. Andrew was old enough to handle the ball himself although he couldn't get much speed on the ball. Suprisingly Isaac didn't run off more than once and was a good little boy. I would have never thought the day would come. We went home and had a pizza and chicken nuggets lunch with grapes and hawaiian punch. All Andrew's choice. We then had cake and cake batter flavored ice cream and finally he got to open presents. KC and I got him a new bike since we sorta broke his old one trying this and the old one was a garage sale special. We'll have to work on the no training wheels thing this summer.
Now that Andrew has turned 5 he is quite anxious to go to kindergarten. I feel bad having to explain to him that he has to wait 6 months before he can go. I think he understands though. In the meantime we spend a little time each day doing pages from a Kindergarten workbook.

Happy Birthday Andrew!

Bling Duckie

Meet, Bling Duckie. It was created when three Isaac phenomenon's merged together.

1. Isaac's love of rubber ducks, especially this one of late, who he calls "baby bird."

2. For some reason I had a bag of plastic easter eggs among my Christmas decorations. Isaac found them and started pulling them apart and playing with them of course.

3. Isaac loves to get into my bedroom when I fail to lock it. His favorite thing to do is get into my jewelry box and put things in his pockets.

Thus, Bling Duckie was born. Doesn't the egg make a great rubber duckie helmet?

Camera Fun

After complaining enough to KC about our camera we started looking at different models and prices. We gravitated towards the SLR-like digital camera group. They aren't true SLRs since you can't fully remove the lens and they are smaller than an SLR but bigger than a typical point and shoot. The reason I like this class is that they tend to have powerful zooms, larger LCD screens, SLR features like hot shoes and the option of getting lens add-ons.

We settled on the Canon S5 IS after reading reviews checking picture and video samples and finding one on sale at Walmart for 50-100 dollars less than anywhere else. It has a flash hot shoe, you can add a wide angle or a telephoto lens to it and a 12x zoom. It has all the point and shoot features plus advanced camera features and a cool super macro feature.

The one thing we love is that the video quality is comparable to camcorder quality. I can even zoom while recording! The great thing for me is that the video is recorded on a memory card so I can just drag and drop the video onto my computer. EASY!

This was supposed to be a Christmas present for me from KC but since it was on sale and it was the last one we had to get it soon. I couldn't see any reason to let it sit in a box while we had family over for Thanksgiving, so we broke it in yesterday.

KC had the idea, after playing with the features of the camera for a while, to make a movie with the boys using their toys. He thought it would be fun to reenact a scene from The Incredibles. I imagined he and the boys would sort of record a play by following the sound and moving the toys around. Boy was I wrong. He went all movie guy on me and started composing shots and scenes to go exactly with the sound of the clip. The boys got bored after a while, but still watched what we were doing. After they went to bed we loaded the video onto the computer and edited it with Windows Moviemaker. So here's the family spoof on the opening scene of The Incredibles.

The IncrediToys


(if the video doesn't work let me know in the comments, it was working fine for me at first but won't play now.)

Duckies

So recently Isaac has ended up with his own little family of rubber ducks. He calls them his "duckies." The first ducks to join our family were the blue and the green one. I bought them for the boys for Easter this year since they needed something to play with in the tub other than the shark and the killer whale that doesn't swim anymore. Andrew thought his was okay and played with it, but Isaac stuck with his and soon adopted Andrew's blue one as well.

The next duck to join the little family was the larger yellow one. We were shopping at D.I. when I found the duck for Isaac to play with since he was getting bored. He was attached immediately and I couldn't bear to part him with the duck so we paid the $.50 and took him home.

Than, while we were in Hawaii, Grandma found out about his duck family and how important they were to him. (Even now he's upset because he saw the picture of his duckies and he can't find one.) While at Thanksgiving point Grandma bought him the tiny yellow baby duckie. That same week she brought the black duck which has sunglasses, horns, a puka shell necklace, and the word AXE on his chest. Uncle Rich had this at home and she figured he'd want Isaac to have it. He's on a mission and so doesn't have much say in the matter. Anyway his flock quickly grew in one week. This last week he added one more prize duckie. Grandma bought him a key chain duckie about the size of the baby yellow one. It's not a rubber duckie, but rather it is electronic and brought a big smile to Isaac's face. You press a button on it's side and a LED in it's mouth lights up and it says "Qua-Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack."

At least two duckies accompany him to bed every night. I let him take a ducky on car trips and even let him take the quieter small duckie to church today. His flock is so large that when he tries to carry them all, one inevitably falls and when he reaches to pick it up another falls and so on until he gets upset. So now we have a duckie bucket for him to carry them all together. What a cute little family.

Fun and Educational Toys

I started writing an email to share some links for some great toys with my sisters and mom, but then I thought, I could post this on my blog. So here I am.

Here are some toys that I found that you might like for your kids. (or grandma can buy for the kids). Melissa and Doug toys are really nice, well made toys. Andrew already has some Melissa and Doug puzzles that he likes. For some reason I like the idea of toys made of wood so here are the links to a website with some of the toys I liked. There are a ton more great toys there and this isn't the only place to buy them.

Standard Unit Blocks
These blocks are just like the ones that KC and his brother's played with as kids, we have a big bag full of them. Andrew loves to line them up to make a road or buildings.




Cutting Food Box
I thought this toy is a great idea. Velcro holds the slices together and they use the "knife" to separate them.





Lace & Trace Pets
This seems like it would be good for times when they need to sit still for a while like in church or on car trips.






Magnetic Responsibility Chart
This isn't a toy, but it seems it would be very useful. I've been trying to think of a way I can make some sort of job chart for Andrew that would have graphical representations of chores since he can't read yet. So this sort of does that for me and better.








Shape, Model, and Mold Play Set
I guess you can get versions of these all over, but I liked the wood thing and how it seems like little toddler's fingers could use them easily.







See & Spell
No not the old electronic game. I really like this because it combines a puzzle feel with letters and pictures. This is one I am seriously considering getting Andrew