Thomas Turns Two!

Making the cake.
I really do keep shorts on him, he just ditches them in one of the bathrooms and I'm too lazy to go find them.

Pizza, Thomas' favorite!

Opening presents. He got lots of cars. He has to have one in his hands at all times. :)

The kids went to a friend's house so I got to have time with just Thomas where we decorated his tractor cake together.

Spencer's Talent Show

One day last week Spencer wanted to perform for me and wanted me to put him on the blog. He sang several songs and played several on the piano, but I'll just post one of each. He's very enthusiastic about music, you can tell by listening to him belt out the songs in primary. :) He loves playing the piano too and is found sitting at it the majority of the day. He's learning to read music, but he mostly plays by ear. He can play any song out of the Children's Songbook and hymn book, several with both hands. He also loves the songs that are stored on our digital piano. He loves to turn the right hand off and play it with the piano accompanying the left hand. Here is the one he learned this week.



(Oops, these got put on in the wrong order, but I can't fix it and I'm not going to reload them, so oh well.)
Spencer also has a prophet fetish right now. He's learned to sing many of the prophet songs out of the two hymn books including the sixth Article of Faith (which has the word Prophets in it) and almost all the verses to "Follow the Prophet." His favorites are this apostles song he learned when President Monson first became prophet (I'll send you the video clip if you want) and "Latter-Day Prophets." He also loves to play the prophet and apostle match games on friend.org or the card game he has.

Hit the Books!

Madalyn and Spencer are excited about their new school supplies. Everyone got their own color of ruler, mechanical pencils, notebook, and clipboard. (On the clipboards we keep papers we're working on like spelling lists or notes for our weekly reports.)

Thomas' color is orange and he gets his pencil and scratch paper or notebook whenever he sees the other kids doing so. Welcome to school, Thomas!

He imitates the kids being very serious about their work.

Spencer learning French.

Thomas once again copies the kids hard at work. Excuse his lack of clothes. He had just been playing outside in the rain and came in soaked, so I took them off. Then he grabbed his spiral notebook and jumped up at the table with Spencer and Madalyn to do school.

We are off to a great start! I love our new schedule for this year and the more independent work the kids are doing. Our favorite part is the weekly history reports. Each child picks something from the weekly topic and then does an oral report on Friday. We hang up the written ones (with pictures) on the history wall. The first week we studied the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas. The second week we studied famous and not-so-famous explorers.

Odds and Ends

This is not an exciting update or anything, just a few miscellaneous pictures from June and July that I never posted.

Potty-training Thomas
I tried to find a good week to potty-train between all of our trips, the pageant (didn't want to worry about having to use porta poties all week), the 2 weeks of having the flu, etc. He's pretty much all trained now and doesn't even want to use the potty chair anymore. He's loved it, but who wouldn't with 4 older siblings cheering for him all the time. :)

The kids wanting their pictures taken in their pajamas.

Now they're wearing mine and Nathan's! Silly kids.

Playing in the rain.
I love living where we get lots of rain in the summer.