Kindy 500 and A Battle Wound

Today all of the kindergarteners at Calvin's school did a Kindy 500. They each made a car out of a cardboard box, showed their car in a parade around the halls, and then visited different classrooms to learn about U.S. landmarks.

He told me the design he wanted, and then I stayed up until 3am trying to implement it. It wasn't perfect, but he was excited. BUT THEN we got to school, and holy crap some of these parents are hardcore! There were massive planes, a firetruck with real flashing lights, and a shiny red Mario Kart. I wish I had known how awesome others' cars would be, and I would have stepped it up a lot. Anyway, his car was cute and he had fun.

His driver's license:

 

Autumn holding Nicky in the hall at school, waiting for the parade to start.

These are terrible pictures. They're screenshots from the video I took.

Calvin in the parade line-up:

 Stepping out of rank to high-five Autumn and Nicky. Love the big smile:

Crushing everyone in his path to get back to his exact spot in the line that left him behind while he was high-fiving:

Someday we're supposed to get pictures that the teachers took of them. If we do, I'll post those as well. He said "it was fun but kinda boring 'cause we didn't really race, we just learned stuff."

Right after school he had a birthday party for a kid from our neighborhood. They held the party at the church, so there were a million kids running around the gym area when I dropped him off.

When I went to pick him up, he was over on the side-line with the birthday boy's mom holding towels to his face. Calvin says someone ran into him while they were playing tag. It was hard to stop it, and it was an impressive amount of blood.

Driving home:

Before taking a bath:

  

He's fine and happy again. It was an eventful day for Calvin!

Selfies and Activity Days

 It's fun to see what pictures end up on the camera when the kids get a hold of my phone:

My new assignment at church is with the 11/12 year old girls. Today was the first activity that I was in charge of.

 We completed a goal of writing a letter of appreciation to someone special by making valentines.

 Then played cupid by shooting arrows at hearts for points. Some of them were excellent marksmen. Others struggled.

 The girls with their finished valentines. They were super creative, and I think everyone had a good time. It went well, and I'm glad it's over!

Slender Man

Calvin has recently become fixated on Slender Man. I have no idea what this means, except that Calvin says he is "horrifying and awesome at the same time." He has nightmares about him, but then he'll talk about him all day and draw pictures of him and dress like him. I have strange children.

This is what Slender Man looks like according to Google:

 

 And here's Calvin's version:

And the added "girl version" according to Autumn:

Creepy, right?

Then they sat down and drew pictures and made signs:

And Calvin posted signs like this all over the house:

 

The signs say creepy things. But he had so much fun when his dad was running around the house looking for them because he had to find them all before he died. He laughed uncontrollably.

I do not understand video games or Slender Man or 98% of the things Calvin gets excited about, but it's fun that he's so creative and into his weird stuff and loves, more than ANYTHING, to play strange themed games with his dad. I'm glad they have each other.

Here Kitty Kitty!

The Pennsylvania Grandparents gave Autumn a kitten for her birthday that moves and purrs and paws at things waved in front of its face. It's a cute cat (and my kind of pet!), but I didn't realize its true value until Nicky discovered it this week.

It's perfect (purrr-fect. ha!) because Nicky has about a ten second attention span when it comes to toys. But this one moves around enough that he'll get excited and chew on it and hug it until it stops moving. Then he'll play with it for a bit longer, and just as he's decided it's boring and he's ready to move on, it will start to purr and move again, which grabs his attention all over again. It's awesome! He'll play with the cat for 30 minutes at a time. Autumn loves the gift, but Nicky can't get enough of it! Thanks for the gift that keeps giving, Grandma and Grandpa!

Aysha's Baptism

This morning we got up early (for a Saturday) to go to Aysha's baptism. As we drove there, Calvin yelled, "I don't wanna get baptized. Please don't make me get baptized!" I said, "It's your choice. You don't have to unless you want to." To which he promptly responded, "okay, I choose no!"

During the baptism Grandma told a story of how the Holy Ghost is just like Pinocchio's friend Jiminy Cricket who helps us make good choices and can't go along with us into bad places. She asked why the Holy Ghost doesn't have a body. Autumn yelled, "probably because he's just a puppet!"

We haven't seen a lot of the family since Thanksgiving because everyone's been sick and busy, so it was a lot of fun to see everyone and spend time together. We took family pictures. I'll post one when I get a copy from Alicia (hint, hint!), and after the baptism we went to Grandma's house for brunch. The kids ended up staying and playing for hours because we couldn't drag them away. Grandma brought them home late in the afternoon, complete with felt hats she'd sewn for them because they asked her to. I need to get a picture of those as well. But until then, here are some of my favorites from the day:

Grandma and Grandpa with a bunch of little girls:

Calvin and Miriam playing with my phone:

The church clothes* the kids all got from Brown Grandma for Christmas:

 *Funny story. When Calvin opened his new suit on Christmas, he said, "What is this?" I said, "Grandma got you new Church clothes." He said, "Ugh. Didn't you tell her that I hate church?" So yeah, we're teaching our kids so well. I had asked Grandma for new church clothes because they needed them more than toys. She didn't get to be the fun grandma this year.

Cute/blurry picture that Calvin took of Nicky: