Balls, Legos, and a Little Fixing

 

My original plan for last week's family night was to play some (easy) games.

I got out the games during the afternoon and let Henry examine them before we even tried to play.

The checkerboard was useless - he just wanted to build a tower.  

Chutes and Ladders showed promise - until he found the spinner again and didn't stop spinning it for about 5 minutes.

We're not ready for "rule" games yet.

 So we went outside to play.  We played with the bat and balls, and after I reminded Henry to keep his eyes on the ball, he was hitting them half-way across the yard!  It was hilarious to see how intently he focused on the ball before swinging.

Doug got a workout after we got the giant tennis ball out - once Henry saw him kick it up high, that's all he wanted Dad to do for the next 20 minutes.

 

This weekend we put sheetrock up in the basement for the toy/train/farm room.  I don't know who's more excited about it - Doug or Henry.

Please ignore the high-water pants I subjected my son to.

And here's proof that he will be an expert with tools in the near future.

This Tuesday we hauled out the legos.  

That is definitely Doug's area of expertise.  

I build a box and called it a garage.

Doug built trucks.

Henry was kind enough to play with both.

Henry also walked on Dad's back. There may have been a little jumping.

On AND off of Dad's back.

I never did hear if his back felt better or worse after Henry "fixed" it.

Life As We Know It

Last night wasn't really family night, so we're going to do it tonight.  Doug called at 5:45 saying he still had one more delivery (he's usually home by 5:40), so Henry and I played memory and held off with supper until 6:30, then made our Not-so-Molten Chocolate cakes and enjoyed them with ice cream.

And got Every. Last. Drop. 

Henry pushed his truck around while bouncing like a frog, parked his trucks all in a row under the toe-kick of the cabinets, and then we went up to take a shower just as Dad got home at 7:30.  Not exactly the night I had planned, but we'll make it up tonight.

 Some of our highlights from this week were making an A for Alligator, singing the alphabet song 10 times, and reading "There's an Alligator Under My Bed" by Mercer Mayer about 5 times.  We've had it from the library before and by now Henry can "read" about half of it with me.  I got the idea from here, and hopefully we'll make it though the alphabet in the next few months.

 We watched the garbage truck come pick up (yet another) dumpster from our driveway.

 Dad moved his tools from his shop to our basement so he can actually get some use out of them again, and along with them came the wagon for the old Structo truck Henry discovered in our attic a few weeks ago.  I think Doug had grand plans of refinishing them, but this little boy doesn't care, as long as it's a truck.  It's current function is storage - Henry loves to shove all of his other cars and trucks in the "wagon."

 

And I just need to point out that Henry's as enthusiastic about salad as he is ice cream. Makes his momma proud.

Our New Tradition

I don't know how many times in the past years I've thought about or talked about our family doing something together.  We spend a lot of time together, but even though we may be in the same room, we often aren't doing anything together, and the TV is usually on.

While I will never convince Doug that unplugging the TV for a month, or even a week, would be a fun experiment, I really want us to spend some time together while really being together.  Starting this week, we have designated Tuesday night as "Family Night" - after supper is cleaned up, the next hour is for us to have fun being together.

Yesterday, Henry and I made Snickerdoodles during the afternoon.  (Look at his little tongue - shaking them around in the cinnamon and sugar takes so much concentration!)  We also each ate one, but mine was warm from the oven, and his was raw and quickly shoved in his mouth.

We also collected leaves and pressed them between waxed paper.  He loved collecting the leaves and had so many he could hardly hold onto them all, but was fascinated with our "picture" for about 25 seconds.  Oh well.

After supper, we headed outside and Henry got to ride to the park in his wagon - which doesn't happen near often enough for him.  There we quickly tried out every piece of equipment on the playground, played with a basketball, got a "bucking bronco" ride from Dad on the bee, and rolled down a hill and got dizzy and covered in leaves.  On the way home, Dad tried riding down the hill with Henry but didn't make it very far and still had to pull him most of the way home.  Inside, we finally got to enjoy the cookies, and for as much as I like to bake (and as much as I like cookies), I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I think this is the very first time I have ever had Snickerdoodles.