While I Was in Paris

My mom introduced the boys to water beads.  The boys loved them! 

Water beads starts off as little pellets and when submerged in water they grow.  John had a good time watching them grow by making water dots on paper each hour.

Look at those eyes.

Okay, back to the beads.

The beads come in all different colors.  You can buy them at almost any craft store.  They come in the dried pellet form and in jars with them already about this size.

The cool thing is that if these beads are left out to dry they will go back to in the little tiny pellet forms.

My mom told the boys they could play with them however they wanted.  Apparently this is what Anders thinks is cool.

Gus made a camera and wanted my mom to take a picture of him taking a picture. 

My mom started a book that we still need to finish.  I thank my mother every time I pick up that darn thing.  It is an incredibly boring book.  But somehow this book managed to win a Newberry.  Gus picked this book because it is about a dog.  Go figure.  And because it is about a dog this kid needs to finish it.  I've never been so determine to teach this kid to read to himself.

The boys also enjoyed building puzzles with my dad.  This is actually 3 puzzles in 1.

Grandma lets them eat in the living room.  Grandma is so cool.

The Fiene boys couldn't be in Texas without visiting the Blaschkes. They had fun swimming.

The boys also had fun hanging out with Uncle Mark.  Gus is like Mark's mini-me so I love when they get to see each other.  Mark and Gus "get" each other.

John's Surprise Visitor

I must start off by saying that the length between my blog posts does not reflect the amount of material I have to blog about.  It seems the more pictures I have to go through, the more time seems to fly by between posts.  I am happy to say that, while I am behind, I'm only a month behind.  And, that is a big accomplishment for me.

Back to the blog post at hand.  The week my parents were in town, John's class was having a field trip to the Shedd Aquarium.  I put my mom's name down as a chaperon  but her name was not drawn out of the hat. This, of course, made John sad.  Which made John's teacher sad. She felt so bad that she emailed me to see if my mom could come in to read to the class one of the days she was in town.  Since my parents were arriving on a Monday morning while John was already in school we set up a plan to have my mom in the classroom before the kids came back from lunch.  I figured John would be pretty happy about this surprise.

Happy and surprised was he.

 My mom picked out some good books to read to the kids.

 John was one happy camper.  And so was Grandma.

 Mason, our next door neighbor, wanted his picture taken with John too.

 And, of course, I had to grab a picture with John's teacher.  She bawked just a bit because she hadn't done her hair that morning.  But she is still beautiful.

Soon everyone in John's class wanted their picture taken with him.  Everyone loves John.  So we just took a big class picture.  Since I don't know all of the kids or their parents, I figured it was safer to forgo posting that picture.

It was a wonderful surprise.  Thanks to my mom for reading and to Ms. Georgis for having this wonderful idea.

A Little Reading

This just makes me happy.  It isn't just that John likes to read.  It's that he loves to read and loves even more to read to his brothers.

If only these kids would be like this all day.  But inevitably they wind up wrestling on the floor and someone ends up crying.  Then 5 minutes later they will be reading again.  Just with tear-stained, red faces.  Reading and wrestling go together in the Fiene house.

Uncle Mark

My brother Mark is pretty cool.  He is a very busy person trying to keep up with his business, All Signs and Tint, I think he and his business partner Ryan work at least 6 days a week.  Despite his busy work schedule he has always made time for the boys.  And not just for a quick 5 minutes, but for some real quality play time.  The whole time he is over at my parents house he is throwing a ball, playing with trains, reading a book or having silly conversations with John and Gus.  The boys just love their time with Uncle Mark.  I'm very happy they are able to spend time with him.  I have fond memories of my parents dropping my brother and I off at my Aunt Diane's house for some quality time.  I loved spending the night with her every year and it wasn't just because of the pound of bulk candy she bought us.  Maybe when my brother buys a house the boys can spend the night with him...hint, hint.  I'll even let Mark use my car to transport my children....Mark is a little particular about his car.  You become a little less particular about your car when you have kids.

 Lots of books were read by Uncle Mark.

 Lots of nose picking was done by John.

 After John was done with his nose he thought Uncle Mark's could be cleaned out.  **John isn't actually picking Mark's nose...it just looks like it.  I felt this must be mentioned as not to let people think I actually encourage my children to pick other people's noses...or their own.**

I love that my children have great relationships with all of their aunts and uncles.  They are very, very lucky boys.