King Calvin and his Kingdom of Jayhawkian

Calvin has been working very hard the past couple of months on a castle project at school and this week it got to come home!  Introducing the Kingdom of Jayhawkian, constructed by King Calvin!  Notice the moat, castle walls, look-out towers, several outbuildings, and the red & blue castle in the middle.  He had to design his kingdom and carefully measure each piece for the buildings before gluing them together and painting the entire masterpiece.

 The castle has a functioning door for the king to enter through.

 My proud boy with his project!

 Oh, and how could I forget his favorite part?? In his hand is "Super Striker", protector of Jayhawkian against enemy attack.  This catapult can send a marshmallow, er I mean cannon, flying at least 20 feet!

 I see lots of marshmallows on my floor in the future. Although Violet really likes to eat marshmallows, so she may keep the cannons cleaned up.

 Prince Oliver yells, "Bombs Away!" as the Super Striker strikes again.

Great work, King Calvin.  Your castle turned out beautifully!

Thinking of Grandpa

These mugs we got from Grandma Ruth's house last summer have become the favorites for drinking around our house.  Every time I see the kids drink out of them, I can't help but think of my Grandpa (Elmer) Deterding.  I picture him at the Corder Picnic where he most likely purchased them (correct me if I'm wrong, Aunt Karla) sitting around with his buddies in the beer garden.  I'm sure these mugs are as old as me, and I think it's so cool that his memory can live on, even though my children never got to meet him in person.

 Without any prompting, Oliver even did my Grandpa's famous "Aaaah" after he swallowed.  I think Oliver has some Grandpa Elmer in him.  And that ornery look Calvin is giving?  I'm sure that's Grandpa Jerry from the Dwyer side.

(Just to set the record straight:  They are drinking milk out of their beer mugs.)

Eagles Day

Yesterday, the boys and I were able to participate in the "Eagles Day" held in Lawrence and we had a great time!  Grandma Jo was kind enough to keep the girls, so it was kind of a bonus "Just Me & My Boys" Day!

There was so much to do!  We started out at the craft tables, where the boys made hats and take-home eagles out of toilet paper rolls.

 Then they went fishing in Clinton Lake, as Eagles of course, swooping down to catch their prey.

 My least favorite part of the day was when they wanted to handle some of the slimy creatures in attendance.

 They got to interact with this beautiful barn owl. . .

 . . . and then pretend to be owls themselves.  They learned that barn owls have heart-shaped faces to help funnel sound to their ears, and they can hunt completely by sound!  Which is exactly what the boys are doing in this picture.  The owl masks are covering their eyes completely and they are trying to catch the gerbil just by listening -- they did pretty well!

 Next up: Button making!  The boys LOVED this and would have made a dozen buttons if I'd let them.

Here are the button magnets they made for themselves (Calvin on the left and Oliver on the right).

 They also were sweet enough to make keychains for Russ and me.  Here is my beautiful keychain courtesy of Oliver; Russ is already using his awesome deer hunter keychain Calvin made him. Didn't they do a great job??

They each got to smash a penny, Calvin chose the eagle scene and Oliver chose the "Corp of Engineers" symbol.

There were all kinds of nature exhibits with plenty of furs and skins to feel. 

And plenty of instructions not to purchase things like alligator skin boots or fur coats, etc.

 Oh no!  The shark is getting my Calvin!

Our final activity of the day was dissecting owl pellets.  This is something I did in elementary school when I was probably about Calvin's age.  We were required to reconstruct the skeleton of whatever animal our owl had eaten.  As it turns out, my pellet contained an entire nest of mice with itty-bitty little bones and I painstakingly had put all of the bones together to build my baby mouse skeleton.  Russ, a couple years ahead of me in school, had also been required to dissect a pellet and his owl had eaten a full-grown mole.  He wasn't quite as meticulous in his work, but had a few large bones put together for his project.  Well, when it was done, he threw his in the trash can, and I asked him if I might take it home.  Of course, he didn't care as he was going to throw it away anyway.  My mom kept both my and Russ' owl pellet dissections for many years, and when we ended up dating (and eventually getting married), she laughed that we could have "his and her" owl pellets at our wedding.

 

 The boys each found the skull and several larger bones in their pellets.  They weren't quite as interested in it as I was.  Maybe we'll try again when they get a little older.  I think all of the fur and hair kind of freaked them out and the idea that it was owl 'puke', and Oliver actually said, "This is kind of disgusting."  You just never know with my boys!

 Look at all of those tiny teeth in Calvin's discovery.  How could they not think this is cool?!?  Oh well.

 We had such a fun time at Eagles Day!  Look at my sweet little baby eagles in the nest!

JM&MB See Frozen

With Monday being Martin Luther King Day, the boys were out of school, which means a Just Me & My Boys Day!  We started out the morning by making a visit to U.S. Toy.   They checked out the fire truck outside the store. . .

. . . and then it was time to check out the goods INSIDE!  When I was a kid, my mom would take me here and give me a dollar to spend however I liked! It was one of my favorite things to do. So, prices have gone up a little since I was a girl, but you can still get quite a lot for $5, which is what each boy received as we embarked on this shopping adventure.  As we walked through the front doors, they couldn't believe how big the store was!

 No time was wasted as they found their way up and down the aisles full of thousands upon thousands of plastic made-in-China treasures. And so many decisions to be made!  I very sneakily made them use their math minds to figure out how much money they had left to spend.  With each item they put in the basket, they had to tell me what their remaining balance was from the original $5.

 No, they didn't buy the basketball hats, but they would have been pretty cool for Calvin's basketball birthday party last weekend, don't you think?

 They even found something they knew Violet would LOVE: a guitar lip-gloss keychain! If that doesn't have Violet written all over it, I don't know what does.

 

They found some awesome puppets (no, not in the $5 budget, unfortunately) and put on quite the puppet show for me.  Highly entertaining.  Almost made me want to drop the $30 to buy them.

 After the moose and elephant show, Oliver found this chameleon puppet, and it may have been the coolest puppet ever.  You could move his eyes all around (and even make them pop out or pull in) and you could control his tongue!  I loved watching Oliver's expressions as he brought the chameleon to life.

 So we left with some fabulous sticky snakes and spiders, some jumping putty, stretchy monkeys, a couple of sparkly slap bracelets, shooting rockets, a high flying glittery bouncy ball, and I'm sure a few other things I'm not remembering at the moment. The boys proudly carried their loot out of the store.

We left U.S. Toy and headed to the theater to watch the movie everyone's been talking about.  I wasn't even sure "Frozen"would still be in the theaters since it's been out since Thanksgiving, but it was!  As I was buying the tickets, I realized that this is the first movie I've ever taken my boys to.  They've seen movies with Grandmas and Aunt Joy, but I have never actually been to the theaters with them.  So this was an exciting day! (Doesn't Oliver look excited??)

I think one of the reasons we never see movies in the theater is because of how ridiculously expensive it can be! I was happy to discover a theater close by that does $5 matinees, which is a little more manageable.

The benefit to waiting until a movie has been in the theater for 3 months before seeing it?  You have the place to yourself!  As it turned out, one of Calvin's best friends and his family came to the same show, which was really fun.  But the theater never filled up, by any means.

I always try to get at least one picture of me and my boys on our special days.  I'm not always all that successful.  This was definitely one of those "less than successful" attempts.  Oliver was in charge of the selfie on my phone and I'm not sure what happened with the resolution; oh well.

We loved the movie!  We were also pretty hungry once it was over.  I asked where they wanted to eat, and Calvin requested someplace where he could get an apple.  Oliver suggested McDonalds with their apple slices, but I politely refused and suggested Panera instead, which they were agreeable to.  They enjoyed their ham and cheese sandwich, and Calvin enjoyed his apple.

The boys had a couple more requests for our JM&MB day once we got home.  Calvin had a science experiment he wanted to do from a dinosaur book he received for Christmas.

(And of course, they had to play with some of their slimy new toys.)

Oliver really wanted to make these "Peanut Butter Oatmeal Dream Bars". . . YUMMMM.

They turned out every bit as yummy as advertised.  Great choice, Oliver!

I was thinking back to our JM&MB day on MLK day from 2 years ago.  That was the day after we learned there would be an Evelyn joining our family :).  It was also the day we should've been in the hospital with Violet recovering from open-heart surgery, but instead we were continuing our quarantine as her surgery had been postponed.  Her surgery was actually on January 18, and I managed to let the day go by without even thinking about it this year.  I'll take that as a good sign that it is truly behind us!  So on this MLK Day, I was thankful for the time I got to spend with my boys, and especially thankful for healthy children.  Quite a bit has changed in our house since that day 2 years ago, and I couldn't be more grateful to have four healthy kids today!