Sam continues to be creative with the boundaries of writing text.

Sam's kindergarten class has a sign-up to be the Mystery Reader on Fridays. Ben took a turn and brought in King Bidgood's in the Bathtub. I suggested he wear full costume and Ben happily agreed. Heads were turning as he strode into the school. Sam's teacher reported to me that the children were agog at his majesty and all enjoyed his reading performance.

Jack's Cub Scout den started their "bear claws" unit about knife safety. Jack used Ben's knife for the introduction meeting. The next day he brought home a work-up for his ideal knife:

The local stores were fresh out of fire-cat diamond blades. He's pretty pleased with the blade they found.

I never cared for this holiday, but little boys look forward to it more than Thanksgiving.  So I tried to help them celebrate the day.

Last night we tried to switch the boys in their beds while they slept.  But they both woke up wide-eyed when we lifted them, so we aborted the plan.  Laughing, we put them back in their normal beds.  This morning neither kid had any recollection about the disturbance.  We should have pushed on!

Jack and I froze a bowl of cereal and milk and served it to Sam this morning.  He was almost too sleepy to understand he was being pranked. "My spoon is stuck!" He exclaimed.  He caught on quickly and, after his real bowl of cereal, pried out his spoon and ate his "ice cream cereal." Gross.

After school I helped Sam to color the bathroom sink aerator, so Jack got surprised with colored water.

On the drive home from school, the kids asked me, as usual, if I baked cookies today.  "No, but I made brownies!"  "Yesssss!"  They inhaled the chocolatey smell when we got inside.  I made them wash up while I poured milk, then served them brownies:

Sam was understandably concerned that he wouldn't be getting any real stuff :-D  See, even harmless pranks are not any fun!  I should show them this video as evidence.  They were excited to repeat the prank on Ben tonight.

The rest of the week was pretty boring, in a good way. We took care of Amanda's new kitty until she got back from Salt Lake. We went bike riding, got stacks of books from the library, worked on Sam's polar bears research project, etc. Ben and I had a fantastic dinner at The Spice Room on Friday night (we don't ALWAYS go to the Alamo for dates ;-) I'm still Salivating over their naan and samosas. Today was a long Sunday at home with hyper boys. I'm so so glad we are back to school tomorrow.

The magic of forwarding brought me the family pictures.  Enjoy!

We met up with all the Waterhouses in Salt Lake City for the first weekend of Spring Break.  The kids were excited to see Andy and Jenn's house ("we've never been there!" they whine at me every other day).  I also wanted them to see some church history sights, and it's always great to get the family together. It was rainy all weekend but we managed to stay mostly dry.

We walked through Temple Square and looked at the remodeled Church History Museum.  It's quite different than the one I remember!  The kids enjoyed the treasure hunt for different watches throughout the exhibits.  There was also an art exhibit that had some absolutely wonderful works.

 

I have a lot of pictures from our visit to Dreamscapes.  It's a walk-through interactive art exhibit.  The kids loved it!

 

We braved heavy rains, and then thick snow, to get to the natural history museum on the University of Utah campus.  They had an excellent dinosaur display.

Ben and I and Amanda had some quiet time in the afternoon, but grandparents were going strong.  They took the kids to Tracy Aviary, with a special tour by Jenn who used to work there.  They talked about the birds the whole way home, it must have been a great visit!

Our last night we had dinner at the Arndt's home.  Martha arranged to have all us Waterhouses and Masons, plus the whole Arndt family, and most of the Cook family clan too!  We haven't had such a large group of Cook family descendants together for a long time.  I saw Martha snapping pictures, you'll have to check with her for the evidence :-)

Today we honored Brian with dinner at Teller's Taproom, our old neighborhood trivia bar. Ben also gave the kids each a Transformer we saved from Brian's collection. They were really into them this time (previously the Transformers have been to difficult for them to play with).