Arthur's 11th Birthday

Arthur celebrated his 11th birthday at Great Wolf Lodge Pocono.

There was a large dessert buffet, so we didn't do a cake -- we stuck his 11 candle on a cupcake and some mud pie.  We quietly sang Happy Birthday and he closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and really made a wish.

Play

by Lizzie Kim

We need a design for the place-
Daddy is the swimmer,
The four-year-old girl is the princess,
Stephen is the ninja,
We need something to cover us up when it's time-
Because it's a play

Lizzie turned 4 today.  We took her to Build-A-Bear, where she built-a-dog: a princess costume (with Hello Kitty underwear)-wearing, iPhone-toting, basketball-playing dog.  She also took a birthday bubble bath.

We have started to throw away the kids' old toys in anticipation of the move.  We were sorry to see the Shape Turtle go, something that lasted through all three kids.  I didn't feel ready to toss out Arthur's mini-golf ball rack.

The point of having this blog was to record stuff we want to remember.  What with Facebook and Picasa and all, we hardly ever use it.  But I want to remember that after reading Lizzie her bedtime books, right before we turn out the lights, she asks for, and we give her, a "no bad dreams" kiss, as she clutches her two bears, always in the same way, one in each arm.

Stephen has been sleeping with a Santa hat on.  Arthur is going through an annoying phase where he keeps saying stuff like he's tired of living, even though he is not in the least depressed.

Mother's Day

The kids had various cards and crafts mostly from school. Stephen's tribute-to-mom booklet mentioned Mimi's ability to locate the Crate and Barrel Outlet and how she calls his room a "hell hole" when she wants him to clean it up. Arthur wrote a poem on which he noted that it had been "edited by Mr. Brown."  Mimi suspects that means Mr. Brown had to write it for him, and joked about the impropriety of a teacher writing a Mother's Day poem to her. There were some definite Arthur touches though -- the poem extols Mimi's "skill" at taking care of kids, and at one point he ended a line with "me/us" -- although "me" rhymed, I guess he felt "us" was more accurate.

Art

Stephen (on requesting more paper to paint the same thing he just painted):
Claude Monet painted many pictures of the same bridge.  Why not me?

4/23/12

Arthur's protagonist in his "realistic fiction" writing assignment has a love interest.