since I'm lame....

head on over to Grandma's blog to check out what we've been up to lately....

some art

Alien Defeator Plane

and alien

A school paper

Just thought the illustrations were cute....

Aww....

Nick brought this letter home a few weeks ago:


Loved it but am not sure what the significance of the fire-breathing dragon is...

That's my boy!

Nick's class is doing a unit on colonial times right now. He brought this paper home yesterday:

Welcome Home Dad!

Greg just returned from a near 2-week jaunt to Seattle and everyone is thrilled to have him home again. Nick brought this home from school today:


complete with this picture on the back :)

Cleanup time!

In the midst our busy summer and crazy fall, many things fell by the wayside...like the blog, and cleaning our house. The smarties over at Well-to-Do had a great idea about tackling the cleaning projects one day at a time - perfect for those of us who get completely overwhelmed with all of the stuff that needs to get done. I started on November 1 with cleaning out the car and was lucky enough to have a fantastic helper with me:


He vacuumed, sprayed cleaner on the windows and even picked up a few toys. Once he found the bubbles though, that was the end of that!

Halloween

The boys got a lot of mileage out of their costumes this year with 2 friend Halloween parties, 2 school parties and trick-or-treating. Here they are in their glory:
Our resident vampire:


and Luke Skywalker:


Here are a few shots from trick-or-treating with the Peterson boys.
Soren is a biacca (I have no idea how you spell it) riding a dinosaur


Disco vamp


the whole gang (including Nick who refused to wear his robe or a coat)


ready for action


Nick with his glowing light saber before it shriveled in the cold


The kids had a great time and it was a major success!

A Highland Halloween

Tim with some school buddies

End of the Season

The boys finished up their soccer season on a bright and chilly morning. The ground was covered in frost but at least it wasn't raining!!


Just like the rest of the season, Tim was happy to go out on the field for warmup but wasn't really interested in sticking around for the actual game. He much prefered hanging out on the sideline eating snacks. But, I feel like we had a small victory! I convinced him to go over and stand in goal with me feeding him bites of snacks while he played goalie.


And he did it! He was actually out on the field for at least 15 or 20 minutes straight!! That was a record for him!


Success!

The Maine Jump

We've been struggling with Tim and swimming lessons this fall. For some reason, he has been absolutely refusing to cooperate for lessons. It's gotten as bad as him kicking and hitting his teacher, flicking the pool director in the face and kicking and biting me. Its not that he is afraid of the water as he'll jump right in and start diving for rings during free time. I'm trying to be strong and not let him think that he can get out of doing something he doesn't want to do by behaving that way, but really all I want to do is pick him up, leave and not bring him back. So, we're trying alternate approaches including having Amanda stay with him for lessons, having him sit on the side and watch the whole lesson, offers of rewards for cooperating, etc. So far, one thing that has worked (one time at least) was having Uncle Kevin take Tim into the boys locker room to change. Tim had a great lesson (this was while Nick was at his 7-yr checkup) and as a reward, he got a trip to the Maine Jump, a new bouncy house place here in Bangor.

He was very excited and quite taken with the different bouncy apparati...especially the baseball one.

baseball from The St Pierre Family on Vimeo.

This one he tried - climbing right up fast but then once at the top, he decided it was too high (it really is high) and he wasn't coming down. Ooops. I climbed up and we went down together ...phew!


After that, he decided to stick to the smaller ones :) and was much happier!

Closing time

For Grandma's b'day, we celebrated with the season's final weekend out at camp. Greg braved the water to pull out the dock


while the kids tried to keep warm by the camp fire


Dinner was a big hit with spagetti/hotdog spiders


followed by birthday cupcakes


Everyone was ready for an early night


Until next season!

Visit with the St. Pierres

We enjoyed a quick but lovely visit with the St Pierres shortly after Nick's birthday. The kids loved showing Nana & Pepere their camp, reading with them


showing them the garden


getting in a little soccer


and enjoying a family trip to the bog walk


Thanks for a great visit!

Nick Turns 7

So, shortly after my birthday, it was Nick's turn!


The huge parties are too much for him and for me too so we decided on a small party at our house, and thankfully lucked out with fantastic weather. The theme was Lego Star Wars by request and we had lots of fun playing, eating and carrying out the various tasks of the Lego Jedi training, including carrying Yoda across an obstacle course


lightsaber training


destroying the death star (drawn in chalk on our driveway)


defeating Darth Vader with thermal detonators


freeing Han Solo


and of course building a get away ship for the rebels


No birthday would be complete without one of Greg's custom cakes :)


The birthday boy loved it (and I think his friends did too!)