This week...

Colin decided that he is too cool for diapers.  When I try to put one on, he clenches his knees together and says "no diaper!".  I bought some pull up diapers and convinced him they are "big boy pants".  looks like we might be entering in full force potty training, because I've been finding a lot of this...

Yes, that is a wet diaper placed in my entry way.  Welcome to our house, it smells like pee.

Alison had a choir concert at school this week.  It was a big deal to her and she did a fantastic job.  For a little girl who would have stared at the floor last year, she completely broke out of her shell.  She was even slightly dramatic with all of the motions :)

They asked that all the kids wear a plain red t-shirt and black pants.  Alison is more of a pink girl with lots of sparkles, so I didn't really want to buy her a shirt she would wear for 30 minutes.  As I looked through our house for options, I found a really old shirt of mine...it has 'Jennifer' written across it and I believe my dad bought it for me when I was about Alison's age.  I turned it inside out and Alison thought it was pretty cool she got to wear my shirt.

Eli fell on the sidewalk coming out of her concert and screamed like he was being attacked by bears.

Random Eli fact: he hates bandaids and will cry harder if you try to put one on.

 

Our zoo membership is expiring soon and I haven't decided if we'll renew it next year...so we've been going to the zoo A LOT to maximize our money invested.  Eli's been dying to ride the train, so this week we went just to ride that little train.

 

We had a picnic and looked at the monkeys.

 

One rainy day, we had to run an errand, so we picked up some drinks to make the gloomy day a little more fun.  Eli thought he was big stuff sitting in sissy's chair and getting his own drink.

 

 The kids have really been into building a "secret hide out" this week.  I love it that we have couches they can take apart and play with.  Also love that they build a small space to contain themselves and then whisper so we won't find them.  It's really a win, win situation...unless we want to sit on the couches while they play.

We got to celebrate 2 big accomplishments by Alison.  She has been working hard on her reading at school and got up to a 3rd grade reading level this week!  I wanted her to know it was a big deal, so I took her to the store and told her she could pick out any treat she wanted.  What did she pick?  A luncheable.  Oh kids.  You offer them the world and they choose prepackaged food.

She also memorized the first 40 questions of the catechism.  Both things she's been working for months on and I'm so crazy proud of her.  We told her we would buy her a bike when she got to 40, so today we picked up a pink "real" bike, complete with streamers on the handle bars.

We ended our week with dinner at Abuelo's.

It was a great way to start celebrating the big 3-2 for me!