Jay and Julie: Theo's Birthday, Halloween, Buttercup the Foster Dog

It was Theo's birthday! I just want to recognize how great my boy is. He has lots of good friends at school and at jiu-jitsu and he works hard in both places. He is so great at doing and turning in his homework without my help at all. He loves chess, Rubik's cubes, reading, Minecraft, Pokemon, and dominos. And he's just a generally nice guy to have around. I often wake up to find he's baked something. He's joined his school newspaper club, so he's a reporter. He reads to his sisters and lets them borrow his books. He wore my sandals to the store the other day, so he has grown a lot, although they are still big on him. I'm glad he's my boy.

"Can you write 'ache popcorn' for me?" Wendy asked.

"Ummm, ache popcorn?"

"Yes, I already wrote the 'M,' so just write 'ache popcorn' for me." Wendy explained reasonably.

Make popcorn it is.

I was busy trying to clear a room so Jay could redo flooring. Wendy was helping, but Miri was not so helpful.

"Can you put this in the recycling for me?"

"Mommy, I think this is Theo's paper. I'll put it in his room," Miri told me.

"He doesn't need it anymore. Please put it in the recycle."

"Theo might still want it."

"He wrote one sentence on it. We can't keep things forever. Put it in the recycling."

Miri paused a minute and then came back. "Mom, I don't think we can keep our house."

"Why not? We paid for it," I told her.

"Yeah, but we can't keep things forever. You just said that."

Wendy told me she was so sleepy, can we just do bedtime now? It was 12 minutes before bedtime, but we started. I left the girls' room about 10 minutes early.

The girls both got out their easy reader books, Bob Books. Then they read and read and read like I haven't seen them ever work so hard or long on reading. It was both wonderful, and also frustrating because they were so excited to be reading, they kept interrupting Theo and I doing his bedtime and Miri somehow hit her head on her bed. I'm very proud of them, but it was also nice when they finally went to sleep.

Granddad took the girls around the house a few times and then took them through the desert around a nearby elementary school

The floors look so nice!

She loves me to take a picture of her with a banana phone. It's not like I even talk on my phone very often.

Their cousin Rachel told us that she had been wearing her mom's sweater for days, so the girls decided they needed to sleep in my sweaters.

I was so busy hosting or something that I did an abysmal job taking photos of the party. After the party, I grabbed a shot of the destroyed pinata.

Chocolate frosting on vanilla cake.
He had a pokeball pinata, a pokedex themed scavenger hunt, Pokemon bingo, and a rocket toss through a pokeball cornhole type game.

Paint station at the children's museum. They provide aprons and you can paint anything in there

This was upstairs from a Dr. office we went to -- it's become the new bribe: if you're good for the appointment, you can take an elevator ride.

Gru with his 2 minions, his evil scientist Dr. Nefario, and his wife (in movie 3) Lucy

It was Wendy's idea first and she didn't want to share with Miriam

This is Buttercup. She is a great dog. We fostered her for 2 weeks.
I think she would do better in a home with another dog because she had separation anxiety. But we miss her a lot.

Photo op at a community play we saw that their cousins were in. It was fun!

I told them I'd take a picture to help them not be so sad that we were leaving this cool cart behind. But 1 picture turned into several and finally I asked, "Why don't you like any of the pictures? I've taken so many."
"I don't like them because my eyes are too shut."
"No, they're not, This is you. You've been looking at Miriam."
It's so funny to me that Wendy confused herself with her sister.