Matthew rinsing his medicine syringe plunger. He was fascinated when he discovered that the water formed this bubble if he held it with the rounded end directly under the stream. I should have shot video of this, since it was actually much cooler than the photo shows.
Matthew, curled up on the couch, intently studying a new game on his iPhone. He was being more cooperative than Kaylee (who kept sticking her foot in front of the camera), so I snapped a few pics before I reminded him that video games aren’t allowed on school nights. ;)
Done with her homework early, Kaylee volunteered to listen to Matthew practice his sax without even charging him one of the coupons she gave him for his birthday. She even sang and danced along.
The look on his face in this shot cracks me up. :)
Matthew, in his room, playing a bit of one of his X-Box card games (Yu-Gi-Oh I think) that he doesn’t play on our newer X-Box because it doesn’t have all his progress saved. He’s been playing this one a lot recently. It seems that he goes in waves of diving into one game or activity for a few weeks and then will abandon it completely, eventually circling back around to dive back into it weeks or months later.
Since last weekend was busy with magic, Matthew had to wait until this weekend to celebrate his birthday with his friends. He had his two best friends over for the afternoon for pizza, cake, video games, and general chaos. :)
The three of them have a lot of fun together, and they even got him laughing when he was trying to make his wish before blowing out his candles. :)
The boy turned 13 today! Being a school night, it was a simple family celebration, with Matthew’s favorite – apple pie.
Gifts included magic cards, a magic video, a gift certificate from Kaylee good for listening to Matthew practice his sax four times (he gets lonely practicing by himself LOL), and then his puzzled reaction to the largest gift… a helium tank.
This was then followed by a box with instructions to go turn on the TV and press play.
The TV was cued up on this video...
Matthew got the shark. Pretty awesome. It’s fairly involved to assemble and set up, so it will be a bit before we get a chance to see it in action, but Matthew was suitably impressed. :)
Happy 13, buddy! Hope it’s a fabulous year! :D
Matthew demonstrating a magic trick he’s been practicing. :)
Side-story about the glasses. He’d only been wearing them now and then at school when he felt he needed them. He didn’t bring them along on our holiday road trip and mentioned a couple of times during the trip that he wished he had them. A couple of days ago he was cleaning his room (trying to earn video game time) and wanted to show off the progress he’d made. When I went to check it out, I saw the glasses lying on his dresser and asked him if they shouldn’t be in his backpack so he’d have them at school. As he got them to put away, I noticed that they were pretty dirty, so I cleaned them up and then gave them back to him. He decided to put them on instead of in the backpack, and immediately gave an amazed “wow” at how much clearer everything was. Kind of a surprising reaction, given that he’s had the glasses for almost a year. I think he’s had them on every waking moment since then. Makes me wonder if his vision has gotten that much worse lately, or if it’s just such a big difference with the glasses actually being clean! ;)
Had a little fun with some shots of Matthew having a little fun with a Slinky. :)
For his summer project this year Matthew decided he wanted to create his own fantasy board game. Kaylee and I were roped into helping him do his first mini test run.
Kaylee was very into it, as you can see. ;) (That’s an ice cream cone pen she’s pretending to chomp. No, it didn’t have anything to do with the game.)
Matthew lost. LOL
Yep, it’s another post for today. It’s my blog, I make (and break) the rules. ;) Excuse the funky color in some of these; it was nearly sunset, so I had to boost the exposure.
I ended up needing a nap after all the labor of Kaylee’s room, and during that time, Mark decided to take the kids out one more time to look for new bikes. They needed them desperately, since they’d outgrown their old ones to the point of knees banging on handlebars. We’d gone looking once before and hadn’t found anything, but this time they scored some affordable appropriate rides at Wal-Mart.
Kaylee still had her training wheels on the little bike. She hadn’t gotten enough time in on it to get the hang of it when she was smaller, and trying to learn when she was so much bigger would have required sending her to clown college. So this was her first time without the training wheels. She was nervous, but she did very well!
Matthew was pleased to find that his skills from last summer were still with him. :)
(We’d also gotten the kids new helmets, but Matthew mistakenly grabbed his old one without realizing. LOL)
ROTFL… Reading On The Floor… Lounging? (Yeah, I know it’s a stretch.) There are those cushions again. They apparently make a good place to read as well. :)
(The timer? The kids are tracking their reading minutes for a book store summer reading program.)
Matthew had his first sax lesson of the summer today. He was able to complete a lesson he hadn’t quite been able to finish at school and was awarded this cool saxophone-shaped pencil!
Matthew had a band field trip to an amusement park today. They played for judges (and took first!), and then were turned loose in the park. He had a great time and came home with these souvenir teeth from one of the carnival games.
Continuing my tradition of absolutely terrible Easter morning photos… the kids race around the family room collecting eggs. They had scoped out the location of most of them while Mark and I were sleeping in (they actually let us sleep!), so it was mostly just a matter of memory and speed.
I love Matthew’s creative choice of egg-collecting basket.
(That would be his bicycle helmet, if you can tell in my lovely blurry photo.)
Video game time over, Matthew was struggling with boredom and rejecting all suggested activities. Finally, he went and dug out his old military toys. The floor around my desk was covered with tanks and aircraft and one amusingly out-of-scale Ewok. :)
Matthew spotted a new Pokémon DS game in a TV ad last week, so new it hadn’t even been released yet, and he wanted to order it immediately. Mark found a good deal on Amazon, and Matthew decided to go for it. He was thrilled when it arrived this afternoon, a full week ahead of the earliest estimated delivery date on the order. :)
The kids retreated to the master bedroom after supper to watch TV and play a bit with their DSi’s. Kaylee was none too happy that I invaded their relaxation time, so she started PictoChatting ornery messages to Matthew, asking him to get rid of me. :b
A photo that magically appeared on my camera while I was taking a nap. :) Kaylee helping Matthew sort pieces to put together another one of his Mega Blok Halo figures.
Matthew had an English assignment to create booklets about the four main characters in the novel “The View From Saturday”. He decided to use the X-Box character creator to do the illustrations. Meet Noah, Julian, Nadia, and Ethan. :)
