Winter Fun in L.A.

This week I taught Ben's little preschool and the theme was winter. It was a little strange teaching them about snow and winter and then letting them play outside in short sleeves and sandals right after. Since we can't make real snowmen, the kids each made one out of play dough. They had so much fun and the snowmen turned out really cute.

When Jimmy got home from school he wanted to make one too so here is his masterpiece.

After about five minutes Jimmy's snowman evolved into something else. I'm not quite sure exactly what it is. It has a piece on it's head from Optimus Prime (a transformer) so it can fly. It is kind of hard to tell from the picture but it also has 2 mouths and when I asked Jimmy why he said, "the one on the bottom is so he can talk to the bugs on the ground and the one on the top is so he can talk to people who are bigger than him." All I could really say to that is, "Oh, very creative." He also made a gun out of toothpicks and buttons to "shoot the bad guys" and a green plastic water squirter in front of the snowman. Jimmy said that if there are too many bad guys then the water squirter will flood the whole city and save the snowman from the bad guys. I have to admit, he is very creative and imaginative. His kindergarten teacher calls him "little picasso" because his artwork always has an abstract quality to it. Thankfully she is very understanding and lets him explore his creativity. I guess it's better to allow him to express his creativity then to squelch it.

Luke's first day of nursery!

Luke had his first official day of nursery today - well kind of official. He is really going to be 18 months tomorrow but it's close enough. I have a calling as a primary teacher so I haven't had to deal with Luke for the past couple months. But I know that Jim is celebrating because he was getting pretty annoyed with having to chase Luke around the church for the last 2 hours. Except I think he might be a little bit sad because now he can't use Luke as an excuse to leave priesthood. Oops, did I say that out loud. Unfortunately after about an hour of being in nursery they had to come and get us because they thought that he had leaked through his diaper. But he actually just sat in water while the kids were playing outside. So Jim had to take him home to get a change of pants. Next week we are going to come prepared with an extra set of clothes.

Transformer Mania

So my kids have just recently become obsessed with transformers after receiving them as a gift for Christmas. Now I am seriously wondering what I was thinking giving them Transformers! If any of you have these you know what I am talking about. Each figure comes apart into about 18 small pieces the size of my thumbnail (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration) and I find myself stepping on them and nearly breaking my ankle or I find Luke with Megatron's head in his mouth. Not a good thing. Seriously, when I bought these I didn't realize that they would come apart so easily. I know that's not how they were back in the day when I was a kid. Not that I played with transformers as a little girl, I was too busy with my Barbie dolls (that's a whole other issue that I won't get into today).

Anyway, despite all of my rumblings, my kids absolutely love them. They really are pretty cool when you think about it and they keep them busy playing for a while. I mean these things are not easy to put together. I feel like I need an engineering degree to figure some of these out. Also, they also have every episode of the animated series online for free so Ben probably asks me like 25 times a day if he can watch Transformers on the computer. I usually just let them watch one episode a day but sometimes it's really tempting to just turn it on and let it go for a few hours. Not only does he ask me constantly to watch it, he also asks me questions about the characters all day long. He got me good the other day. He said, "Mommy, what color are Optimus Prime's (that's like the leader or something) legs when he's transformed?" I say, "blue, of course." He said, "No they're not! Trucks don't have legs!" I felt like an idiot. Yes, I was out-witted by a 3 year old! I need to be more careful. I guess I will just have to embrace this transformer mania and enjoy the moments of peace and quiet when they are focusing their energy on assembling and playing with the blasted things!