The birthday that kept going and going and going.... :)

Happy 5th Birthday to our beautiful Rex!  I'm finally posting it!  He had such a great birthday - it seemed to go on for two weeks!  

First, we had a party in our hometown with the grandparents and aunts and uncles :)  His cake was Mars with Curiousity land rover on it! I'm not posting a picture since it had his name on it - it wasn't anything exciting though!   Some highlights:  My mom made him this awesome blanket! 

 A coworker of my mother handed down two TUBS FULL of dinosaurs - tons of huge walking ones - totally a hit as you can tell by the faces :)

Still playing with them for days back at home! (It came at the most perfect time - the weekend between my two weeks of tot dinosaur school!)

Next, papa took us to Splash Lagoon!  With a name like that, you can imagine the fun!

 Rex's FAVORITE thing is crossing these lily pads! He is the more timid one of the boys and he knocked our sicks off when he did it over and over again when we went to Captain's birthday!  So proud of him :) You have to use timing and balancing to manuever the lily pads and wait for just the right time...

Finally, was his party here at our house.  Here's my volcano cake! 

 As you can see, some of the dinosuars didn't make it fast enough from the lava flow!

 I love decorating their cakes at night when they're sleeping.  Their faces in the morning are priceless.  I loved catching this look on camera hours before the party! Just staring...

 And I had to share this sweetest picture of Tot and his little friend.  I glanced in the living room and these two had been following each other around and then sat down next to each other all by themselves in the room.  After that they each stood up, got their own book and sat back down by each other again and read!  Super cute!

Pray for no frost tonight!!!! I want TONS of applesauce this winter!!! I could have cared less about frost before having a farm - now I understand why they randomly pray for weather and harvests in church!  Please no frost!

Dinosaur tot school - wk 2 con't

Ok - so I ended my post last night with blogger not letting me download my pictures, but voila! it worked again, so here is the rest of week 2 :)

Day 2 setup

 The first tray had the same colored dino puzzles.  The middle tray was one of our favorites - roll and graph.  I knew my others ones would want to join in so I printed off three dice and three graphs before anyone asked :)

 I asked Tot to roll his dice - this was his very dramatic, stand up and THROW the dice!

 I think his dice was heavy sided to the first dinosaur or he didn't know at all what he was doing. I think I'll vote on the latter ;)

 Here I put on a number and he had to count and place that many dinosaur bones.

 Our new line up of dinosaurs! They have permanently taken over the top shelf!

 One of our 'oldie but goodie' puzzles.  First you build the triceratops skeleton, then on top of that his muscles and organs, then on top his skin! I love this one!

  Day 3 setup

He did so well at practicing cutting.

**I know you all are raving at my tasmanian devil snap bracelet that Rex put on me that morning!  The boys bought them that morning with their own quarters from their Easter eggs - they were a hit (for about 4 hours)!

 Better and better at his following lines...

 Rex was busy with dinosaurs behind us.  If I heard him right it was the American vs. the British dinosaurs!!!

 building a stegsasaurus...

 :)

 I liked Rex's 'TRICERATOPS'.

 This had nothing to do with dinosaurs, it was just fun!  Fishing for ABCs - here we are preparing (I should have done it without him and surprised him, but I couldn't get away long enough!)

 Rex made up great games for the two of them right away and they played for quite a while.  He asked Tot which letter he should get, Tot called one out, Rex dinosaur swooped it and gave it to Tot for his net.

 I don't know where his net was in the pictures, but he had a fishing net :)

And now that's really it for dinosaur tot school :)

Happy Spring!

Dinosaur Tot School - Week 2

Wow! It's been too long since I posted!  My wrist was out for a week - sprained it while sleeping??!!! Really!?? It sure is interesting getting old!

Well, week two of dinosaur school went wonderfully!  All of the dinosaur printables came from www.3dinosaurs.com (the site has nothing to do with dinosuars!! I have printed tons of different themes from her, just so happens this one was dinosaurs!) 

Here's the set up the first day:

and the really exciting thing this week was the sensory bin!

The base was two boxes of baking soda and the blue 'lake' was dyed vinegar.  She when the the dinosaurs brought their white feel into the lake it bubbles and sizzled! My plan was to have a 'water bottle' volcano in the other corner that would erupt, but it never happened!

 Perfect timing...for Rex's birthday which I will post soon, he recieved TONS of these awesome walking, roaring dinosaurs!!! A hand me down from a friend of my mother's! They were the biggest hit!

 The first tray had dinosaur colored puzzles..

 every time he made one he said "Great job!" :)  So cute! Clapping for himself!

 Little Sheriff Woody (he was too excited for school and we didn't even make it out of our pjs) amazed me at prewriting practice.

 And some basic shape matching and naming the shapes.

 just to keep him quiet while doing big boy school To learn the A's, I pulled out his binder (it needs updates, he's done these few too many times!)

 I named a shape and he colored it.

 Day 2

hmmmm...and now I'm sad, for three nights now I've tried to upload the rest of the week in pictures and it won't let me :(  So.....if it let's me soon, I'll update...otherwise c'est la vie ;)