Sophia and Avery were excited to make me a bookmark – out of glue. Step one: use a plastic lid from a box and color a tray-like space. I wanted a rainbow bookmark.
Then you pour glue all over it and wait 3 days for it to completely dry. The colors soak up into the glue.
Time to make pancakes. Avery is great at measuring and mixing the ingredients and making sure the sugar hasn’t gone bad.
Sophia and Avery prefer their pancakes with syrup and iPads.
Carson prefers his with a side of whipped cream.
Lastly, a game of Break the Ice:
Now, Grandma can go home. Smiling.

A new sports season has begun.

Sophia stayed warm and dry in the car. She said she was about 85% better.

Carson was proud to be moved up to an independent gymnastics group.
Avery at indoor soccer on Sunday afternoon:
Sophia’s cold turned into walking pneumonia. She missed a few days of school and stayed home today to recover.

After the Chinese New Year event, I picked up Sophia, Avery and Carson from Auntie Leah’s and went back to their house. Thais and Lenin went to an out-of-town wedding and were spending their first night away from their kids in TEN years.
There’s a Morning Sing song from long-ago school days called Ten Bears in the Bed which goes,
Ten bears in the bed
and the little one said,
“I’m crowded, roll over.”
So they all rolled over and one fell out,
Nine bears in the bed, etc. Fast forward to … Four bears in the bed … So they all rolled over and Grandma fell out, landed on her feet, and went to find a bed in another room. LOL!
The next morning:
Yay! Mom is home.

While Lenin kept score for Sophia’s game, I watched Carson. Thais went for a run with a group that’s training for an upcoming half marathon.
“Grandma, look!”
“It’s easy to climb up here.”

This afternoon, Avery showed me how to make a Chinese lantern like the red one he’d made in school that day. He told me he was born in the Year of the Rabbit, and wrinkled up faced and kind of harumphed, “I wanted to be a dragon” 😦
He asked me what sign I was – a rat. The look on his face made me think he’d decided his sign could have been worse. From there, he wanted to to learn how to write the Chinese characters for all of his favorite signs, so we looked things up on the laptop, he wrote out the characters, and we practiced saying the words in Chinese (because the computer pronounced it first).

At Tricks Gymnastics. Friends from Carson’s preschool were the main invitees.

The reveal:
Avery’s turn:
“Grandma, this is the Statue of Liberty.”
Time for Grandma to go home. Two boys jumping and popping packing bubbles.

Among Uncle Justin’s many talents:

Thais and Lenin went out to dinner tonight and I got to stay with the kids. Lola joined us.
Sophia and Lola created an elaborate scenario and built their own “home” surrounded by a fence. After about an hour, Avery came downstairs and said, “I’m not going to play that anymore. It’s hard being the dog.”