Wyatt Turns 6!

My firstborn is now SIX years old! I can't believe it! We had a fun birthday party with all things "Ninjago"...it's a cartoon with Lego people as ninjas! Thanks to my cousin, Andrew, I have a lot of great pictures for memories sake!

Most of my party décor is from ideas and links that I found on Pinterest. Most things I just printed out directly from a link and then laminated a few of them to re-use for Levi's 6th birthday next year!

 

 

Below is a picture of all the little ninja party guests! Each guest brought an extra long-sleeve shirt and we showed them how to make a ninja hood out of their shirt (no cutting or gluing required!)

 no sew ninja hood

This picture is out of order, but...
On the actual day of his birthday, I made him a huge pancake in the shape of a #6 along w/ some pink food colored heart pancakes. And of course birthday pancakes have to have sprinkles on them!

And back to the birthday party...
We had to play some ninja games of course, and what better than speed slicer on the Wii!

Some other ninja activities that we did were "Finding your Ninja Name" and "Decorate Your Ninja Star". We made up the ninja stars before the party because it was quite involved to make them. And by "involved" I mean it took a lot of thinking and perfection to fold the paper in just the right way. Thankfully I had my Engineering cousin there to help me! When the boys are older, it will be a fun activity to make with them, but I couldn't imagine trying to have 6 five and six year olds trying to fold the paper perfectly to create the star! It's harder than it looks! Check You Tube! :-)

One of the favorites by far was "Sensi Wu Says" (a spin-off on Simon Says). Adam was gracious enough to hold my Sensi Wu beard and play the part of Simon, I mean Sensi.

And here are the Ninja's in-training participating in Sensii Wu Says

 The food and drink were all ninja themed as well. Once again, a big shout out to Pinterest! I'll post all the links at the bottom of this post!

Even these cupcake toppers were from Pinterest. I just printed, laminated, cut out, and attached to a small piece of drinking straw to stick into the cupcake! And they will be used again for Levi's 6th birthday party next year!

Snakes are a big part of the ninjago cartoon. The boys got a kick out of the veggie snake!

The goody bags used for when the piñata was broken. Print out ninja eyes from Pinterest.

Ninjago jello cups! Homemade. Easy. Pinterest!

 

 All the party guests chowing down! Yum!

Our Birthday Boy!

My cousins, Andrew and Luke with Wyatt!

links:
water bottle labels
no sew ninja hood
ninja food
ninja weapon making
ninja jello cups

Finally Some Snow Worth Talking About!

This deserved it's very own post! We have lived in NC for 5 1/2 years, and this is only the 2nd time it has snowed "this" much..."this" being 4 to 6 inches! That's a big deal for NC! Growing up in PA, we probably wouldn't have even had a school delay for that much snow! But we were excited for the kids to experience this none-the-less!

The amazing thing about this snow fall is how fast it accumulated! We had just been outside doing the piñata for Wyatt's birthday 2 hours before these pictures were taken and there was no precipitation coming down at that time! A few of our parties guests had to stay longer than planned because their parents were stuck on the bad roads! As soon as all the guests left, we got on our snow gear and went out to play! It was so pretty!

 

 

Most of the snow even stuck around through the night and we were able to enjoy it for a few hours the next morning before it totally melted by the afternoon!

We Are Always Learning!

This post has pictures from our day to day life in the month of February. We are just getting into homeschooling and LOVE it! There are so many things that we do everyday that is really part of "homeschooling", but we don't even label it that as it is just part of our everyday fun and conversation!

One day I found the boys at their little table w/ pencils and paper just "writing". (Wyatt was probably instructing Levi in letter formation or math! ha!) See pictures below.

 

The picture below shows the Valentine's Day goodies that Levi brought to preschool. He helped me make strawberry cake mix cookies into heart shapes w/ icing and sprinkles! And he wanted to bring his teacher flowers too! We also made another Pinterest inspired "craft" to give each of his classmates in-lieu of valentine's day cards. It was a glow stick w/ a cute message on card stock hole-punched for the glow stick to fit in.

Most of the month of February, you would find our family at the Marvin Ridge Highschool's gym for the JV and Varsity boys basketball games coached by Adam. The boys learn a lot about basketball (of course) and math while at the games. The "math" part comes in when they are looking at the scoreboard and figuring out by how much we are ahead or behind, and also the point value of the shot that was just made! Wyatt is very, very in-tune w/ this and often "teaches" Levi.

And some days we just have "fitness" or "gym" class inside and play a round of tennis on the Wii! Homeschooling is great! :-)

The next two pictures are the boys painting some wooden "crafts" from The Home Depot. They love to paint!

And then we have some "life-lessons" as well...every boy needs to learn how to shave, right? Don't worry it's play shaving cream and a play razor as well. They want to be like their  Daddy!

And you can't forget learning about hunting your own food to provide for your family! Levi is our resident hunter! He loves to pretend hunt and carry up huge sticks that are the various prey that he caught that day...whether is be a bear, a deer, or a moose! He can often be seen wearing his play bow and arrow set as shown in the pictures below!