What we've been up to!

As we go into 2016, I (Katie) am going to take over the blog so I can speak better to what both the boys are doing :)

Here are a few notes about Sam at age 4 that I wanted to remember...

-We were playing a game where Sam was pretending to be a plumber (we played it a few times both with Grandma Hyland and just me and Sam too), and Sam would answer the phone and then say he was right by our house to come fix the broken pipes. When he "hung up the phone" he would say, "Bye, wuv you, bye, wuv you" just like he does when he is talking on the regular phone. When he was playing with Grandma, she was "panicked" about her broken pipes, and after he fixed them he told her, "next time, stay calm".

-He loves to pretend he is a dog and will happily play that game for quite awhile.

-He loves playing stuffed animals one minute and will then switch to Minecraft or construction the next.

-He is VERY stubborn.

-We were playing outside, and he brought me what I thought was a snow valentine so I pretended to read it and then laughed and threw it aside (which is the little game we play). Sam said, "that was my duck" and burst into tears. We made a new duck and a nest with other duck babies in the snow.

Here are some things we have been up to over the past 2 months!

Sam is now into Minecraft as much as Joey is. They chose to use some Christmas money on some Minecraft characters.

We had a family fun night at Joey's school. They had gymnastics equipment set up this time, and Sam was all about that equipment. We really need to sign him up for gymnastics!

Silly at the photo booth!

Random picture of Maebel :)

Sam got a TON of Play Doh from Great Uncle John & Great Aunt Sharyn since Aedan, Olivia and Julia are done playing with it. Sam was SO EXCITED!! He wanted our kitchen table to stay looking like this.

I went with Sam to be snack helper at his school. He built a huge structure with the blocks (along with a couple other kids). He was so proud, and they got to put a sign up on it to not clean it up so that the afternoon class could see it. That was a BIG DEAL.

That same week he was Star of the Week. Below is what his bulletin board looked like.

The boys went squirrel hunting with Daddy and Grandpa. I didn't get any pictures the day of, but here is Joey the night before.

The boys and I went to a park to test out the snow. We went to the one with the giant plowed pile :)

Sam brought his shovel and did a lot of work helping the park clear their areas.

Joey was a Red Carpet Reader at school. I went and surprised him during the presentation (Daddy had to drop Sam off at school at the exact same time or they would have come). Joey was very surprised and of course asked, "why didn't you come last year when I got it?" I told him they didn't invite us last year!

We had a nice day outside so Sam and I built a road for his vehicles, and Sam was hard at work!

Joey had a Valentine's Day program at school. He did a great job participating in the singing, and he had a line to say where he thanked everyone for coming to the program. He did great on that too!

There's been other stuff going on too, but I somehow have to figure out how to keep straight where all the pictures are now that we are finally Smartphone owners and have 2 phones and a camera.