Happy Birthday Noah!

Noah turned 9 on the 4th of Feb. and it was a family party for him this year. The night of his birthday we watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure while we ate pizza. The kids loved the movie, and we've been quoting it ever since. Yay for Netflix!

I had to do a close-up of the boys' names that Brigham wrote. I LOVE Kindergarten handwriting!!

The next day was Saturday, so that's when we had our family party. Chris arranged for the three older kids to help out at an animal shelter in the morning. They had so much fun with the kittens! Later in the day we ate lunch at HuHot, which is a Mongolian grill, then we spent a couple of hours at the House of Bounce.

All About Noah:
Height - 4' 3"
Shoe size - 3 1/2
Favorite things:
Foods - pasta salad, pesto pizza
Things to do - run outside, swim, climb, hike, do gymnastics, read
TV show - Wizards of Waverly Place
Movies - Harry Potter, Earth
Friends - Cannon Tweed, Samuel Threlkeld
Books - Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke, Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, Lost Hero series by Rick Riordin, 39 Clues series, Magyk by Angie Sage
Songs/Music groups - Hot Air Balloon, Hello Seattle, and Fireflies by Owl City, Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, Beethoven symphonies 1-9
What does Noah want to be when he grows up? A wildlife biologist/botonist/zoologist

Noah, you have grown up so much this year! It is so fun to see all your many interests and talents emerge. I don't think a day goes by that I don't learn some new fact or piece of trivia from you. I hope you continue to love to learn. You have such a good heart and I know that you are trying hard to do what's right. We all love you so much and we're so glad that you are in our family!

Sylvie

My friend Kathleen came over and took some pictures of Sylvie in her blessing dress. Here are some of my favorites. I thought she did a beautiful job!

Or not so screenless?

Okay, so if the kids are in front of some sort of screen for hours on end each weekend, does that cancel out all the other screenless days of the week??

We're going screenless!

. . . at least most of the time. At the beginning of the year, I decided to propose to the kids that we don't have any screen time on school days. I had been reading a couple of books that suggest getting rid of (or seriously cutting down on) screen time in order to give your kids more free time to use their imagination, their creativity, and to just PLAY.

Initially I was a little nervous for a few reasons:
1 - I thought my proposal may cause a rebellion of sorts.
2 - I was afraid of my kids being bored, because I witnessed how the boys would use their imagination when they were out of screen time for the day; they used it to come up with creative ways to torment each other.
3 - I had come to depend on it a lot in order to get some time to myself during the day

But at the same time I had grown increasingly frustrated with how much time was spent in front of the screen. We had plenty of options for everyone: TV, desktop, laptop, and 2 ipods. Even though I had tried to limit the kids to an hour a day, I couldn't monitor it for everyone. And with Annie and Noah in school 6 hours a day, plus homework and other activities during the week, any free time they had was usually in front of the screen, even if it was for only an hour a day.

We are into our 3rd week of this, and I have been pleasantly surprised! When I mentioned my idea, Annie and Noah were totally fine with it, Hudson didn't really get it, and Brigham was the only one who was a little unhappy about it. I did tell them that I may let them in front of the screen in desperate times, like if I'm sick, or Sylvie has a bad night, and I need some serious rest. But otherwise, on days there are school, the screens are not on. Yes, there are definite drawbacks. I've had to tolerate more messiness (screen time is very un-messy!), and it's a little more tricky to rest in the afternoon (I'm still getting up at night with Sylvie), but most of the time I still can if I need it. But, on the other hand, the kids have played with toys that had not seen the light of day for months, they've made up games, we're doing more art projects and reading more books together. They're helping me more in the kitchen (is that a pro or a con??). And, on those days that they are on the computer a lot, I don't feel guilty anymore.