Our Scarborough Boys' Soccer Team are State Champions!!!

To be honest, I'm not really a sports kind of girl.  I would rather attend a play or a music concert over a sports event.  The only sports I truly love watching are ones that involve my children.  However, I discovered over the past week that watching sports is a lot of fun too!  

We have been attending all of our Scarborough High School boys soccer team games recently.  What initially struck me was the incredibly high level of talent the players had.  At all of their games I felt as though I was watching professional soccer players.  Scarborough easily won their way through the semi-final games and the state finals game was this afternoon.  We drove up to Bath to watch the final game today.  It was well worth the long drive because it really was such an exciting game to watch!  Both teams played really well and at the end of the game the score was tied 1-1.  Two minutes into overtime Scarborough scored the wining goal giving them the state champion title.  Grace, Jack and Eve did a great job cheering on their team throughout the game!  

Jack intently watching the game from the top of the bleachers

 Grace & Eve

For everyone who knows Grace, this picture says a lot!  Grace loved reading through the program.  I think by the end of the game she had all the players' names (including how to spell them), ages, soccer positions and numbers memorized!  :)

Brrr!  We all bundled up for the game today because it was definitely a cold one!

State champions!!!!!

My Little Engineer at Work

These past few weeks have been quite busy so I was very excited to have a quiet morning at home with Jack and Eve today.  After we dropped Grace off at school we came home and did several fun projects together -- and we all decided it would be best to stay in our pajamas until it was time to pick up Grace!  :)  I love these type of days, where our schedule is completely free with no time constraints.

Just before lunchtime today I presented Jack with a big bag of plastic cups.  I had got them for Jack the day before, knowing how much he would enjoy building with them.  Jack is such a deep and detailed thinker and instead of diving in to immediately begin building with the cups, he sat with me to come up with a plan for his construction.  Jack talked for the longest time about how important it was to build a solid base to support a high structure that he was planning on making and the best way to do that.

After watching Jack this morning I smiled because he reminded me so much of a little engineer!  I just love how Jack is always exploring how and why things work, how he takes just about every item apart and how much he enjoys a challenge.  He also is very creative and practical and is great at applying objective and subjective reasoning.  I saw all of these skills at work this morning as Jack was building with his plastic cups.  This was such a simple activity but it was filled with so much thinking and learning from beginning to end!

I'll post more pictures over the weekend of our fun Friday.

Jack's Montessori Work

Jack's teacher at his Montessori preschool frequently sends me pictures of Jack engaged in specific activities at school.  Here are two that she sent to me last week.  In the picture above, Jack was given small phonetic objects and he is shown working on building words with moveable alphabet letters.  In the picture below, Jack is working with the teen board and number beads.

Jack attends preschool school three mornings per week and he loves it!  Every morning when I pick Jack up from school I ask him what he enjoyed the most that day and his reply is always the same, "Everything, Mama!"  I love how his school is so academically based and filled with so many learning activities yet Jack never views it as work.  Jack always tell me that he "plays" all day at school.

Wordless Wednesday

Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf & The Granny!

 

Happy Halloween from the Little Red Riding Hood Cast of Characters...

Cast of Characters:

Grace as "Little Red Riding Hood"

Jack as the "Wolf"

Eve as the "Granny"

I hope everyone is having a fun-filled Halloween.  I have many more pictures of my Little Red Riding Hood cast that I will be sharing with you soon.  Another very big thank you to my Mom (Maddy!) for making these beautiful costumes.  

Have a very happy and safe Halloween!

 

A Look Back at Halloweens Past...

Halloween 2012

Three Little Birds

Jack, Eve, Grace

Jack

Grace

Eve

Halloween 2011

Three Little Bakers

(Eve's first Halloween)

Grace, Eve, Jack

Eve

Jack

Grace

Halloween 2010

Two Little Giraffes

This was a very busy Halloween for us.  We had just moved into our new house and Eve was born a little over two months later!

Jack & Grace

Halloween 2009

Cowgirl & Cowboy

(Jack's first Halloween)

Grace & Jack

Jack

Grace

Halloween 2008

Grace as "Ella"

 (Ella is Grace's beloved pink elephant that she still loves and sleeps with every night!)

Halloween 2007

Grace as a Ladybug 

(Grace's first Halloween)

Every year Maddy works so very hard to make all of Grace, Jack and Eves' costumes.  Maddy thinks about and plans for the costumes a year in advance (to be honest, my Mom and I have already started talking about next year's Halloween costumes!).  Maddy begins working many, many weeks prior to Halloween in order to make sure every little detail is absolutely perfect.  I so love and appreciate everything that my Mom puts into making Halloween so special and forever memorable for Grace, Jack and Eve and I can't possibly thank her enough.  One of my favorite days of the year is when the UPS truck drives down our long driveway to deliver the Halloween costume box from Maddy's house in Middlebury, Vermont to ours.  It is great fun for me to watch Grace, Jack and Eve open it up and to see their excitement, to hear their squeals of delight and to watch them dress up in their costumes for the very first time.  I am so excited to reveal what Maddy has made this year.  :)