You're a GRAND OLD FLAG!

Part of Mary Grace's kindergarten celebration was the singing of "You're a Grand Old Flag", and it was very cute. Afterwards she adopted the philosophy that whenever she sees a US Flag, she will sing that opening verse of the song. And every time she sings it, it gets stuck in my head too!

So I was just looking at a picture that Mary Grace drew on my wall in my cubicle and noticed that I was humming "It's a Grand Old Flag" to myself. I guess my brain has become conditioned now!

EDIT - After writing this briefly this morning, I thought it would be prudent to include the picture. Background: She drew this at the Midtown child care by looking in the mirror and making facial expressions then drawing what she saw.



I can't decide if I like the pictures or the misspellings more!

William and "Break The Ice"

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the game "Don't Break The Ice", where there's a platform of little plastic cubes held up by pressure One of the ice cubes has a little skater guy attached. You tap on the ice cubs with a little hammer trying to knock out the cubes without knocking out the guy.

Ever since William got the game from Santa, he has cried ever since he won, because the other person got to break the ice (make the remaining ice cubes fall down, resulting in the guy falling). Our attempts to explain that he actually won were useless. If anyone broke the ice, William had a mini-tantrum! In response to this, we renamed the game "Break The Ice", since that was the new objective.

Well, he finally come around some time ago and now plays the game like a big boy. Little things like this remind me that my boy is becoming all grown up.

William is cracking me up.

He just referred to Saran wrap as "Plastic Ratburn". I think he's mixing up "plastic wrapper" with "Mr. Ratburn" from the TV show Arthur.

He also just instructed me to go catch the spider in the basement to release him outside. He added "I'll be hiding in the corner of the basement behind the garbage can".

Fathers day = Strawberry picking

36 holes with my son

Today William and I had a boy day as Anne and Mary Grace had both dance recital photos and a baby shower. I gave William the opportunity to choose anything he wanted to do, and while his initial choice was for Rochester Museum and Science Center, I convinced him that an outdoor activity might be more fun.

So he chose miniature golf. We drove to Henrietta and played 18 holes. During those 18 holes, William got two hole-in-ones. In fact, he had so much fun that we played a second 18 holes! That's right, 36 holes of (miniature) golf with my boy today. And it was fun!

After golf, we came back home for a quick lunch, then off to the Midtown swimming pool for an afternoon of fun in the sun Mary Grace and Anne joined us for the last hour or so, so it turned into an enjoyable outing for the family.

Also, "in fact" is something that William says frequently, as he has been since he was 4. "I like summer. In fact, it's my favorite time of the year!"

William's mis-hearing

Heard William utter the term "eyebulb" instead of "eyeball". He's combining eyeball and light bulb.

When he was a few years younger he also thought I was talking about a thunderstorm when I uttered the term "undershirt".

I remember having a lot of these growing up. I encourage the kids to ask questions, but for some reason they've already got it into their heard that learning is what goes on at school and fun is what goes on at home.

Photos by Mary Grace

I was luckily enough to score a "Bag Of Crap" during a Woot-Off on woot.com a while back. One of the items I got was a cute little caribener digital camera with a whopping 640x480 resolution, no on-screen preview, and no flash.

Mary Grace recently rediscovered it and here are the photos she took (all pictures were run through Picasa "I'm feeling lucky" filter due to lack of flash).

Anne suggested I tell you that there are 2 decent photos out of the 45 in this slide show. :)