Special Olympics ~ Basketball

Little Bitty's class gets to participate in various Special Olympics events during the year... a couple of weeks ago was the first one of the school year - basketball :).

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Creeeeper and aliens

Quick update on our Halloween:

Bitty wanted to be a Minecraft creeper so I resized Cuddlebug's costume from last year:

Bearhug and Cuddlebug didn't want to wear a costume, so they went as "aliens pretending to be humans."

And of course, any self-respecting alien pretending to be human would want to be a Longhorn fan, am I right? ;) (hook 'em!! \m/ )

This is Bearhug (that stuff all over his arms is paint from art class). Cuddlebug ran off before I could get his picture :(

Bitty actually trick-or-treated the entire neighborhood for the first time. This is his third time going (he wasn't interested prior to that), and the last two years he has gone to just a few houses and then decided he's done. So I was surprised when he was getting into it and wanted to keep going until we made it all the way back around to our house (granted, we live in a small neighborhood, but still).

Sometimes he remembered to say trick-or-treat, sometimes he didn't. He usually remembered to say "thank you" but it was always "Thank you, Edward!" (if you guessed he's referring to Edward from Thomas & Friends, you got it! lol). He's been doing a lot of scripting from Thomas episodes lately.

Anytime we came across a pile of leaves (a lot of houses had leaves piled up on their front porch from the wind) he had to stop and "chug" his way through it. When he finished at a house, he came running back to me yelling "wheeeesh!!!" (engine sounds). Whenever someone asked him what his costume was, his answer varied.

"I'm a creeper!"

"I'm a small green engine!"

"I'm Percy the small engine!"

"I'm a creeper engine!"

LOL, he was so cute, and it was kind of funny to see the looks of confusion on people's faces wondering what exactly is a creeper engine? A lot of the neighborhood kids recognized his costume though, since many of them are Minecraft fans too.

Cuddlebug and Bearhug beat us home, and we arrived to find dh decked out as a zombie and the house full of fog from the fog machine, and zombie sounds echoing through the house from the speakers. He had a fun time handing out candy, but may have been just a little bit too scary because we had a lot of leftover candy!

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Little Bitty Director

I shared previously some of Bitty's work creating short movies with series' of still-shots of his trains.

He has since moved on to borrowing my camcorder (and tripod) and taking short video clips of his trains, or his characters in Roblox (an online building game where you can design your own "world"). He plays music (mostly his new favorite-evah song - "Break My Stride") or narration from YouTube in the background.

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Home

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A Close Shave

Bitty acting out a scene from "A Close Shave for Duck" (from Thomas, of course), with a bubble beard :).

His favorite episodes are the ones with crashes (of course!) and his favorite line, which we hear repeated often as he throws himself to the floor, is "... but it was TOO LATE!!" lol

Have I mentioned how much I love seeing him pretend play? :D

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Handsome x3

We got the boys some new dress clothes for church :).

When Cuddlebug and Bearhug were little, we had a hard time getting them to wear anything other than their usual day-to-day clothes, largely due to their sensory issues. Church was enough of a battle without adding to it by forcing them to wear uncomfortable clothes - and so we have always let them wear polo shirts and khaki pants to church (with the exception of their baptism day).

But, as they are quickly approaching an age where they will be more young men than little boys, we thought it was time (again) to try having them wear dress shirts and ties. Actually tucked in and everything. With a belt (so that's what those loops are for!). And dress shoes. And we figured as long as we're getting our big boys some dress clothes, we'd do the same for Bitty.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that nearly all of the rampant complaining that day was NOT from Mr. Bitty. But by the time we left church both Cuddlebug and Bearhug had decided it wasn't SO bad after all.

"Behind the scenes" of how I managed to get a picture of actual smiles ;). Doesn't matter what they're wearing, these two never pass up a chance for a play-fight. This one is actually relatively mild :).

Peter Sam (the engine, in his best "most interesting man" voice) says, "I don't always go to church, but when I do, I go with Bitty." :)

Taken outside before church... I tried to get one of all three boys together, but as you can see that didn't work out.

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Leavin' on a jet plane...

This summer I took Bearhug and Cuddlebug on a trip to visit family. Bitty and dh stayed home, mostly because we're not quite ready to try air travel with Bitty just yet.

This was Cuddlebug and Bearhug's second trip on a plane, and they did great with the airport procedures, etc. It helped that we took the earliest flight possible in the morning so it wasn't too crowded when we went through security.

The lady checking ID's asked Cuddlebug how old he was and who he was traveling with, then asked him where he was going. He answered the first two questions just fine with one-word answers, but on the third one his expression went blank as he stood there thinking for a minute, then finally he turned to me and asked, "Hey Mom, where are we going again?" Awkward.

Next it was Bearhug's turn. She asked him how old he was and that was about as far as she got since he gave her the long version, "Eleven, same age as 'Cuddlebug' except I'm just two minutes younger and I'm going to the same destination as him and my mom..." he would have kept going, but we managed to move, thankfully there wasn't a long line behind us :).

(Most of the pictures below are new, a few I have posted before but I wanted to have them all in one post)

Waiting in the airport

Playing Angry Birds on the plane :)

Train surfing (trying to balance without holding on)

Visiting the Air Force base, where they signed the gigantic post card :)

Swimming with cousins (note: I typically try to be careful not to post pics of other people's kids on my blog, at least not where you can see their faces, without permission... in case you're wondering why there are not many pics of their cousins, it's not because I didn't take many!) :)

How many boys can you fit inside a stack of floaties? (anyone else remember "how many guys in bunny suits can fit into an H&R block"? hehe)

Race!

Love those smiles! :)

Helping their little cousin onto the floatie...

...and all three of them riding together :)

Love this one too... my little niece kept asking me to take her picture while she jumped :).

Looking rather Jason Bourne-esque, no?

uh-oh... ;)

At the airport with Grandma and Grandpa - the boys were sad to be leaving :(

Sunrise viewed from ~30k feet (pilots feel free to correct me if my estimate is way off base)

Waiting for the train to take us to our gate for the last leg of our trip

I am so proud of how well they both did travelling, and had a great time with my big boys! I missed my little guy though (and dh of course) so it was nice to get home too and have the family all together again :).

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Two weeks in...

School started two weeks ago.

First day of 2nd grade:

First day of 6th grade (middle school!):

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Two weeks in, we are slowly getting into a new routine. Bearhug and Cuddlebug seem to be adjusting well to middle school overall. It's a challenge with so much being new - the school itself, lockers, separate teachers for each subject, electives, etc. and it's a lot to keep track of, but I'm really proud of how well they're doing.

We requested that they be in the same classes as much as possible, and they ended up being scheduled for all the same classes, which is great at least for this year. They've been in separate classes before but have been together for the last two school years and they work well together. They have enough changes going on this year without adding being separated for much of the day on top of everything else. And let's be honest, it also helps us to keep track of homework assignments, projects, etc. when they have the same teachers :).

Both of the boys decided to join the orchestra at school. They each chose to play the cello. I'm really excited for them and hope they enjoy it. Both dh and I played music growing up and hope it will be a good experience for them. They get to start with instruments tomorrow :).


Bitty is doing well so far at school, and he's been great about getting up and ready in the morning. He still complains about going to school every day though :(. His teacher said he is doing well. She said she's been pacing his academic work to parallel the general ed class and he's keeping up just fine so that is good. However, during the time that he actually *goes* to the general ed class, there are a couple of areas where he's struggling and it sounds like it's more in terms of the approach being different. So we may need to adjust his IEP. Already. We're going to talk about it this week. Hopefully whatever changes we make will help him feel better about school...

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Here is some of what the boys brought home their first week of school:

Bitty's class worked on how to draw cats (which I'm sure he LOVED!). He adores cats. And as you may recall, one of his first drawings from a couple of years ago was of a cat. :)

Bearhug and Cuddlebug were each asked to fill out a "getting to know you" questionnaire. Here's an excerpt from each.

Cuddlebug:
#4 made me laugh as he clearly demonstrates his point, and his answer to #15 is just so sweet! :)

Bearhug:
love how he states the obvious in #4, and his reply to #7 is just so... him :)

The questionnaire was two pages long and the last question from the teacher was "do you have any questions for me?" so this was Bearhug's response (LOL):

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My sweet baby

Impromptu photo session in the front yard. He humored me to a point, and then he went back inside to play.

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June, in pictures

Aside from Cuddlebug and Bearhug's birthday, here's a recap of what we did in June.

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Dh and I celebrated our 19th anniversary last month. We took the whole family out to dinner to celebrate, here are my four handsome dates for the evening :).

Bitty is very particular about his drink and insisted on a big cup like the rest of us had, so the waitress brought one out clearly labelled for him :).

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Bearhug and Cuddlebug defended the house against zombies with super-soakers, lol. Bitty wanted to join in, so they "volunteered" him to play the part of zombie. He didn't care though and didn't really try to play the part, he was just happy to be outside playing with his brothers :).

After the zombie-hunt, Bitty put his watergun to use watering the plants :).

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I took Cuddlebug and Bearhug on a trip to visit family. I'll have a separate post on that but here's a preview.
In the airport:

Swimming

It was brutally hot... although to be fair this was taken right after we started up the truck and it cooled down after that. If by "cooled down" you mean, all the way to a chilly 110°.

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The lazy cat was, well, lazy. Every day. He loves this window cat bed we got for him, which gives him a great view of the birdfeeders outside.

From the garden

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