Shepherd Boy David

Here's Weston dressed up for AWANAS on Wednesday night. Grace and Weston both started attending AWANAS this year; Weston in Sparks and Grace in Cubbies. They love it! AWANAS is a club centered on Bible memorization and has been around for as long as I can remember. I was even in Sparks when I was Weston's age!
AWANAS is a great opportunity to memorize God's Word, meet friends, learn to participate in a classroom setting, and learn some independence from Mom and Dad. The night consists of Bible story time, singing, memorization/quizzing time, game time and awards time (kinda like Sunday School on steroids). About once a month they have a dress up night for the Sparks. This past Wednesday was Bible dress up night and we happened to have everything to make a "David" costume. Weston is wearing a pillow case and my hairband and has Mike's old marble bag, a sling shot and a stuffed lamb. He loved dressing up and even won a prize for his costume.
From the beginning Grace had no trouble being left at Cubbies. It was a little easier for her as she went with Laelie (her friend next door) into Cubbies and she tends to be a social butterfly anyway :). Weston had a harder time being left. The first few times he was very nervous and even a little teary. When I took him last week I walked him into the gym and helped him get his coat off. I expected him to turn around and say goodbye to me, but instead he ran off to play basketball without a backward glance! Although my feeling were a bit hurt, I am so glad that he's growing up and learning some confidence and Independence.
I'll try to post a photo soon of Weston and Grace in their AWANAS vests. They each wear vests with their patches and awards for Bible memorization and attending club. They look so official!
David vs. Goliath!

Weston

I've been wanting to do posts to update the specifics of what the kids are up to lately. They are growing up so fast I thought it'd be fun to have a record of what they're into right now. I'll start with Weston and do separate posts for each child.

Weston has officially started Kindergarten this year. We are doing a great homeschooling curriculum called Sonlight and are enjoying it very much. We are pretty relaxed with our schedule as it's his first year. A typical day includes a math worksheet, reading time, maybe some copy work, and Weston has just started reading 3-word books on his own. We are way ahead of the curriculum schedule for the parent reading, way behind on the science projects, and right on schedule for the math :) I'm still learning how I want to structure our "school" time. I'm not a creative teacher, so my weakness is teaching the concepts as opportunities arise in regular life. When Weston wasn't understanding the math concept of counting by tens and working with dimes and pennies in the math worksheets, we took a week off from the worksheets and worked with beads and real pennies instead. I'm trying to train myself that I don't have to stick to the curriculum if I don't want to. The curriculum is there to serve us, we're not there to serve it!

Weston also spends a good part of his day coloring. Although his personality seems to be headed toward type "A", he seems to have freedom from perfectionism when he's doing art. Last week he colored about 30 army guys with various vehicles, uniforms, weapons, etc. He's really into military stuff right now (I'll have to scan one of his artwork pieces to display on the blog).

Other activities my son enjoys include bossing his sisters in pretend play games. He's pretty put-out if they don't want to play attack/war/boy games with him. In the summer, he spends a lot of time outside doing boy things. He usually wears some type of camouflage clothing every day.

Weston looks forward all day long to when Mike returns from work. Mike is definitely his favorite person in the whole world. This can be a little exhausting to Mike as Weston is so intensely needy for his attention when he's home. Usually Mike and Weston spend their time playing sports together or wrestling. Weston played soccer this past spring and we plan to have him try T-ball this next spring. Although he's small for his age, he's got surprisingly good hand/eye coordination. He can really whack the baseball over our fence!

One of Weston's quirks is that he doesn't want to throw things out. Broken toys, random piece of thread, cardboard, you name it, he thinks he'll have a use for it! Hmmm, wonder where he got the "keeping everything" quirk? Papa John, any ideas? ;)

Weston is very loving toward his sisters. He especially is tender toward Elsie and does great with gently leading her and teaching her. He likes Noah and talks to him often but hasn't been too interested in holding him much. Weston's chores include helping to fold laundry and dust, Swivel-Sweep the floors, run errands for me (fetch diapers, etc), and help his sisters with things.

Some of the things he struggles with are being bossy (hmmm, I have no idea where he got that one, I've never been bossy :) and not desiring to be independent (he'd rather be told and helped than to try it himself first).

Well, there are some highlights of my son and his life! I'm sure I'll think of many more things I should have included after I finish this post. I can always go back and add more later. Below is a picture Weston colored for me today. It's a princess with a flower in one hand and a coffee cup in the other :)

Weston is 5!

Hard to believe our oldest is 5 years old! The time has gone so fast since having kids!
We celebrated Weston's birthday with both sets of grandparents and Mike's brother, Tim, who came down from Seattle just for the day. We celebrated with a sports theme and my mom graciously made Weston's soccer ball cake. It turned out great!
Mike's parents contributed a cool dump truck pinata which Weston loved. He took some turns hitting on it, then Grace took some turns. After Grace's turn Weston grabbed the blindfold and the bat and starting whacking on it so quickly that he almost got Grace in the head. She hadn't had time to move out of the way yet!
Some of his birthday "loot" included a microscope, slip 'n slide, bicycle, toy chain saw, real soccer goal, sunglasses, markers, GI Joes, etc. He made quite the haul!
Weston kept saying over and over how this was his best birthday ever ;) Apparently this was his favorite out of the 1 or 2 birthdays he can actually remember ;)

Don't look too closely at Weston's face! We forgot to wipe off the lasagna dinner before taking photos!

He received some fun outdoor toys (now if we could ever get the backyard grass in so they can use them) :)

Grace has wanted some swimming goggles ever since she used some at a couple of swimming lessons my mom took her to.

Soccer Star!

Here's Weston at his second soccer game! Weston is having a great time participating in his first organized sport. We decided to try out a soccer league called Eastside United FC this year. It's been more commitment than we anticipated, but lots of fun. A great opportunity for character development!
All the kids at his level are 5 yrs or will be 5 this summer. They practice once a week and the games are 3 on 3 about once a week. We discovered on Saturday that most of the kids on the opposing teams participated in fall soccer as well. We kept wondering how the other teams were so good at only their first and second games! The team they played against at the first game even had professional-looking jerseys with their numbers on them!
Let's just say our team has major work to do! None of the 6 kids on our team have played soccer before and 5 of the 6 kids seem to have pretty passive personalities. They generally follow the the ball instead of trying to take it away from the other team. At one point the girls on our team were playing patty-cake with each other as the other team went right by and scored! After the other team had scored about 15 goals and we'd scored 1 we finally put more of our players in. They other team was very kind and they even cheered for us when we kicked a goal! I think they were relieved for us! Another time two of their players were distracted at the other side of the field, so they only had 1 player next to the ball against 5 of our players. She still managed to get the ball away and score! 5 on 1!!!
This was a conversation Mike and Weston had towards the end of the first game:

Weston: Dad, who's winning?
Mike: Oh, we don't keep score.
Weston: I think they're winning.
Mike: Why do you think that?
Weston: Because we've only had one goal and their girl put it in our net on accident. :)

Despite the difference in skill level, we are having a great time. We are so proud of Weston having a great attitude and learning to work hard as a team. Although he's the smallest on the team he tries the hardest and doesn't "space out". Of course I'm kinda biased as his mom :)
He also looks pretty cute in his uniform! Notice his golden soccer cleats I found on Ebay for $5. Pretty cool!