The Everyday Inbetweens

After Easter, we were back to nice weather and Catherine’s fiercely independent fashion choices!

Matthew normally does his email supervised, but in the chaos of 3 kids I let him write emails himself and he “spammed” his entire contact list. Email etiquette lessons are definitely starting early. He wrote a follow-up email but is also learning the more email he sends, the more he receives and the more the cycle continues :-) He thought he was being pretty funny sending math problems to Papa. I tried to capture his devilish grin but he was on to me:

I did accidentally get this silly shot which was not quite what I was going for!

Poor sleepy baby, it seems we’re always waking him up to drag him somewhere with us.

This day Matthew had a 4 day weekend at school so we took advantage of Thursday and Friday to visit friends he doesn’t see much because they are not in his school. First up was storytime at a little country school out of town. We got caught up with some surprise visitors and ended up with a leaky diaper. John had to borrow his buddy’s PJs. I think purple could be his color!

The next day we met one of Matthew’s friends (and his week old baby sister so I could steal newborn snuggles) at the Dino Park.

Matthew was mostly excited about having a peer to join him on the climbing rock. Catherine just isn’t quite there yet.

Friday we decided to have friends over for dinner and make your own pizzas. Catherine and Matthew were quite the sous chefs and even color coordinated cutting boards and tomatoes. Normally Matthew dislikes tomatoes, but if I buy the yellow ones for “taste tests” he eats even more of them.

Someone started to sit up! It’s amazing how quickly he’s advanced from this unsturdy tripod to full-blown sitting.

Matthew was pretty proud that he figured out how to turn his tunnel into a hanging basketball hoop. Basketball has been his newest obsession and he’s been practicing a lot to get better. I truly have no idea how much skill a kindergartener can/should have in basketball, but I get the feeling he has peers with far more experience.

And things that make my heart melt, Catherine reading to John:

With John’s prowess for sitting, we brought out the booster seats so he could sit up at the table with us for a while. Of course he never gets to be in a picture by himself:

Unless Catherine’s off at school of course, then we can sneak a few in!

I’m finishing up the last of my science lessons for Matthew’s class. We were scheduled to launch rockets but due to a crazy snow storm, I came in and did a 4th little pig engineering lesson. I even brought the big bad wolf with me to help blow down the houses:

Matthew hard at work with his buddy:

Eyeing the competition and finishing up their house.

Matthew and his partner built a very sturdy house with an intricate escape route for mice (?!?!) but it was not the tallest.

That afternoon the kids and I ran errands and took a snack break at one of my favorite spots to enjoy the Bridgers in their snowy glory!

That Friday we headed out to Three Forks for a playdate and to bring milkshakes to a friend who had just had surgery. It was a great visit but we had to hurry back because it was movie night at Matthew’s school. We made Big Hero 6 cupcakes for the occasion.

Next my phone reminded me of Matthew’s first spring where we spent a lot of time hanging out in Virginia and wedding hopping. I’m excited because John will be about the same age when we head out this summer. I’m less excited because I get the sinking suspicion John will be far more mobile this summer than Matthew was 5 years ago.

Oh Catherine! On our days at home, this is what she does much of the time. She LOVES puzzles:

That Saturday we ended up running errands all morning to procure the necessary things to get all the Watsons on bikes or bike accessories at the same time. We finished up just in time to sneak over to the MSU Spring Game and check out Bobcat Football. Matthew asks about going to a game every time we pass the stadium and everytime we look at ticket prices I just can’t see paying all that money to watch a team we only mildly care about play teams we don’t really care about, only to have 2-3 whining children throughout the game, or pay a sitter even more to keep the kids at home.

Though there wasn’t the full gametime atmosphere, the spring game allowed us to sit front row almost on the 50 yard line for free to learn that it only held our kids’ attention for 20 minutes tops. John was thoroughly unimpressed.

We stopped in to grab pizza and a beer at the new-ish brewery that James goes to often with work but I’d never been to. We gave John a breadstick to hold and he went to work chomping away.

We capped off the evening testing out our bike gear for an inaugural ride to Ace Hardware for a bolt! Catherine snapped this picture of James and Matthew for me:

Thanks to some gear loans from friends, we are now bike trail ready! Next blog I’ll cover our super exciting trip into Yellowstone and John’s foray into solid foods!