Weekend Update

Nothing much has happened lately, so I don't have a lot of stories to tell on this blog. This past weekend, I was on call on Saturday, so there is definitely nothing interesting to tell about that day, since my family went on with their activities without me. Alex went to a friend's Sweet Sixteen birthday party and then saw a movie afterwards, so that's about it. I got some sleep while on call, but Sunday, my post call day, was still a blur.

I joined Snapchat this weekend, and friended Natalie and Anthony. For those of you that don't know what Snapchat is, it's basically an app on your phone where you can chat and sent photos to one another, and the photos only stay on your screen for a few seconds. You can take a screenshot, and I did take one, but that's not really the point of it. When Anthony got the friend request, he said that it was "slightly weird to have your mom on Snapchat". I told him that I mostly joined because of Natalie but that it all depends on what type of pictures you send.

This is one example of a photo I sent to Anthony. I took a picture of Patrick's donuts that he was having for breakfast and labeled them "Papa's donuts". Anthony replied back with a photo of his schoolwork--a bunch of math-looking formulas and some circular pictures and replied that those were HIS donuts. He is nearing the end of his school term (they are on the quarter system instead of in semesters), so he is getting even busier. Natalie and I will be going up there to visit him at the end of this week, and he will hopefully be able to see us a couple of times, but I don't dare ask him for any more time since he will be studying for his exams next week.

This is a picture of Eric reading his new book. Last weekend, Eric, Natalie, and I were at Barnes and Noble. They both wanted to buy books with their own money. I've got them trained now. They wanted to see what the price at Amazon was. Since it was cheaper at Amazon, they decided to let me order from there.

The books were supposed to arrive on Saturday, and I told them that since I would not be home. Unfortunately, the books did not arrive on Saturday. They were very disappointed. Amazingly, the books arrived on Sunday. I didn't think the US Postal Service delivered packages on Sunday, but I got the text alert on my phone saying that it had been delivered, and sure enough, the package was on the front doorstep.

In case you're wondering what book that is, it's a book called "Dinosaur Wars"--as if Eric needed another dinosaur book. This one compares dinosaurs to one another, though, so it's structured differently than his other dinosaur books.

We had decided to go to our regular church for mass at 5pm on Sunday. We have been going to a different church for the past few weeks, so we forgot that our church's Fall Festival was on Sunday. We only remembered when we were trying to get into the parking lot. Of course mass was cancelled, so we decided to go ahead and go to dinner early. The kids chose California Pizza Kitchen.

Natalie was in fine form. She was chatting constantly about anything and everything. I even took a little video of her and sent it to Anthony via Snapchat. She, of course, kept saying, "Don't take a picture of me!" That's why I decided to take a video. Then, of course, she said, "Are you taking video?!" Heehee. Sneaky mama.

Alex had his earphones in so he could try to tune out his sister's voice. Eric was his normal goofy self. They consented to having their picture taken. I'll take what I can get. I still love this photo because that's who they are. Goofy, lovable boys.

Although today isn't really the weekend anymore, it was my "Sunday" since my whole Saturday was spent at work and I was off yesterday and today. Eric isn't very talkative about his day at school, so I was happy to see a newsletter from his new GT teacher. She has a blog telling about what the kids do in her classes. Eric has GT on Mondays from 9-11am. There was no entry yet for today, but there was an entry for last week, his first GT class for this new school year.

He had received an assignment to do something creative with a square piece of white paper. He started folding it right away but quickly became frustrated because he couldn't get it to look like a dinosaur, which was his intention. Alex was able to coax from Eric that he wanted to make a pteranodon, so Alex and I of course googled "how to fold paper into a pteranodon". Sure enough, there was a video on YouTube. I helped Eric fold the paper, and then he decorated it. This photo was posted on the GT blog. That's when I realized that I had not taken a picture of the pteranodon. The folded object in the upper rightmost corner is Eric's pteranodon. I cropped out the teacher's name at the top. The other objects are what some of the other kids made with their white square piece of paper.

The GT folder also had a newsletter with QR codes on it. QR codes are sort of like the barcodes that you see on products at the store where the cashier scans the barcode and gets the price of the item as well as what the item is. QR codes usually lead to a website. The GT Teacher, Mrs. S, had a QR code for the blog as well as a link to the Google document where I could fill out Patrick's and my contact info and send it to her automatically. Cool. The third QR code led to the GT Twitter page. Wow, I love that she is using technology, because kids nowadays really have to know about this kind of stuff.

Lastly, she sent home something for the parents to do. I'm not sure why the parents were getting homework, because there was no explanation in the newsletter, but Eric had some shapes cut out of yellow paper and paper clipped together, and he said that the parents were supposed to put the shapes back into a square. Patrick, Natalie, and Alex all tried, but not for very long. Alex had homework and Patrick and Natalie were on their way to swim practice. I ha a little more time, so I worked on it, and I solved it.

I have to admit that I did cheat a little. Since Eric cut out the shapes, there were some jagged edges, because he can't yet cut a clean line with scissors. I used that to help me figure out that the two big triangle pieces had to fit together, and then I figured it out from there. So I got a little creative. :)

So, I had a few little stories to tell after all. I should have more interesting photos and stories next week since Natalie and I will be traveling. Alex is also going on a school trip to visit Texas Tech University this weekend--his first college trip. I'll be back next week to recap it all.