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| I stumbled upon this wonderful illustration last week. It is by Janet and Anne Graham-Johnstone. They twin sisters who were famous English illustrators who illustrated over 100 books. I looked them up on Wikipedia...never married, born in 1928 (one died in 1979, one in 1998). |
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| The two sisters... |
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| Can you guess what book they were reading in class? |
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| Learning the alphabet and the calendar in class. |
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| Skeleton, ghosts, bat and the unfortunate man. |
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| Snail Race |
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| Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Tom came up the day my folks left to also celebrate Lincoln's birthday! They came with us to the boys first swim lesson (swim boot camp at Foss in St.Louis Park -- it has been excellent -- hooray for their talented and fun teacher Grace!!) All FOUR of the kids got to stay up from naps while we went to the Como Zoo that afternoon. They did great! Then Tom and Nancy took Lincoln out on his own to a restaurant for dinner. The next morning Grandma Nancy went to Atticus' kindergarten to visit. He was so excited. Grandma took him back home after school and then goodbyes were said. Such a fun week of Lincoln-Awesomeness! Yay! |
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| Three! |
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| Grandpa laughing at Lincon's silliness |
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| Thea Belle and Lincoln loved the koi. Sometimes I am sad that they don't get more time to linger and look and just "be" like the older two were able to have at that age. I know it is part of having a larger family, but I still feel like I stole that from them. |
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| p.s. Thea promptly lost her hairclip when we arrived at the zoo...I usually carry some extras in my pocket but not that day. |
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| They all liked the bears -- Thea Belle was ecstatic. She loves all animals -- chattering away with many unintelligible happy observations. Grandpa was her patient escort, letting her see and chat and look as the older boys sped off to the next exhibit. |
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| This snow leopard was a stoic hoot. We all stood watching him as he took what might be the longest bathroom break ever for very unimpressive results. Then he turned and looked at us haughtily and leapt up into the rock cliffs in his pen. It was pretty funny -- in a junior high boy kind of way. |
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| Happy Birthday, again, Goofball. |
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| ...handsome, sweet... |
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| ...mischievious, a bit dangerous... |
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| When I asked Lincoln for some ideas for his birthday gifts, he said wanted Grandpa Gary (my dad) to walk with him in the woods. Awww...that kid. So my dad and mom came up the Monday after Lincoln's birthday to do just that. We went down by Minnehaha Creek. We played "Pooh Sticks" off the bridge, threw rocks, enjoyed being outside together. There was even a little adventure while I was gone picking up Atticus from school: Lincoln started kicking rocks off the bridge when his shoe sailed away down into the moving creek. Lincoln started sobbing-screaming. My dad rushed down to the creek trying to fish the shoe out with a stick. My mom tried calming Lincoln down. Then my dad raced to take his shoes off and roll his pants and heroically jumped out into the creek rescuing the escaping shoe. Dietrich and Lincoln were extremely impressed excitedly retelling the story when I returned with Atticus. We played some more and then my folks took us out for a birthday lunch. |
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| My mom's contribution to birthday festivities was to come up with the idea of "planting" the boys in the still-empty garden box. They all had much fun and thought it was awesome to be doing something their mother never lets them do. (Clarification -- I DO let them play in dirt -- in fact, they had a couple hours of crazy-dirt pile adventures at one of the parks this week; But I DON'T let them play in the garden box.) Oh dear. (-: |
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| This is my favorite picture -- that kid. Rascal-face. |
