Winter Is Here

We got just enough snow last week for some after-school sledding. Pete and Sam headed over to the hill right behind the house.

Pete Will Be a Lawyer (Part III)

Dad (to Mom): Does Wegman's have our paperwork for leaving Pete and Sam in the play area?

Pete: What paperwork are you talking about?

Dad: If you want to leave a child in the play area at Wegman's, you have to sign a form indicating that Wegman's is not responsible if anything happens to the child.

Pete: Why would anyone sign a contract like that?

Sam's New Guitar

Here is Sam playing with the new electric guitar he got for his birthday from Nana and Poppy.


Maybe we will have to post another guitar video of Sam on YouTube. His last guitar video currently has been viewed over 55,000 times.

Sam's Birthday Party - The "After Party"

Sam wanted to invite some of his older friends to his birthday party. We decided to invite them to come at the end of the party and play afterwards. Note, at this age "play" apparently means "fight":

Sam's Birthday Party - Opening Presents

Can there be anything less interesting than a blog post about a 4-year-old opening birthday presents? Perhaps not. For something more intriguing, you may want to click here to see a discussion we raised on Yahoo!Answers about the importance of opening presents at parties.

The Lincoln Logs shown below were fun, because they were from Sam's friend Bill and the two characters in the set are Sam and Bill. The protagonist is "Sheriff Sam", and the anti-hero is "Bad Billy".



We also let each guest sit with Sam while he opened his or her present.

Sam's Birthday Cakes

Cake #1


Cake #2

Sam's Birthday Party - Pin the Wand

There was time after the magic show for "Pin the Wand on the Magician". This is the game we didn't have time for at Pete's party in August.




"Somehow" Pete managed to get his wand right in the center of the magician's hand. It's too bad there was no prize.

This game yields a fascinating distribution of results. About half of the attempts are dead-center on the target. The other half are randomly distributed across the wall (this included Sam, by the way). If we ever do this game again, my idea is to give a prize to everyone whose guess is not right on the target. In other words, the people that played the game fairly.

Sam's Birthday Party - Magic / Invisible

No "Mazes/Magic/Invisible" party would be complete without a magic show.


Pete, Sam, and Dad all participated in the show. There were 4 tricks:

1. Magic Crayon

2. Cut the Rope

3. Vanishing Coin

4. Make Sam Disappear



The magic words for each trick were "Abracadabra, Alacazam, do you magic Mr. Sam!"


Dad and Sam practiced trick #4 each night leading up to the show.

Sam's Birthday Party - Mazes

No maze party would be complete without a maze. So during the week leading up to Sam's party, Pete and Sam helped Mom and Dad construct a floor maze out of plywood, garden hose, contact paper, and glue. We did a little bit more gluing of hoses each night until it was done.


We did three maze games at the party. The first maze game was guiding a ball through the maze using a magnetic pointer. The guests sat very nicely and took turns. Here is Harrison demonstrating game #1:


The second maze game was walking through the maze. The last maze game was selecting a color out of a bag and trying to pick up a ball of matching color. Here is Gia demonstrating game #3:

Sam is 4

Sam is turning 4 tomorrow, which seems a bit anti-climactic since we've already had 2 of his 4 "parties".

The first party was Saturday night with Nana and Poppy. We went out to Sal's for dinner, and then had a small cake.

The second party was the big Mazes, Magic, and Invisible party on Sunday afternoon with A LOT of Sam's friends. There was also an "after-party". This is a new trend we are starting among the pre-school set.

These are the children who attended to Sam's party on Sunday:

Sam*
Pete

Bill*
Gianna*
Josh1*
Tahina*
Harrison*

Pickle
Gia
Christina
Josh2
Nick**
Brandon**

* In Sam's pre-school class
** Attended only the after-party (for the older kids)

More details on the party will be posted later this week.

Alphabetics

Sometimes you have to take a picture of a special creation so that someone can be convinced to clean it up and put it away. Below is an example of this phenomenon, featuring Magnetix:

More Proof That Pete Should Be A Lawyer When He Grows Up

Mom: Where do you guys want to go to dinner?
Sam: Wendy's
Pete: BK
Mom: You have 3 minutes to discuss together and reach a decision

[after 2 minutes]

Mom: Where did you decide to go?
Sam: Wendy's
Pete: BK
Mom (to Pete): If you guys don't agree on a place, we are going home

[after 3 minutes]

Pete: OK, we've discussed it and agreed to go to BK
Mom: How did you get Sam to agree to that?
Pete: I just told him that his choices were BK or go home

Pete's Hiking Rules

Pete has his own set of hiking principles.

#1 Trees have branches for a reason, and that reason is climbing.

#2 The easy way is for losers


#3 Risky is usually good

#4 Always choose the path not taken

Thanksgiving

We did our second annual Thanksgiving hike on Thursday. Note that the weather was quite nice, so Pete is wearing shorts and Sam has short sleeves. We did about a 1 mile hike, and then went to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium while the turkey was baking for dinner.

Pete and Sam are seen above collecting various items in a bucket for creating a nature person.

Also, here is Sam log-surfing:

Maze Party - Invitations

We asked Sam what he wants to do for his 4th birthday party. He said mazes, magic, and invisible.

Here are the invitations:

Playground at Grandma's

One of the nice features of Grandma and Grandpa's house is the nearby playground / clubhouse / pond.


On our last visit, Pete and Sam were old enough to walk over to the playground by themselves.

Some things to do there are feed the fish, play pool, and play in the sand.

It's a small playground, so Sam can get bored after a little while.


This was also the first place we realized that we can hide a toy in the woods and mark it on the GPSr so Pete and Sam can use the device to go look for it, like a mini treasure hunt.

There is also a putting "green", with a sand trap, but it was not designed well so it is almost impossible to strike a ball without it rolling off of the fast, sloped surface.

Floam Map

Here is a map of the world that Pete made with Floam.


Note that the crack in the table is the equator.

Also, here is one Sam made, which he calls "Earth".

CTR Race

Inspired by Crash Team Racing, dad hid the letters CTR along a "track" in the house so Pete and Sam could race around, grabbing the letters as they found them. Sam had to grab the yellow letters, and Pete the blue letters.

After a few CTR races, we did a few races with crystals.

Link For Hunger

This year was Pete's third year volunteering to help hand out food to the needy as part of the local Link For Hunger program. He went with Dad on Saturday morning. They split up - Pete working on stocking the shelves in his favorite area, while dad helped walk around with the people coming for food and with loading the food into their cars.

Actually, all of the food given out comes from a scouting program called Scouting For Food. Pete also got to participate in collecting the food with his cub scout troop. First they go out and hang bags on all of the doors in the neighborhood. Then they go back a week later and collect the bags full of food. This is the food that is given out at the church.

A Good Lunch

Chicken tenders and mini root beer.

Big Boy Bed

Sam is now in his big boy bed. Note that he is completely protected from an evening attack, with one hand on his drive vortex.

Delaware Hike

We stopped in Delaware on the way home from Philadephia for some lunch and a hike in a nice local park.

On our walk to the geocache, we met a fellow geocacher who was out letterboxing.


Sam was wearing a cape that he found in Grandma's basement, his happy pants, and his rainbow shirt. So he was happy.


Pete brought Libre and Stripey on the hike since the cache we found was called "Here Kitty Kitty". There were some cool big leaves on the trail, about the size of Pete's head. Pete walked around with a leaf in front of his face and asked us to henceforth refer to him as "Leaf Lad".

Giggleberry Fair

On Sunday of our Philadelphia trip, we went to a fun place called Giggleberry Fair, in Peddler's Village.

In Discovery Land, Pete and Sam enjoyed the dress-up stage, moonbounce, rock wall, games, and drawing table. We also had some pizza with grandma and grandpa.




We also hiked for a few geocaches on the ride home. Pete and Dad hiked some pretty aggressive terrain on the second one, but had to turn back when darkness set in.

More Costumes

Note, these are not Pete and Sam's Halloween costumes. There are just their extra Power Rangers costumes for everyday wear. The weapons are the Drive Slammer and Drive Vortex.

New Castle

On our trip to Philadelphia, we stopped in New Castle to look for our first indoor geocache. The original purpose of the stop was to meet mom's friend Beth, who we learned is now living in the Wilmington area.

The geocache was in a historic renovated courthouse. We got a nice tour from Bob before locating the geocache.

Here are judges Pete and Sam. Note, the Bible in this picture is older than the United States:


Here is Bob showing us a trap door to the area preserved beneath the courthouse. This is where they once kept a prisoner who used a candle to burn down the original courthouse:


Here Bob is announcing that the jury of Pete and Sam found the defendant "Not Guilty":


Here Pete and Sam are in jail with the slaves who were caught escaping through Delaware on the underground railroad:

By the way, it was not Halloween. Pete and Sam just felt like dressing up like Power Rangers.

Mario's Pizza

Sam and Pete were very excited when we found Mario's Pizza on our trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Philadelphia.

We always take a quick excursion through Newark, Delaware on the trip, to avoid the toll plaza that is South of the Rt. 896 Exit and North of Rt. 279 Exit. When we spotted Mario's, we had to stop there for lunch. Sam said: "My two favorite things, Mario and Pizza!"

Note, in the picture Sam is the blue ranger and Pete is the black ranger.

Halloween Shirts

Mom made some cool Halloween shirts for Pete and Sam. Here is Sam's shirt:


Pete's was similar, but had some ghosts on it also.

Candy Corn

Dad took the day off yesterday to celebrate Halloween.

First Mom and Dad went to Pete's classroom for the Halloween party. The highlight of the event was the candy corn guessing jar. They passed it around the room, and each child got to guess how many candy corns were in the jar. There were about 20 children in the class. Pete announced to everyone at his table that he was guessing 241. When everything was counted, they announced that the second place guess was 200, and the winning guess was Pete's. (There were 226 candy corns in the jar.) Pete's prize was that he got to share the candy corn with his teacher and his class.


Later in the day, Dad went to sit in with Sam's pre-school class. This was good fun, since he arrived during free-play time. Dad and Sam did some puzzles, games, and an I-Spy book. Then everyone did songs together at circle time. In the meantime, Mom read a book and Pete worked on his homework in the lobby.

Then everyone went to do a local geocache. Pete found it quickly, so we all went to the playground for a little while before it was time for some trick-or-treating.

Gladiators

Someone had the bright idea to give Pete and Sam some weapons and permission to start whacking one another.


Of course, Pete declared himself the winner.

Warm-up

Sam: I'm cold

Dad: Go run a few laps, and that will warm you up

[Sam runs a few laps, then starts slowing down]

Sam: I'm tired. Can you carry me and run some more laps?

Sorry

Dad: What did you do this afternoon?
Pete: I won a game of Sorry against Sam
Dad: Wow, you got Sam to make it through an entire game of Sorry?
Pete: Well, he left about half-way through, but I finished the game by playing for both of us.
Dad: Oh. Did you always make the best possible move for Sam?
Pete: Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't.