Reid and Stefani Adopt

Isaac took the liberty of taking a couple of videos of himself, so I thought I would post them here.  He likes to take pictures and videos, and I think he really likes to hear himself talk.  One of the videos he took of himself was in timeout.  He totally shouldn't have had his dad's phone in time-out, but it was so funny to watch that I kind of sort of forgot to scold him for it.   To make sure I don't forget to represent Jaydon and Esther, there is a picture of them in their church clothes.  They spend hours playing together in Esther's room.  Isaac kind of feels left out, but without fail, within 30 seconds of him walking into the room, the yelling and screaming starts.  I think he comes in and wants to take over and that throws a monkey wrench in Esther's imaginative play.  So I decided to take a quick video of what Esther and Jaydon are doing right now.  The results tell their own story.

 Christmas this year was about house projects and biking, biking, and more biking.  Here are some photos that someone managed to snap amongst the chaos.  Christmas eve at the Archibald house consists of dramatizing the Christmas story.  Jaydon was a wise man, and Esther and Isaac were Mary and Joseph.  Reid was the donkey.  I read the story from the bible, and Grandpa Archibald played the star and the angel.  Grandma Archibald played the shepherd and successfully shepherded the wild wise man too.  The kids got to open pajamas on Christmas eve, and they were almost too small. Oops.   December 26th after church. Daddy reading a Christmas story to the kids. Grandma Archibald came and helped the kids manage the chocolate fountain. Brother bonding time. Gingerbread houses! Esther was going for maximum amount of candy. Two stories!  This one almost wouldn't stay up. Grandpa Archibald was heavily involved in the construction of this house. We e...

 Isaac was accepted for the school of Science, which I believe I have already posted about.  If not, he now goes to the West Melbourne School for Science, where sciencey things are known to happen.  This year, Isaac is required to participate in the science fair, and he came up with one of the most difficult projects to tackle.  He wanted to see how different colored lights affect the hatching of chicken eggs. So, we first hatched chicks normally to set a control.  We had 9 eggs hatch, with one that started to hatch and then gave up the ghost before it got out of the eggs.  Two of our hatchlings died within the first week of life.  These were in a group that hatched a day or two later than the first brood.  One of them had a gimp legs and the other got trampled trying to feed.  So now we have 7 chicks that I am passing off to a friend today.  But no worries, we have 48 more eggs from Amazon of all places incubating in our experimental in...

Happy 6th Birthday Jaydon!  Now that he's been with us just over 2 years and is officially an Archibald, I have no shame posting these pictures.  Jaydon loves cars, so he had a Lightning McQueen birthday, complete with all kinds of car themed presents.  He went from owning 1 Lightning McQueen car to owning 5.  Even after that, he begged his Grammy to give him another one, because it was yellow.  Who knew there was a yellow Lightning McQueen?  For Jaydon's party, we took his brother and sister and 3 friends of his choosing to Defy, a trampoline park. I chose not to post pictures of his friends, but I got one of him and his siblings.  When we got done jumping, we came home to presents, ice cream, and cake.  It was fun, and still about wore me out.  who knew four 6 year old boys could wear you out so fast?  Jaydon's cake, now totally eaten.  I may or may not have let them have the last of it for breakfast this morning. It took this kid...

 So my husband Reid bought an app called SimplyPiano.  Because Isaac is so into video games, he thought this might be right up Isaac's ally.  It is.  Isaac begs at times to use our phones to go play the piano, and he is now even starting to read sheet music without the phone.  This is a video I took of him sight-reading a new song, which is a little rough, granted, but great for where he came from, which was no musical experience at all.  Even Esther is starting to read music, and Jaydon pounds on the piano occasionally before we run out of patience and get him off.  

This has been long overdue.  My kids got into this "A+" charter school called West Melbourne School for Science.  My husband has been trying to convince me for a while that this would be a great place for them to go, but I was reluctant to give up the easy walk across the street to the public school.  But I put them in the lottery and all 3 of them got waitlisted.  I truly didn't think we would be going to this school this year, but then I got word that Isaac got a spot, then Jaydon.  Esther was in waitlist spot #1 when the deadline happened, so I thought for sure she wouldn't go to WMSS.  But then I got a call, AFTER THE DEADLINE, and they had gotten special permission to let her in!  Miracles do happen after all.  I guess there were a lot of people pulling their kids out of the school at the last moment due to COVID cases increasing.  I forgot to take off Jaydon's eyepatch for this picture.  That is the front of the school. We had to s...

 This year for Isaac's birthday, we may have gone a little overboard.  What started as Isaac and I throwing ideas for his birthday back and forth became a waterslide in the rain in our backyard.  Isaac originally wanted to do laser tag, but after looking into the expense for that, Reid decided it would be more economical to just rent a waterslide.  I'm not sure that ended up being true after the cake, pizza, and food we ordered.  Not to mention that it rained, but none of that spoiled the party.  All the kids had fun, and since they were already wet, the rain didn't bother them at all.     The waterslide. Isaac got a hover board for his birthday.  I think he'll soon forget how to walk. The waterslide company threw in a cotton candy machine for free. His birthday loot and cake.