I Love Sundays

 Every day of the week, the kids are always on their devices and it's a battle to get them to do anything else.  Sundays Christian and Bella have committed to keep them off and it makes Sundays so much fun.  The kids have creativity and play together and it's like old times. Today Christian decided to make a cup stack.  He and Peter spent the morning before church stacking dozens of cups in a variety of ways.  The best part, of course, was knocking them back down.  Sundays allow us to take walks (and to jump in puddles when asked specifically to walk around them), enjoy board games, and spend time at church together.  It's really a wonderful day.

Last week all three older kids participated in an annual piano competition which they do every year.  It was Benjamin's last year of the competition and he was so happy to be done.  It marks the end of piano lessons for him. He has fought and fought me on taking lessons and has pretty much refused to practice for months now, so we made the agreement that he would prepare of the competition and then he could be done.  I'm super sad about it.  He has so much natural talent and I think he could be really amazing, but $25/lesson so he could refuse to practice all week was getting tiresome.  No matter the consequences I enacted, he was unmoved.  It was time to end the battle.  He gave me one happy smile photo but he really wanted the triumphant victor photo too.  We still haven't gotten the scores back.  Christian was the only one with a flawless performance, but we'll see how the judges felt.  Sadly, parents aren't allowed in the room, so no videos to show.

Just a random picture I found that I thought was funny: this is how Peter joins Christian on the computer - laying on his mouse hand, leaning directly in front of the screen so Christian can't see.  Every time.  

Peter picks up more and more teen slang every day.  Today I was telling him that I would like him to be more careful with my things because sometimes he'll take my things and break them, as he had just then with one of my items.  His response: "Fat L!" and away he went.  Thank you Benjamin for teaching him that little retort.  A few days ago he was trying to tell me something and I couldn't understand and he got frustrated and retorted, "Fine, bye Felicia!"  Thank you Christian for that one.  What I find remarkable is that he doesn't just learn the phrases, but he knows perfectly when and how (with just the right amount of sass) to employ them.  It's both annoying and incredibly impressive.