4H Shooting Competition, Loads of Daycare Fun, and A Roller Coaster

 This has been a busy week. (Yeah, I know. I say that every week).  This week, our nine year old competed in his first 4H shooting competition - this one was for air rifle.  He didn't win, but did well enough to earn a purple ribbon. Pretty good for his first competition in 4H.  He will have his archery competition in May, and he's starting a class on shotgun shooting next week.

He also accomplished a major childhood feat this week.

He learned to blow bubbles with his gum.  :)

 (Sorry this is a really random post, but I don't have time to make separate posts for all we've done this week.)  Anyway, I thought I'd show you the simplest daycare meal ever.  (Okay, so that's totally not true, but this was EASY and the kids devoured it.)

It's just refrigerated biscuit dough, flattened out, with a little scoop of refried beans and a hunk of cheese.  Fold it over and bake.  I made some without the cheese for our dairy free kids (I have three in the daycare, but ours is also wheat free, so no biscuits for him.  I smeared a little of the bean on top of the dairy free ones so I was sure to know the difference.

They pretty much all ate three biscuits each.  Simple, and fairly mess free too.

 Not so with the crafts - ha.  They're plenty messy.  But we're having SO MUCH FUN with this curriculum (Star Brite).  The kids are so excited about lesson time.  They RUN to the table, and some of them even ask as soon as they get here if we can do our papers now :)

Here's some cuteness thrown in for free :)

And here's a major accomplishment.  Our four year old has figured out how to pedal!  Woohoo.  And yeah, that is the living room.  I try to protect this particular toy from the daycare kids because a couple of them are very destructive, and this is our four year old's special toy that he got with his Christmas money a year ago.  So I bring it in when they are out and only put it out when they are gone.  It's usually in the laundry room, but he figured out how to get it out and was riding it in the house... dirty wheels and all.

 Here's our latest greatest investment.  A Roller Coaster!!!

The Fed Ex truck brought it on Friday, which happened to also be a drizzly-rainy-cold day.  The kids begged to try it out, so we unpacked it and snapped the track together in the living room and had all sorts of fun.

It was a huge hit - even just to walk and climb and slide on.

All the kids loved it - even the daredevil one year old.  I only had one daycare kid who was afraid of it, but she is afraid of everything so it was no surprise.

The one year old has even figured out (along with everyone else) how to push the car back up the track, get on it, and push himself off, which is a huge deal.

Oh, and the box has proved to be just as much fun as the roller coaster. :)

Tonight was movie night.  We dragged our huge television in from the garage, and all the guys (plus one daycare kid) claimed their spots and watched Ice Age: Continental Drift.  It was pretty cute.

Did I mention how much the kids love the preschool curriculum?

Today I finished another book - The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.  Wow.  Awesome book.  All 552 pages of it.  If you haven't read this one, you really should - especially if you're into Nazi Germany history.  Great book.