The benefits of chile

Enrique woke up around 11am, rested and recovered from last nights fever.
He told me he was hungry, so I started making him some oatmeal for breakfast.
I boiled the water, then I went for the oats in the pantry.

Enrique asked me, "Whats that?"
I said, "Oatmeal."
"Oh, I thought it was chile." Rique said.

This comment started a cute conversation. I asked him if he liked chile and he said no.
I told him I liked chile, but I didn't think that Aurora like it when I ate chile.

I meant that I thought it gave her an upset stomach, he thought that she just doesn't like chile and doesn't want anyone to, so he explained it to her.

Rique (in his sweet tender high pitched, I'm talking to a baby voice): Aurora, Momma and Papa like chile, its good for them. Okay?
Aurora: Big smile, because Enrique's talking to me
Rique: It helps them to fight bad people and monsters. Okay? (And all this time I thought it was just to add some extra flavor to food.)

Our Day

Instead of school work today, I thought we could use a change and do yard work. I've decided that exercise is overrated. I want to get in shape while beautifying my yards. I sweat and I get sore, so I think its just as good as an exercise video.Enrique doesn't seem to care for yard work. He says, "Its too hard." All the more reason to make it part of our daily routine.While I trimmed and weeded, Rique's job was to put the yard waste in the garbage can. It was more work to get him to do his job than it would have been to do it myself. But the point is to teach him, so we may have a long road ahead of us.

Tia Roxsana and Grandma Granados stopped by to say hi. It was her birthday.

Enrique thought she looked like a tiger in her shirt, he showed her this picture and then took her picture with the camera.
Rique took this picture of Baby Mei.
Sometimes Rique just grabs the camera and starts taking photos. He does a good job, and the ones that don't turn out I can just erase, so I let him.

Besides the photo of Rique, he took all of these.

After a nice cool bath and the movie Tarzan in the basement, Enrique felt better (he had a fever in the late afternoon.)

The bath looked so refreshing, after he was done and occupied, Aurora and I had our turn. It was so nice to relax and enjoy being clean.

Color Struggle

Coloring is still a bit of a struggle for us. Sometimes he wants to, but only for a very short time.

Painting seems to be a good way to put color on a picture in a short amount of time. Rique likes that.

I would love to see him coloring in a coloring book all by himself. I guess we need to work on that.

Puzzle Time

To work on Reasoning and Problem Solving, we did a puzzle.

After our exciting trip to the Dinosaur Museum Tuesday, Rique was eager to do the Dinosaur Puzzle.

I can't say when it happened, but Rique can figure out puzzles so well now, and he has interest in doing them. I love to see his mind work as he looks for pieces to fit together.

He wanted to take a picture at the end of the completed puzzle.

Rora and Rique together

I asked Enrique to watch his sister while I got something. I came back and they were sitting together on the chair. They looked so cute, I had to take a picture.

Its really wonderful how much Rique cares for his little sister.

Aurora at the park

It was very relaxing to lay on the grass and watch the boys play. Aurora is styling in her hat.
We got some nice photos without the flash.
I love this new stage that she's in. Her face just lights up when she recognizes you. It makes me feel so special.
I love her so much.

Quick Trip to the Park

We took a quick trip to the park and picked some of Rique's buddies up along the way. They ran all over the park and played monster, while Rora and I rested in the shade of a small and lonely tree.

Dinosaur Museum

Thank you Great Grandma for the $1 we got in the mail for Rique's 1/2 birthday. He loves the card and refers to the chubby penguins often.

This is what we did with the dollar. Thanksgiving point has $2 Tuesdays in the month of August. I remembered about it the last Tuesday of August in the afternoon, better late than never.

As soon as I did, I got everyone dressed and loaded in the car for a fieldtrip to see the dinosaurs.
Rique thinks this is cool. The exhibits were wonderful.
Aurora was such a good baby to stay in her stroller, most of the time.
Rique was so excited, he rushed from one thing to the next.
It was so neat how they had all these scenes set up in different rooms, I would think that we were done and then there'd be another room with more things to see.

Rique being silly.
Towards the end of the museum there were many hands on play things for kids. Rique participated in this drawing table. I was so impressed with his picture of a dinosaur.
I'll post the picture tomorrow.
This was a large dinosaur body that kids could add limbs to, to create their own dinosaur.
When Rique pushed these buttons, lights lit up on the map to tell where various dinosaurs were found. Pressing buttons was fun.

This was a rubbing exercise. I was so happy that Rique wanted to do all these activities.
This room was so crowded, but so fun for our Enrique. There was a giant sand and water table that covered the room. In the table there was water, sand, little trees and dinosaurs.

All the kids made their own dino scenes.

I held Aurora so she could see what all the excitement was about.
They even had cool little aprons for the kids to wear.
He's creating a mountain.

Look at that face, all the chaos was so worth it.

Rique riding a dinosaur.
Too cute.
With a little help from some blankets, Aurora was able to sit forward in her stroller.
Rique plays with Rora.
This last exhibit was Rique's favorite. The room was full of two large sandboxes that had dinosaurs to excavate with I'd have more picutres, but I was nursing Rora as he played.

Baking Day

Monday night for Family Home Evening, we read a story from the friend about giving the gift of service. After reading it, we decided we should do some service too. Enrique, Aurora and I made oatmeal cookies for Papa to take home teaching.

We also made bread for our family. While we did this we talked about measuring. Rique remembered that two half circles make a whole, and therefore, two half cups also make a whole.

Aurora started grabbing the toys hanging from her rocker too, it was a big morning for us.