green light day

hayden's class has a "light" chart for their behavior. at the beginning of the day they all start on green. they then get a warning and then the lights begin to change. yellow, double yellow, then red. the day before school started, during the class orientation, the teacher let us know that on a red light day, the students would have a note sent home regarding what they did. she then followed it up with a "but there really aren't very many of those." i laughed inside and thought....oh this year is going to change her life.
hayden has had a pretty difficult time getting green lights. but the red light days have come quite easy to him. awhile ago we made a policy at home. if he got a green light he would get a quarter. if he got a green light all week he would get a total of $2.00 for the week. dave would also give him a "squish, zerbert, tickle" which seemed to work even more then the quarter. if he got a yellow light, nothing would happen to him but he wouldn't get the quarter. a double yellow meant he had to take a short nap/rest and would lose video games. and a red light day meant he had to take a longer nap/rest and would lose video games, shows and movies. at one point we had so many red days we then took away desserts and treats for the day.
last week jessica and justin were in town. that thursday jessica texted me and said that if i wanted to bribe him, i could tell hayden that if he got a green light jessica would take him swimming at a friends house. i didn't mention the swimming part because i knew i wasn't going to go swimming and i just didn't know what would happen so i left it as "we'll do something super fun if you get a green light."
jessica and justin came over a bit before hayden got home from school. i figured he wouldn't be coming home with a green light since bribes usually don't work with him and, let's face it, i'm just a glass half empty kind of person.
a little after 12 he comes jumping off of the bus and informs us he did, in fact, get a green light that day. we all had decided we didn't want to go swimming so we had to come up with something to do. i thought about putt putt or ice cream and then thought....why not chuck e. cheese. we've never taken hayden and he's always talked about it from commercials.
so we all packed up and headed to chuck e. cheese for lunch and video games. the whole ride there, hayden was telling me about how cool this place is and how parents can "relax." more commercial talk.
the boys both loved it. talan fell in love with a little car ride where he sat next to chuck e. cheese and it would snap his picture. i put him on a barney ride that was more or less exactly like it, but he jumped off before the ride was even over and asked for the mouse ride again.
we ate pizza, watched the chuck e. cheese stage show...which both of the boys LOVED, played video games, rode roller coaster rides and ended the day with some cotton candy.
we talked all about how when you are good, you get to do fun things. after the long weekend, he went back to school and got a yellow yesterday. not too bad, i guess.
only 2 more weeks so we'll try to get as many green lights as possible so he can go and buy something with all of his quarters.

riding a roller coaster:
talan's favorite ride:

who's this guy?!:





riding the gemini:


the virtual roller coaster. talan LOVED it and would just lay on jessica (but he wouldn't lay on me). hayden then went on it 3 or 4 times:
it took a lot to keep talan off of the stage:

spring break 2009!

hayden is just finishing up with his spring break week which was a VERY busy week indeed. no trips filled with sunshine and beaches, but we did visit the dr. office several times (never for him), he went to a gifted school in livonia to have some testing done (he was testing to see if he can get in to that school for next year...results to come probably this coming week), had a sleepover at grandma and grandpa's house, went to see monsters vs. aliens 3d with his pal ellanore and went to see a fireflight show.
i'll post some fireflight pictures on the main blog, but here are a couple of pictures from the movie:




hayden and ella dancing at the end of the movie:

hayden's first big house experience

on saturday, dave and hayden went to ann arbor with chadd and ashton to watch the spring something-or-other u of m football game. it was free which meant it was the perfect game to take hayden to for the first time to see how he liked it.
apparently hayden was so excited that he hardly stopped to take a breathe while talking the ENTIRE time in the car. then when dave and hayden got out of the car to run into a store real quick, hayden was literally bouncing while standing next to dave. the lady ringing them up looked at him and said "excited are you?" and hayden said "yes! this is going to be the biggest day EVER!"
from conversations i've had with hayden, he seems to have really enjoyed himself. although dave did tell me that he really just wanted to run up and down the stands. which comes as no shock to anyone that knows him. he also really loved the popcorn.
i asked hayden who won the game and he told me "both the blue and the white did. it was 28 to 28." i had no idea why in the world a game would end in a tie so i decided in order to write this blog i would need to ask dave if that was correct. and i'd also need to ask him who michigan played against.
it turns out it did end in a tie. and u of m played against u of m. really?!
so i guess they enjoyed themselves and are already planning on going back next year when they will go way too early to take a tour of the locker rooms and some other football related stuff. who knows, maybe talan will even go.

i guess these are brand new press boxes. exciting, huh?!:

kindergarten photo

apparently having your picture taken once per school year isn't enough, so lifetime photos came and took a "spring" round of photos. i just ignored the letter and didn't even think about it again until hayden came home with his photos that were available to purchase. he was standing with his arms crossed and actually a very nice smile in front of a spring backdrop. hayden asked "i wonder where i was?"
included in the package was a picture of his whole class. instead of buying it for $12, i had dave scan it. so here it is:

bingo for books

march was reading month which meant we did a lot of reading and reading activities around the house. one of the activities was bingo for books at hayden's school on march 20th.
dave stayed home with talan while hayden and i went to his school to play. neither one of us had very good luck, but in the end, all of the kids were able to turn in their 2 tickets (and their parents 2 tickets) to pick out some new books.
hayden also entered another webkinz raffle but this time he wasn't so lucky with that either. he started to have a bit of a meltdown telling me it wasn't fair, but he very quickly stopped and then happily read me one of his new books on the way home.
he seemed to have a good time even though he never really was able to shout "bingo!" and he got 4 great new books out of the deal.

ready to win some books:
we eventually started playing on 3 boards instead of 2 and we still couldn't win:
doing his best impression of the cover of one of his new books:

fuel '09

northridge church had a glow in he dark event called "fuel" for the k/1 and their families. dave had already made plans with a group of people to go see the watchmen movie so i was on my own with the two boys.
we got to the church where they had a pizza dinner and then the kids were able to make little "puppets" where they would color them, put stickers and glue other things on them that would glow in the dark for the main event. hayden did an ok job eating his pizza...only so he could eat his brownie. and talan only ate the pepperoni, carrots and brownie.
we ran into our friend leon and his daughter noelle, so that was nice to be able to hang with someone we actually knew.
after the kids made their puppets, we headed upstairs for glow in the dark tattoos and then we were seated for the glow in the dark puppet show.
i was told at the beginning of the evening that they wanted me to park my stroller upstairs as it was so crowded. that only lasted through dinner and then i finally had to go get it. talan is just not a kid that will stick near you. and i could never be a single parent to these two!!!
the puppet show was a little long and hayden was getting kind of restless, but we made it through and then headed home. i asked hayden what his favorite part of the evening was and he said "the brownie!"
i guess the past several years about 60-70 families have gone to this event. this year, there were over 150. they said there were over 600 people there! we had a good time and it's nice to be getting a little more involved at the church. hayden seems to really enjoy it and was even stopped by several of his teachers whom he gave hugs to.
on our way home, i stopped off at 7-11 to pick up some slurpees as we were all really thirsty. hayden had fallen asleep in the car but quickly woke up to drink his "frozen drink." then unfortunately, hayden ended up getting sick early saturday morning and he's been down and out ever since. poor kid!
here are a few pictures of our evening. not too many as i had my hands a bit full with tray's of food and a busy talan!

making their glow in the dark stick puppets:

the finished products:

noelle and hayden:
leon, noelle, hayden and talan waiting for the puppet show:
maybe i should have realized earlier that he was getting sick...:

talan loved my slurpee:

first attempt at a 2-wheeler

the other week we loaded up the car with the hummer and hayden's bike so that they could ride around dave's shop after church. we let hayden ride his bike for a little bit before we took the training wheels off and had him attempt to ride a 2-wheeler.
he was not happy about it and used the words "i can't" more than i thought was possible.
hayden has always been really smart and things have just always come to him without much work on his part. so if he comes across something that he can't do immediately, he tends to give up right away.
i do think he had it for about a split second, but that was about it for attempt number one. hopefully we'll start getting some nicer weather so he can practice and be up and running by late spring!





dave showing how not frustrating it is to work with hayden:


i think this is around the time dave let go for a split second: