On Monday Emily's school had a storybook parade where they dressed up like a character in one of their favorite books. One of the new favorites for our kids (and for us) is a series of books called 'Skippy Jon Jones' who is a Siamese cat who thinks that he is a Chihuahua. Skippy Jon Jones imagines all of these adventures like going to Egpyt to discover Mummies or going on hunts to discover dinosaurs. The book is crazy to read as it has English, Spanish and my favorite Spanglish interspersed throughout. So Mommy spent hours and hours (till about 1:30 AM) on Sunday night completing the costume. The basic framework was Emily's black cat costume (as you can see the black cat tail), the Whitney converted bunny rabbit ears into Chihuahua ears (painting them black and bending them down). She then untilized a cape Emily had recently got and painted 'El Skipito' on it (one of the titles Skippy takes for himself). So all in all it turned out to be pretty fantastic.

The kindergarten girls sporting their costumes together (Emily, Amelia and Reagan).

Josh's pre-school had their costume parade yesterday and Joshua transformed into the legendary 'Buzz Lightyear'. Mother Goose happened to stop by as well and read some nursery rhymes to the kids. Josh, I mean Buzz, is seen here posing with Mother Goose.

Joshua, like many kids his age, has now hit the 'fake smile' stage. He has developed his own unique brand of fake smiling we now affectionately call the 'Chipmunk' as you can see by this picture here.

Well when we got home from church our kids were excited and wired and they set up an interesting stage out of our kitchen table chairs and gave us a little concert where they sang a new song from church. They are currently studying about Joshua right now and the battle of Jericho.

Emily took a moment to share her memory verse from school.

Last Thursday was 'wear your favorite sports' gear day at Joshua's pre-school so Whitney went with the casual/spring ivy league look. He is 2/3 Georgia Tech (hat and sweatshirt wrapped around his neck) and 1/3 Texas A&M (as prominently displayed on his shirt).

Thursday was also 'Doughnuts with Dad' day even though my son claims he does not like doughnuts (he also does not like ice cream but he does like the cone so when we have ice cream he sometimes will simply eat the cone by itself - yeah I have no idea where that comes from). So being the good Dad I am, I ate my share of doughnuts as well as his and Joshua enjoyed a Capri Sun or as he says it a 'Pree Sun'.

Sunday night was 'Crazy hat' night at Awanas. Emily wore her 'Tsi Yang Yang' (Happy Lamb) hat from China with random small stuffed animals pinned to it and Joshua sporting a funky ski hat (because we had a Texas cold front as it got like in the low 70's)

One of the songs I've been singing at chapel with the kids is 'Every Move I Make'. From the first moment I started singing it, Joshua latched on to it. Then the other day Josh found an old worship CD that had the song on it. So now one of his favorite things to do is put the CD in and get his jam on as seen in the video above.
Emily has been thoroughly enjoying her music class with Ms Casey. This is one of the songs she has been learning from the Sound of Music.
The kids often enjoy a good biblical discussion. Here Joshua is attempting to describe the time when Jesus and His 'siples' fed the 5000 although according to him it was even a more fantastic miracle because Jesus fed a million people that day. Even though sister chimes in and tries to convince brother that it was actually 50000.

Lastly, one of Emily's favorite things to do lately has been writing and illustrating books. Basically the process works like this: Emily comes up to Daddy or Mommy and indicates she wants to write a book. She then tells us how many pages her new book will be and we grab the appropriate number and staple them together. Next Emily goes through and completely illustrates the book. Then she explains the title and script for each page as the plot unfolds. So far I think she has written 5 books. Some of the books she has written are Emily's Birthday, Emily's new job, Emily's present, etc. We have been quite amazed that her illustrations convey so much emotion with facial expressions changing from mad to sad to happy. Also, she draws her little dogs in each picture and they will change emotions at times. There was one book where she was taking out some trash and she drew in the cartoon 'stink squiggly lines' going up from the trash bag to indicate 'stinkage.' I'm not really sure where she learned to do that.