Shapes and colors

So, I'm trying to find more entertaining ways of helping Elliott learn his shapes and colors. He's actually really good at recognizing and identifying his shapes and colors in books but I thought it would be more exciting trying to find shapes and colors in the world around Elliott. So what I decided to do was take Elliott outside and have him use our camera to take pictures of the shapes and colors. I was hoping it would last longer than it did, but these are some of the things he helped me take pictures of.

Rectangle

Sphere, he also saw circle

Oval

Circle

I confess, I helped him find one square. He decided to count all four.

I'm not sure what shape he found here. My guess it was a triangle...maybe.

Yep, we got triangles here.

He found this circle all by himself.

This one I picked out. He was...starting to lose interest by this point.

We started to take pictures of colors. Obviously green wasn't hard to find.

Yeah, we found pink. 

I told Elliott to find yellow. He took the next couple of minutes to take a picture of his shirt until I decided to help him out.

Lastly, we found white, but sadly Elliott had lost interest in this game and decided to run around in the yard. I thought this picture turned out well.

The last thing I wanted to share with everyone is this wonderful moment. And that wonderful moment was when Elliott spelled his own name without any prompts or help from his parents. It was pretty rad.

This picture is actually a picture of the second time he wrote his name without any help. We weren't able to get the original because he erased it on the account of not like how it looked. He liked the second spelling much better. The kid is becoming a perfectionist. I know he's not getting that from me.

Oh! And for those of you who want to know what the sex of our second child is going to be. We will find out next week. Woo hoo!

Star Wars and other things

I posted this on Facebook a while back but I never got around to posting it on here. As a father and fan of Star Wars it was a moment to be pleased and proud of. Not because of the outcome from the video being watched by Elliott, but because even at four Elliott understood the impact this scene has on an individual. I believe he understood (on a basic level of course) the relationship between Luke and Obi-Wan and the loss of a favorite character in the film. Elliott's reaction to this moment is perfect. I can only hope I get such a reaction to when Elliott discovers the truth behind who Vader is. Hopefully he doesn't discover that truth when he's old enough to watch it with me. That has to be a father and son moment, at least to me it does.

I also wanted to make another announcement to anyone who may grace this blog any more. I know, it bears often repeating how I don't post as often as I should. Our family has nothing really important to talk about! Hahah! I kid! I kid! In any case, check it out.

This kid cracks us up. I couldn't ask for a more perfect face to be given when announcing the coming of our second child. We have no clue what the sex of the child is yet. I believe we find out in about two weeks. I have to admit that we're kinda hoping for a girl but we'll take whatever we get. We're really excited about whatever comes and like I said. We are stoked. I'll add more later, until then, take care of yourselves and don't do anything that I wouldn't do.

Well this is something new

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want to surprise everyone. See, you never know when I will actually post something so you just have to keep checking. Sometimes I'll post often and frequently and other times...well, let's not get into that shall we. I think it's safe to say for everyone involved here that they come as they come eh.

I'm pretty sure that the last little post I put on here was my about my trip to Oregon back in August and it was great time. Well a lot has happened since then. You know, I went back to school and did my whole student teaching (which was quite a crazy experience) thing, graduated and then started to do the real world thing and started looking for a job. I don't know about the rest of you but I for one have to say that looking for a job is one of the most boring things that one can do. How many times can you write about how awesome you are before even you get tired of how arrogant you sound? I mean, I LOVE myself but at the end of writing all those resumes and completing applications even I wanted to punch myself in the face. Thankfully I didn't follow through with that thought. But enough about me. Suffice it to say I got a job at a charter school and I start in the fall teaching 4th grade. I'm pretty stoked about it because I dig the that grade. I seem to recall enjoying that grade and the teacher I had. Ah, Mrs. Realt, thanks for having my back when I unexpectedly farted really loud while you were teaching. That may have been one of the reasons why I decided to get into education. In any case let's show you pictures of our awesome little man and tell you what's been going on.

Since it'll take me too long to post EVERYTHING that we have photographed since August I'm just going to post some stuff from Easter etc. A couple of the pictures will be of Elliott and a good friend of his doing the Easter Egg hunt. Now a little back story to this. Apparently this little "excursion" was hosted by the Elder's quorum and they told us they had 600 eggs laying around and that we should only pick about 10 because of the amount of kids that were there. Ok, fair enough, being me I surprisingly decided to follow the rules and make sure Elliott picked the allotted amount. So we take off and very quickly find 10 eggs ( I kinda helped). Well as I'm walking with Elliott I notice that all these other kids running around stuffing their baskets with as many eggs as they possibly can! I wanted to say "Hold up you little s**&! put em back! I'm following the rules here and denying my kid the awesomeness of more colorful plastic eggs surely you can learn about sacrifice and allow all the other kids to get their fair share." Apparently the irony of Easter and sacrifice was lost on them. (sigh) I expected more from primary kids...So I decided to rectify the situation by stealing eggs from random baskets and putting them in his basket. Problem solved and the other kids learned a valuable lesson. I don't know what that lesson would be but I let them figure it out.

Ok, part of that story isn't entirely true. I didn't take eggs from other kids baskets, but I thought about.

Elliott looking for eggs before the hunt even begins. And yes, that is a Halloween bucket. I forgot to get a basket.

Elliott and his friend Riley getting ready to go find eggs. It's cool seeing my kid have good friends. I mean, heh, why wouldn't my kid have friends?

Elliott showing off his egg. Just stating the obvious.

Apparently jellybeans are eyeballs.

Moving along from Easter I wanted to share a few pictures of Elliott riding his Spider-man bike we got him for Christmas. We got it for him really cheap online but he hasn't been able to ride it until now because of the crappy winter we've had. Needless to say, the little dude loves his Spidey bike.

He did more riding than this picture shows. I...just failed to take more pictures. I kinda suck at that. Taking pictures that is. Shortly after this picture he wrecked it while going around a curve and then wrecked again while trying to get on the bike. Needless to say, the beginning was a little rough for him. Kind of like his old man, klutz and all. I'll end the post with this cute picture below because it's late and I feel like going to bed. Until next time kiddies.