Henry comes to visit!

Since Cooper's friend Henry, who lives in Arkansas, couldn't come up for Cooper's birthday, he came up one recent weekend to hang out.  Coop and I met them at a Kansas City hotel and stayed the night (so we could swim in the pool!).

 

The boys watched a show together on the ipad:

At breakfast the next morning:

We stopped at Union Station, but the train exhibit was closed:

We went to the KC aquarium:

And to see the new Lego movie.  And to LEGOLAND.  The boys each picked out a Lego Star Wars toy to buy in the gift shop.

After all of that, the boys still wanted to hang out, so we brought Henry back to our house for a sleepover:

20 minutes later:

Just kidding.  It was more like two hours later, and only after I separated the boys in different rooms so they could fall asleep.

Somewhere around 5am:

The next morning, Coop started on his Lego project with Henry's assistance:

After Henry left, Coop spent another couple of hours at the kitchen table:

Finished:

And Henry finished his Star Wars ship when he got back to his house in Arkansas:

Raintree

Coop's elementary school teacher Mr. Joe had a sign-up sheet for parents to come sit in the classroom and observe for an hour.  When I walked in, Barrett, a third-year student, welcomed me and said "ma'am, would you like some tea?"  I said yes, and he brought me a tray of ten tea packets to choose from.  He took the one I selected, microwaved some water, and brought me tea and a slice of banana bread.

Barrett checked back in on me a couple of times.  "Are you enjoying the tea, ma'am?"  Oh yes, Barrett.  Thank you.

(Apparently, Coop told Mr. Joe that I only drink Diet Coke, but Mr. Joe said he wasn't going to buy pop just for one person.)

With my tea and banana bread, I pulled up a chair and sat near Coop's work space.  He used this board (with small beads) to do a math problem:  36 divided by 9 times 3.

Mr. Joe gathered a group of third-year students and gave them a group lesson on parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb).

And then Coop got out the "checkerboard" to do big multiplication problems.  Something like 3465 times 23.  Pretty impressive work.

Lyons

Cooper and I made a quick (24-hour) trip to Lyons in mid-February for a family get-together.  When we got to town, mom and dad were working the concession stand at the high school basketball game, so we hung out there for a while.

 

This is Cooper's "there's a lion behind me" face: 

On the way to Lyons, Coop and I ate at a Chinese buffet, and we wondered how difficult it might be to make our own fortune cookies.  Grandma Joan was game to help us try:

Coop and I had fun writing fortunes (my favorite:  "Be of good character.  Preferably one of the Disney ones."), but the cookies themselves weren't much to write home about.

On the other hand, we had a smashing success making our own water-weighted hula hoops!

And we spent a bit of time at the Kansas Cosmosphere, before heading back to Baldwin:

Partying with friends

This was the first year Cooper (at my encouragement) opted for a smaller birthday party, rather than something to which we invite his entire class.  So we rounded up three friends from Raintree (Hazel and Tyler, from his current class, and Madeline, from last year's class) and went to the clay studio in Lawrence:

 

The kids spent an hour and a half making all kinds of creations, and then we celebrated with fruit crisp and ice cream: