Reading, Cooking, and a Movie

We read all 16 chapters of Magic Treehouse book #29 Christmas in Camelot.  Love that Shawn doesn't want to put these books down! Went to library to pick up the next few in the series that we don't have. Also, picked up a few DVDs: Dumbo, ET, & 2 sign language instructional DVDs. 

We watched ET before we all went to bed. Shawn was SOOOO excited. Finally, Raj watched the movie for the first time ever, too! They both liked it a lot. Even during parts that got a little scary, like when the scientists were coming into the house to look for ET, he was really into it. (He did chew on the corner of our blanket & on his fingers a few times, though.) Though I didn't remember every scene, since I don't think I've seen the movie since the 80's, it was a relief that I could tell Shawn that there were no bad guys.  Shawn got super excited when the kids' bicycles started flying. We could identify a few scenes that were used in the ride at Universal Studios that we went on during our trip to Florida this summer. As a child of the 80's, I feel like I've done my duty to share an icon from my childhood.

Recently, Shawn's gotten very enthusiastic about cooking. He's made minestrone soup, spaghetti with meat sauce, blueberry muffins, banana/walnut/chocolate chip muffins, Hamburger Helper Chili Mac, peanut butter & chocolate chip brownies...  While Hamburger Helper and Kraft Mac & Cheese barely count as cooking in my book, he's still involved and doing the work. We

Another proud moment of passing down something from my childhood: Ramen noodle soup. Shawn helped crunch the noodles they would be easier to eat after they cooked. He had a lot of fun doing that. I added ice cubes to his bowl of soup to cool it down. I explained that that is what Opa used to do for me when I was a little girl. Then we added goldfish crackers to our soup and went fishing while we ate. He had a blast. He's never been very excited about eating soup before, but he did an excellent job and even got most of it in his mouth! So, it wasn't the most nutritious meal that we have served and we probably got a week's worth of our sodium allowance, but it sure was fun.