"Thank you very much "

               Kevin is always thinking of what he can do to liven up any group of people he is around! I love this about Kevin! I think everyone does! This is why our book is called the Turano Adventure...we are for sure an adventure seeking family :)
            When Grandma and Grandpa Turano came into town for Will's birthday, Kevin talked everyone into going to the Eiseman Center to see a impersonator of Elvis who was in town. He was performing with the Dallas Symphony orchestra. Kevin sometimes doesn't want people to realize how much thought he puts into things...but he actually really takes time to plan on ways to entertain people.
I think everyone was hesitating about this concert, and even tried to talk him out of it, but once we were at the show there were smiles on all the adults faces! Even Will at the end of the songs would turn to me look me in the eye and say, in a fast and lowered voice.... " Thank you very much. " He did that a couple times! It was hilarious! I am not sure how much Lydia, Sophi and Lexi liked it, but if they didn't they were good sports and they had Will who went and sat on Sophi's lap...keeping them entertained. Grandma and Grandpa Turano told us about how they danced to all these songs in high school, while the show was in intermission.Grandma and Grandpa Pack came along as well. Grandpa Pack kept us updated on when the song came out, and if Elvis really was the one who sang it.He  looked up the facts on his Iphone....

            We are always so thankful that the Turano's come into town for Brooke and Will's birthdays...

IN THE BRAIN OF MY THREE-YEAR OLD

One of the joys of motherhood is watching your children develop and seeing their personalities start to show. Lately, the way that Will thinks has been showing quite frequently. It is fascinating! Will is different from Brooke in many ways. One way is that Brooke always asks questions to put things together in a way that she is satisfied with her understanding of it in her mind. Will is showing lately that he would rather gather his own information and make assumptions of things without even questioning another individual.

Will is so curious that he is still taking objects apart, testing them to see what else they can become and other ways he can use them. Will  even goes as far as making up scenarios in his mind of how something came to be, and he is completely satisfied with his own explanations.

My favorite example of this lately happened today. As we pulled up to the church and parked the car this morning, Will said loudly, " This is Jesus's house." I was impressed! I have never said those words to him. Although it is mentioned in some lessons how to take care of the building because it is a house of God, this has not been a nursery lesson, and I have never spoken to Will about that concept!

We go into the church and after about twenty min. Will made his way in front of the two parents of the family next to us and he looks at the Mother and says, " Where is Jesus? " He then answers his own question and says, " Oh, Jesus is just in the other room." She smiled. It was very cute. After the first hour as we were leaving the sacrament, Will said to me, " Jesus will come back. " I think at that point Will decided the church was Jesus's house but he wasn't there....but he will come back....I said, " You are right Will, he is going to come back someday."

Earlier in the week Grandma Pack was at the craft store with us and she showed Will a skinned rabbit fur that was for sell. She was trying to entertain him and told him, " Look at the soft bunny fur Will." After only a min. of petting the fur of the rabbit, Will said, " But the rabbit! His body is gone! His head is gone!" Grandma Pack consoled him and told him the bunny got sick and died. Will frantically started telling an extravagant story about the rabbit...with stress and disgust in his voice Will said, " Our friends came to our house....the bunny was in our backyard and the friends bit him! The friends were naughty and they ate our bunny's head!" We tried to calm him down but he proceeded to exclaim, " I am going to go get the bad friends."
It was funny, but sad, and kind of disturbing that my three-year old turned the whole scenario into his friends being bad and eating the rabbits head off!

Another funny thing to hear out of your three-year old's mouth is all the tech talk...
Will and I read scriptures on my tablet in his bed before he goes to sleep. My tablet was dead one night and it was way past his bed time so I had brought the old fashioned Book of Mormon picture book into his room to read to him one night. Will said to me, " No, I don't want this book...but where is your tablet? " I said, " Will my tablet is dead, we are going to read from the book. Will said to me, " But...Just go get your phone. " I said, " Will we don't need to read scriptures on a device, come look at the book." Will said, " I will go get your phone." I said, " Will my phone is in the car." Then Will said to me, " Then where is your camera?" At that point all I could do is laugh....and I thought to myself, why is my three-year old attached to technology already? This can't be good....

He is getting bigger and wow, he is very smart! He is determined about his ideas! And my little boy is really just one big sweet heart. When I leave to go anywhere and Daddy stays with him, when I go to give Will a kiss...he kisses me on the lips, and then he says, " Now a kiss on the cheek." He grabs my face and kisses me on my cheek, as if the lips didn't seal the deal for him....He makes us all laugh and smile....

We are so blessed to have our Will!!!!

Will's Third Birthday Party

                              We celebrated Will's third birthday at Chucky Cheese a few weeks ago!
               We were so happy that Grandma and Grandpa Turano came into town to celebrate with us, and it was even more special than normal because they brought a couple of Will and Brooke's cousins with them!
Brooke and Will love Lydia, Lexi and Sophi so much! It was a real treat to have them in Texas for a couple days..

        I made Will two Spiderman theme cookie cakes instead of cake because I knew they would be yummy tasting for everyone, even with out milk or eggs in the ingredients, unlike cake and the way that it tastes with out milk and eggs.

       Will was so excited to have his own birthday party. He understood what a birthday party is this year, and he was actually having more fun passing out coins, and setting up the Spiderman decor than actually being at Chucky Cheese in the beginning of the party....

        It ended up being a super fun party! Will loved playing games with Grandpa Pack, and he even sang Happy Birthday to himself when we were singing. He screamed/sang " Happy Birthday to Will, Happy Birthday to Will."
                     

Best Friends

             Driving in the car a few days ago Brooke says to Will, " You are my best friend Will. "

                         He feels the same about her...About a week earlier we were all getting out of the car and Daddy and Brooke were ahead of Will and me, Will screams, " Wait, my Brookeee!" We catch up...
             Will then goes over to Brooke, grabs her hand and says, " Brooke is my princess. "

Kevin and I look at each other and smile....Hardly anything could have melted our hearts more than that sweet gesture of love between our children.....

Rain Forest Cafe

          Our family loves The Rain Forest Cafe! Grandpa Pack has treated us to Rain Forest twice already this year! One of them was on my birthday! I wanted to go there because I know how much the kids love it! Plus, they have this very yummy volcano dessert where they stack long brownies into a volcano shape,  sitting on ice cream, and then they light it up with fire! We love to see how excited the kids are while waiting for the rain storm to happen. When the lights flicker, you hear thunder and then sounds of rain at this restaurant...all kinds of jungle animals get the party going. The lion roars, the elephants shake their ears, and the gorillas hit their chest with a fist! Even when the animals aren't in motion, you still have big ocean fish to look at in the fish tanks around the restaurant. The past two times we have been to eat at Rain Forest, Will has requested a turtle from the balloon animal creator. He has been sad both times a few days later when it deflated. Last time, he brought me his deflated turtle and said, " My turtle is just dead. " with a sad look on his face...I am trying to talk Kevin into learning how to make these balloon animals...It would be a great addition to his Halloween magic show! ;)

Great Wolf Lodge

 Kevin's Fathers Day gift was a stay-cation to Great Wolf Lodge! It was a great time! Brooke is big enough now to go on full size water slides! Kevin took her on most of them and he even rode the ones she was too little to go on, by himself!  ;) I was surprised that the water slides with inner tubes didn't hurt my neck at all!  I was able to go on the slides with Brooke as well!

                            We love staying at hotels! Great Wolf Lodge has an outdoor/cabin theme.
 It's really easy to pretend you aren't in Dallas anymore.....

                             Brooke went on these water slides! She was laughing the whole way down!

               Will loved the toddler area. He went on water slides his size at least 100 times! He would rush back to the line of kids right after finishing one slide.....

                                                  We had to stop at the sweets shop of course!

 

                The arcade area is always one of Kevin's favorites! He and Brooke stayed up late in the arcade, while I got Will to bed. They won 1,000 tickets!!!!! People were following Kevin and Brooke around to see which games they were playing since they were carrying such a load of tickets! They just don't know that Kevin has some special  ticket winning talent ;)

" Growth Mindset "

If your children have an innate desire to be intelligent, or to be a winner like mine do, you should read this!

I took a psychology course at the state college down the street this summer and thankfully my professor asked us to read an article about how to raise smart children! I learned in this article that I am doing it all wrong! Through studies it is proven that actual IQ or what we call intelligence, has nothing to do with how successful a person will be later in life. In fact, those with high IQ don't make as much money as those with average IQ maybe because they didn't learn to work as hard for a better grade in school?  There was a common key factor in the hundreds of children that took part in this experiment, it was a " growth mindset. " These successful children were not told over and over that they are smart as children, what they were told, and what it was found in their psychology was that they did not believe that intelligence is gift, or trait that you either had or did not have. They were told that intelligence is earned through study, and not giving up even when a challenge is present. The children who did not do well in school had a
" fixed mind set " where they believed that intelligence was something you either had or did not have.

So I think I posed this all wrong as I told Brooke a few days ago, " Brooke, I read an article in my class that said that being smart is something that is earned through working hard. You will actually become more smart if you know you just need to keep working at something really hard, and just keep trying. "

So it wasn't so bad that Brooke misunderstood me........ about twenty min. later I went in her room and it was perfectly clean, the bed was made and she was dressed and ready to go. I was pleasantly surprised because normally I have to ask her to do these things. I was even more surprised when I went into Will's room and his bed was made by Brooke and his toys all cleaned up.

I didn't think anything except that Brooke was trying to be a really big help that day and I praised her for her help!

Well, when the next day she had done the same thing to both rooms with out me asking, I was thinking, Wow, Brooke is really a go getter! Then as she asked to use my tablet and told me she was ready to watch some learning videos because she did her work already, I realized I didn't explain this article very well! She thought you actually had to do hard work and then try and learn and it would make you more intelligent.

She is so determined to be intelligent! She didn't understand I meant when you are at school and a problem is hard, just know if you keep working at it, you will get it eventually. I can see now why she didn't grasp what I was telling her! It was because nothing is ever hard or challenging for her because she has that              " growth mindset " already!

I think I am going to wait a few days before I re-explain the article. It's nice to take advantage of my little hard working cleaning girl in the meanwhile ;) and having a child working hard in the house and then watching learning videos is like dream land for a Mom. I will tell her I meant when something she is trying to learn is hard to keep working hard to learn, is what I meant! Not that she had to clean the whole house in order to learn or be smart! hahaha.....

Brooke is such an amazing child to have! I am so lucky!!!!

                                                    Brooke's seventh birthday ( slumber party! )