Celebrating Noah

Noah was Student of the Month at his elementary school for November. Yay for Noah!! I am so proud of him. To celebrate, I told him that this weekend he could choose what we did. I was not at all surprised when he chose to go to his favorite mall with the crazy play areas. First we rode the Carousel (is this post sounding familiar?)...

Sam was not in a merry-go-round mood and opted to sit out with my dad instead (my mom and dad are here visiting for Christmas and it is WONDERFUL):

Then of course the boys spent some time at the play area, after which we went out to dinner and introduced the boys to the concept of "toasting." We toasted Noah's student-of-the-month-fabulousness and he and Sam got really into the clinking of the glasses. They also quite enjoyed our cries of "Tallyhoe!" which is a toasting necessity in my family.

To top off the celebration Noah got to do some rock climbing. The kid is seriously good at this. I took him to the rock wall at the gym a couple of months ago and he would scurry up the wall like it was nothing and then he'd look down at me (barely half-way up) and say encouraging things like, "Come on Mom, you can do it! Just keep going, you're almost there!" Here's the little spider doing his thing:

Good job Noah!

(That reminds me... Yesterday when I came home from work I saw that Noah had left me a picture on my bed that said "Good goob [sic] Mom!" with a behavior chart like the ones he gets at school from his teacher. He gave me all blues and purples, thank you very much. I am evidently a very well-behaved mother.)