What a busy Month!

I can't believe how busy this month is already and we're not even to Halloween!  Holy cow!  Thanks for keeping up with us.  We aren't always this busy...hmmmm maybe we are!  I just have gotten better at recording things!  We love to be out and about and with five little ones, our lives are busy often.  I just love to share about my kids.

Saturdays are such fun days for us.  We get up early to watch the boys participate in the PeeWee sports program.  I'm so proud of the guys who are so dependable with it.  This season it's basketball!  We're not quite to the games yet, and honestly, I have no idea how that's gonna work.  I mean seriously, they're so little we are excited

Onizuka Play Park

We are so blessed to live on base at this time.  In our neighborhood there are so many little play structures throughout the area that we are often at one of them just to get out some extra energy.  Tonight they were still a bit wound up so we walked less than a minute from our house to the big park in the middle of our neighborhood.  We love it.

Ally loves to play pretend!  These dials often become a computer, a cash register, a telephone or whatever other tool she might need.  She's so imaginative.

 Lizzy is such an adventurous little spirit.  I don't think anything REALLY scares her.  She's such an inspiration to me to let go a little bit more and smile.

 Vaughn makes me so nervous when he hangs out next to an open space like this sometimes.  He's still so little, but so brave...

and sometimes very naughty!  I told him to stop and he leaned out further!  Little turkey!

looking out over the park

Not one child can play on a jungle gym like this without using it improperly.  As long as there weren't other kids playing on the structure too, I stopped worrying about it and just let them have fun.

HS - Friday Friend Notes

Every Friday as I'm sure most of our family and friends know by now, is Friend Notes day.  We write notes to special people instead of doing our spelling exercises.  It's a real-life application of what they're learning and it makes the last day of school for the week a bit different.  They love this activity!

 Evie wrote to her friend Claire this week!  She is becoming such a great writer.  So proud of her!

Joe hadn't finished his note yet, but wanted to be in a picture!  Such a cutie.

Evie's a Big Girl!

So I've been looking for a new bed for Evie for some time now.  Lizzy is getting bigger and we want to move her into the other half of the bunk beds that Joe is already in.  We won't be putting them together, but we do need the bed.

After a couple months of research and a reasonable price limit we finally found the bed she was looking for.  She was specific that she wanted a day bed this time.  We are so excited!

 reminds me how big she's getting and how little she still is all at the same time!

love my girl

It's Pumpkin Time!

When we first started having kids I discovered a horrible secret!  Though Chris loves birthdays and Christmas and he can't get enough of Halloween costumes and decorating, he HATES doing pumpkins.  So after the first year that I carved Evie's pumpkin and did everything myself, I decided things had to change.  Now, we still go pick the pumpkins out as a family (be it farm or store) and then I do all the pumpkin fun after that.  Because I do it by myself we have found a less messy (sort of) and easier to complete way for our kids to do pumpkins.  WE PAINT!  Honestly, with little kids and the warm weather we've been living in for several years, painting is the way to go!

So I covered the kitchen table with one of those vinyl tablecloths taped down and covered my kids in Kmart smocks.  (super cheap)  They each got their pumpkin, a paintbrush, cup of water, and all the paint their little paper plates could take.  

I was pretty sure that both Eve and Joe had the idea down, but Liz and Al are still pretty little so I knew I would be multi-tasking a lot.  With Vaughn at the table my eyes were going to need to be VERY open!

Vaughn had a lot of fun and was finished very quickly.  He had a small pumpkin.  He was also finished quickly because there's only so much paint I think a kid can ingest before a hospital visit is necessary.  He loved it.

Each of the kids were very focused.  But like I said, Ally and Lizzy were a bit smaller than was okay to just let them go crazy.  So I watched Al do her thing and boy, was it fun.  

She loves to pose for all my pictures.

Lizzy was doing a great job until she realized I was watching.  Then her paintbrush got a little carried away as she went from concentration mode to singing mode to crazy girl pose!

focused

singing

pose!

Joe was having such a great time.  He's a very careful child when he's doing pretty much anything.  Artwork is one of the more difficult subjects for him because there are not a lot of rules and guidelines. He did do a beautiful job and helped keep the girls on track.  (by this time Vaughn had gone to bed, so it was just him and the girls).

Evie's passion is anything artistic and free.  She loves to paint, draw, color, create, make, or change.  She had so much fun doing the pumpkin that she of course requested some extra paper when she was done.  She still had paint left.

We had so much fun and the kids had a great time.  Their creations were fantastic.  This is still one of my favorite holiday activities.  So lucky I got to have great kids to share it with.

super cute video!

DC - Sing a Song of Sixpence

With our little Preschoolers we continue going through our nursery rhymes.  Today we read, discussed, and did a fun project for the Sing a Song of Sixpence rhyme.

The girls got a kick out of the fact that there were actual birds baked into a pie.  Ally giggled forever when they popped out and flew away after the king cut into it.

We read the rhyme a couple times and then we did a cool project.  We made little pies out of play dough and made imprints of the little birds inside.  We talked about what the rhyme said (like what is a sixpence?) and why it was popular.  The girls enjoyed the play dough!

 They did such a great job! Usually I'm a bit hesitant with play dough because of its inherint messy nature.  But the girls were clean and on task and when they were done, they were done.  Makes it easier to say yes next time.

 I love that look of concentration on their little faces!

HS Service Project

Every now and then we are so blessed by people with whom we come in contact.  Our neighbors here in Hawaii are really amazing.  The Nimmo family across the street have been a prime example.  Laura and Caleb have been great helps and good friends and their kids Caden, Lily, and Chase are wonderful additions to our fun activities.  The Nimmo family are fellow homeschoolers so when Laura asked if we wanted to participate in a Samaritan's Purse service project we of course said, yes!

It was a great project.  These are supposed to be Christmas gifts for youth in 3rd world countries that this Christian based organization already visits.  You get these plastic buckets and fill them with some fun things like plastic jewelry and crayons or action figures and cars (depends on if it's for a boy or a girl).  School supplies are a great additions as well.  And we also included some H&B things like a toothbrush, hairbrush, comb, and a fun pair of socks.  The kids had a great time and Laura really went out of her way to provide supplies and a location for us to do this.  It was such a great experience.  Each of the kids participated in creating a "present" for their own gender and then they filled out a fun little fact sheet about themselves.  We even added pictures!  It was wonderful.

 writing their info sheets and coloring their pictures

 the finished "presents" ready to be sent!

PS. we got a note later that said our buckets went to Bolivia.  It was so cool!

FHE at the Laie Temple

After such a long weekend, Sunday was absolutely wonderful.  Listening to soft, spiritual music, no appointments to go to, nothing to buy, nowhere to go except to church where you get to hear the scriptures and think about our spiritual life instead of the things we think about the rest of the week.  Talk about a rest!  What a blessing.

On Monday we always do Family Home Evening.  It's a night to just be together as a family and to focus on those principals that the kids need to learn like honesty, kindness, or service.  This week we decided to do something pretty special.  We decided to visit the Laie Temple as a family.  Chris and I go to the temple every month to do work for our ancestors and we love it, but it's not a little kid activity.  They are usually with a sitter.

So anyway, we all drove up to the temple and went inside the visitors center.  Chris and I had never been and it was wonderful.  We so enjoyed all the history of the building of the temple and how it has impacted the local Hawaiian culture in the area.  It was so fun and interactive for the kids.

 Walking to the temple grounds.  I was originally a bit nervous taking such small kids, but the Visitor's Center was well prepared and actually excited to see us!  The kids were unsure how to do this because they knew it was special, but also that they needed to be respectful.

 I so love the Christus statue.  This is obviously a reproduction, but its such a beautiful statue that we took a family photo.  The kids just sat and stared at the representation of Christ for a longer time than I had thought they would.  Kind of neat for mom.

 This display shows how the Book of Mormon is translated into so many languages.  Evie really enjoyed this one because she reads her own copy at home all the time.  She listened to the first verse of the first book at least a dozen times in at least 10 different languages.  She especially liked hearing the verse in Spanish because that's the language I speak at home.  I learned it on my mission to the Dominican Republic.

 This sweet Sister Missionary was so kind to our kids.  She walked through the whole exhibit with us explaining the videos and the displays.  I was so grateful to have such a nice person helping us out.  She really helped make the experience pleasant.  Joe sat at this display for a long time.  It shows different stories about real kids doing great Christlike things.

 This video showed the Apostles of the Lord sharing their testimonies about the Savior, the Book of Mormon and the Bible as the word of God, and of the latter-day Prophet and his work on the earth today.  I think I was the one that liked this most.  I had already heard these testimonies so I knew I liked them, but I also got to sit down and just cuddle with Vaughn while we watched.

 My kids sitting in front of the fountain.  It's water, it's blue, it's refreshing.  Of course my kids liked it here!

 After the visitor center we walked the grounds all the way up to the temple itself.  The grounds are really beautiful so it was an enjoyable walk.

 The temple grounds and the temple itself is covered in these beautiful statues and friezes.  I loved this one because of the fountain part.  The water came from here and then went all the way down to the lower level.  It was beautiful.  It is also a big part of Hawaiian culture.

 On the very top of the temple there are some beautiful friezes that depict the different times recorded in the Bible and the Book of Mormon.  The interpretations of these friezes is on the lower level of the grounds right next to the visitor's center.  This was all of our favorite part.

And that was our special FHE this week.  The kids had a new understanding and appreciation for the temple and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It was reflective and fun and so nice to share something so special with my kids.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity we had to do this!