Hickam Safety Fair '13

This is our second safety fair on our base.  It's always held at the Ka Makani community center and has so far been a wonderful and positive experience for our family.

The community center does a great job with fun activities like a bouncy castle (always a hit), fire safety instruction like stop, drop, and roll and fire drills, free Hawaiian ice and dinner, and our favorite:

 meeting the military police dogs!  

They always do a presentation on how the dog helps to catch bad guys and the kids are so good at patiently waiting to pet the dog (the only time you CAN touch a police dog).

Thanks Hickam for a fun way to remind the kids (and adults) to be mindful of our safety preparedness!

These pix were taken by a woman who prepares the advertising for the safety fair.  She liked that all my kids were so engaged!  I liked that they were having fun learning at the same time they were practicing new skills.

Welcome September!

We have officially begun the new school year!  And with that comes the ever present need for downtime when we can get it.  One of the weekly activities we love is our Park Playgroup on Wednesdays.  It gets us out of the house.  It's a great mid-week change.  The kids get to see their friends and make new ones, and guess what?  So do I!  I love park day!  So this was our first Playgroup visit for this school year.  (the last section is just cuteness of Vaughn)

 getting so big!

 Evie loves to help out Vaughn - he likes it too, most of the time

Vaughn just discovered this Little People's truck - it's perfect for little chubby fingers

Ok, so looking at all these pix I realized they're mostly of Vaughn.  Apparently, I was gravitating toward the only kid I didn't have to try to coral into learning this week.  Wouldn't you?  He was the easy one for the moment.  Trust me, he's heading toward two.  I'm sure it won't last.  I'm taking advantage while I can.

A Fosburg Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!  I hope you had as great a day as we did.

Chris did a great job.  On Monday for FHE (family home evening) we watched a little video on mormon.org about loving and showing love.  He asked a couple questions that got some great answers.

Chris: so what is something that you saw in the video?
Joe: the dad and the brother were playing together.
Eve: the people were being nice.
Liz: playing!

Then Chris talked about Valentine's day and the kids said that the day is all about showing love.  It was a great conversation and I was so pleased to hear how well my kids understood the purpose of Valentine's day and being kind to each other.

By the time Valentine's had come the kids had been practicing showing love all week.  They had done some great things for each other and for mom and dad.

We had some fun activities planned for the day for school.  We began by coloring some great Valentine's day pictures.  After each child presented their picture they got a little heart treat.  Next we played a game of CandyLand.  The kids had a great time and were super silly.  Each kid practiced several skills like counting, colors, taking turns, sharing, and being good sports - both as the winner and loser of the game.  Of course, all of those skills required more heart treats.  Then we played a rousing game of "Mommy says..." which then needed some awesome treats...more candy hearts!

So as the kids were munching the hearts we had a moment of real school lesson and we discussed the invention of Valentine's day.  We talked about how it used to be a religious day to remember certain people (like St. Valentine) who were kind and good and obedient to God's commandment to "love one another."  Then I introduced them to Geoffrey Chaucer and how he wrote a story that changed Valentine's day into a day to "show love" to those around us.  We talked about how Chaucer helped add the idea of hearts, candy, roses and cupid to Valentine's day.  Then we reviewed what activities we had done so far.  We colored pictures with hearts in them.  We had eaten a lot of candy as rewards.

The next activity included an art project.  We made heart mobiles with lots of decorations and nice sayings on them.  Just before we finished daddy surprised us with an amazing bouquet of red roses, red carnations, and tiger lilies.  It was so beautiful and reinforced our earlier point about the flowers as part of the special day.

After lunch and daddy went back to work, the kids ran outside to trade Valentine's treats with their friends.  It was so cute.  To finish off our day of "showing love" we helped out a military/LDS family who's moving have a romantic evening by watching their three adorable kids.  Our kids had a great holiday and we enjoyed serving someone together as a family.

When everyone went home and the kids went to bed, Chris was ready to hang out and I was ready to sleep for an eternity.  Thankfully, my wonderful husband was kind enough to let me move our fun to the next night which is date night anyway.  We are going to watch the new "Total Recall" (his pick) and just hang out.  Can't wait.

Hope you all had as great a day as we did!  Loves to you all!  And don't forget, it doesn't need to be Valentine's day for you to "show love"!

Cute Kid Moments

One of the things I love the most about posting on this blog is that I can post things that are really important like birthdays and major milestones in the lives of my family members, but also that I can post random funny things that happen to me just because I happen to be the mom of some very silly children.  What an adventure this has already been and my oldest is only 5.  

So this is one of those posts that just reminds me why my kids are mine - they make me giggle like no one else can!

 though Ally is cute, it's daddy's smile that caught my heart in this one

I'm sure someone noticed that Ally's birthday post was missing the Nana/Papa gift.  Well, it came a day or so later.  This little fuzzy bear has become a staple in the crib and has since lost his cute party hat.  Ally chewed on it so much it fell off and had to be tossed.  At least we know she loves it!

 This is that little birthday cake by Leap Frog that she got.  She loves this thing!

Ally is such a Fosburg, she's great!  Only my kid would be completely happy drinking a bottle hanging upside down.  I just came around a corner and found her hanging this way with no apparent reason for the position.  Such odd ducks are my children.

This was a great little science lesson we did.  They learned about plants, roots, leaves, and soil.  They enjoyed it so much.  A bit later when the seeds sprouted they got really excited and then frustrated when they didn't do much after that.  Eventually, Joe accidently knocked his over and we had to throw it out and Evie over watered hers while trying to be a big girl and do it without mom's permission...

 ...we still enjoyed the project though!

 Here they drew a picture of what they thought the flowers were going to look like.  It was a way of continuing the science lesson by practicing the predicting skill of the scientific method.  They did a great job.

 can you see the little plants?

Random sleeping picture of Joseph.  We have come to realize that he and daddy are very similar.  They can both sleep anywhere at anytime.  He can also fall asleep in less than five minutes or stay awake hours upon hours if he really wants to.  Sleep seems to be one of those "crosses" he just has to bear in mortal life.  Apparently it is an inconvenient necessity.  So funny.

This is a picture of Evie after a play date with her friend Isabella from ballet class.  We had to send her with a note to give to her friend after class to invite them to our home.  I felt like I had stepped back in time with the process since it's been so long since I've heard of it being done that way.  Anyway, Isabella came over and then Evie was invited to Isabella's house the next week.  It's been a good friendship for her.

And this is what Joe does when Evie is not at home.  He plays with her stuff very happily.  Chris really thought it was cute what he had done with the doll house.  He apparently turned it into a parking garage or something - oftentimes he uses the cars the way Eve uses dolls.  They have teeth brushed, get in time outs, and talk.  So funny.

Evie, Joe, and Liz on a walk with daddy.  I love Evie's pose-my drama queen, Joe's hat-actually daddy's, and Lizzy's little "I'm here" grin.  

Chris and I often find it amusing to notice how Joe seems to organize his toys.  They all end up in rows, lines, and specific groups.  It's kind of funny, but one of those Joe personality traits we noticed.

Ally says hello to the camera!

Aren't my kids silly?  I so get a kick out of having cameras on our phones and a nice one in my home.  It makes capturing these funny moments of the kids growing up so easy and fun to look at.

Homeschool Happenings

Well if you weren't aware yet, we have chosen to home school Evie for kindergarten this year.  We chose the co-op preschool last year, but everyone decided to do public for kindergarten.  We didn't feel that was right for Evie.  Besides, this way Joseph is learning ahead of schedule and Evie doesn't have the issue of changing schools since we know she'd only get this year in the Sumter, SC district anyway.

Our schooling is pretty straight forward and honestly, like preschool, it's kind of hard to mess up unless you just don't do it.  I have a lot of help with websites that I belong to and workbooks from regular bookstores.  Barnes and Noble has made me a part of their educator's club with accompanying discount and my in-laws are both teachers so they're always on the lookout.  I also decided that if anything ever happened and I had to go home Evie and the other kids would end up in the local school district at our permanent address.  With that in mind, I looked into their grade requirements and found that they are really good and follow the principals I wanted to teach my kids.  So after some liaising with the school district and some help online, I found a fantastic and workable set of standards to be working toward with her.  I'm super excited about it.

To give you some examples of my favorite lessons we've done, I decided to record how some of them went.  Normally, we study our ABC's, our numbers 1-10 and 1- whatever Evie is on, sing some action songs to get out the wiggles, go over our school rules, practice their articles of faith (we're working toward a Chuck E. Cheese party), and then have our lesson of some kind.  Examples of regular lessons include Math: grouping and less/more than, Geography: compass rose and our neighborhood, Reading: ABC's and Poem/Nursery Rhymes, etc.  I am sometimes really proud of my lessons because of how they turned out and how they stuck with the kids.  Here are some of them!


This was a geography lesson.  I found it online.  We decided to finger paint the world.  It helped that we have a very large wall map to copy for them.  We work with it every now and then.

 This time I was brave and did a messy lesson!

 Evie was so careful: I was super surprised!  

Past experience did not prepare me for "careful Evie"

Joseph, I was totally prepared for the messiness! 

they worked so hard and did such a great job!  I was so proud!

didn't they turn out great!? 

The next lesson that I was really excited about was the lesson on the human body.  The idea was to help them understand all the body parts and to notice the difference between heights and the types of clothing boys and girls wear.  We had so much fun tracing the bodies and then coloring their clothes.

this is Joseph's picture.  he had so much fun coloring himself. 

He wasn't wearing pants this day so...body had no pants.

This was Evie's representation of herself.  She really likes colors of clothes.  We did have to have a discussion about modest clothing this day.  She tried to draw herself with a belly shirt.  We adjusted it so that we could hang it in the house.  It was a good opportunity to teach some good principals as well as to educate her in health class.

The last lesson I've been excited about happened a while later.  This one we had recently completed school rules.  (I know-why not earlier?)  Then to reinforce the second rule: to follow directions, we did some fun things.  

First, we did our normal opening exercises, then we read about pirates because we chose to do a treasure hunt with certain movements that they had to perform to get to each clue.  It turned out so well.  The treasure ended up being in a box that grama and grampa sent for Valentine's day.  It was so cute.  They continue to talk about it several weeks later.  That's how you know it was a good lesson!

they tore into the box.  it was super cute! 

they loved that the "treasure" was from grama and grampa. 

they loved the fact that each kid got their own special treat bag. 

 this included the box of treasure, the pirate books, 

and the clues we used to find our treasure.

So those are some of the more fun lessons we've done so far this year.  Our regular lessons are fun too, but not out of the ordinary.  They are the more regular draw a picture, repeat a sound, practice the principal, etc.  It's great and the kids do such a good job.  I've learned so much about my kids and how they learn and acquire new information.  I have so enjoyed this experience.  It's a bit nerve wracking to have such a big responsibility on top of a big responsibility (raising kids), but I pray a lot so Heavenly Father is a huge part of how I do what I do.  Thank goodness!

First Field Trip

I love my daughter. She is so smart. We recently joined a group of moms doing a preschool co-op kind of thing and to be honest, it's the best thing that's happened for us in a long time. I was doing school all by myself and while we were doing okay, it just wasn't what I was hoping for. It was also really difficult.

Katelyn and Evie - best friends!

Joseph loves tractors!

Then my best friend mentioned a curriculum book that I fell in love with and found some other moms to join us in home preschooling all together. It's been a fantastic experience.

"i've found it, I think."

"which one, which one, they're all so great!"

"this one, mom"

Well after a couple months we had our first official preschool field trip. We'd just finished colors and it's now October so we all went to a place called Willard Farms. It reminded me of a school field trip I did when I was in grade school back in Spokane.

"just one sweetie!"

Joseph and his pumkin!

Well this farm had tractor rides, a pumpkin patch, a giant slide area, swings that looked like horses, a bouncy platform, and a cow train. It was great!!!!

Yes, cows linked together in a train

Wooden tractor with slide at the back

The kids loved it. It was super inexpensive too because we got a deal for being a "school group" and the "students" little brother/sister just had to pay for the pumpkin they picked out as opposed to the whole price. We paid a total of 10$ for the whole morning. We ended all the fun with a picnic lunch at the table. It was a blast and my heart totally melted watching my kids doing such big-kid things. What a wonderful opportunity. I'm so glad we all got together to do this.