Gymnastics

Maggie chose to do gymnastics for her 2 month activity trial (we have started letting the older ones choose an activity to do - one at a time - for a few months) Then we don't have a lot of running around and they get to try a number of new things. She really loved it. It helped that she was really the only one in her class so she got a lot of one-on-one attention! She also happened to be in at the right time to be a part of the spring show. Nothing like a trophy to make a kid smile :)
For her next turn she chose a dance class - which she didn't like - and switched back to gymnastics. She's adjusting to that because it's a larger class with a different teacher. She will get to be part of the Christmas show for this one.
Jackson will start Parkour again in Jan. so he will probably get to do the spring show this time around. He did the Christmas show last year. He really like Parkour so after his round of Flag football he's ready to go back to it.

A long, long way to run

At the end of 4th grade there is a mile run for 4th and 5th graders who want to participate. I was pretty surprised when Jackson said he wanted to do it. Not a lot of distance running happens around here :) Matt ran with him a couple of times beforehand to 'train'. Jackson was completely wiped out at the end of the race and hated it but not long after he was smiling and said he enjoyed it. I think that had to do with the ribbon and the cookie. I will be kind of surprised if he chooses to do it again in 5th grade but I also get surprised by these amazing kiddos fairly often. There is a short kid friendly tri-athlon that I am going to try to get everyone to participate in...... the problem? who will do the running portion????

May 2014

I thought it would be fun to document how they go to school each day. Hailey rides on Jackson's pegs because it's hard for her to keep up on her bike :) Although now that it's a new year she rides her own bike and Jackson takes the neighbor boy on his pegs. In MD they rode a bus so this is a little different. They only go about 3 blocks to school here though so they don't have to make it far. It takes them far longer to get home than it should because they get distracted by everything! Sometimes I start to wonder where they are and have to go looking along the route for them. They are very good about staying together.

Throwback....

I found this picture when I was getting the files off of one of Maggie's old cameras :) I think it's from a trip to Florida when we lived in Maryland. WOW - they've grown since then :)

Maggie (8)

Maggie turned 8 at the end of April. She wanted a cake from the movie Frozen. It was pretty fun to make. I've never made hard candy before so it was a new experience :) We found the Elsa as an online printable that you cut out and glue together.
Since this was her 8th birthday she was also baptized! She was so excited. It worked out well to have some family around to attend.
We love this girl. She adds so much spice to life :) She loves to create and read, read, read. It's getting hard to keep a supply of library books on hand for her. She also loves to play with friends, Legoes, her siblings and outside.
In the bottom right picture she is getting ready to swat one of her 8 birthday balloons with a dollar inside. They all love that tradition.

Allergies

We learned - not too long after we moved here - that Caleb was also allergic to either rabbits or hamsters...... He played at a friends house and petted their animals. Not long after he started to get really swollen eyes and later, hives. It happened again not long after that. He can pet them if he washes his hands right after but he tends to just avoid them instead. Interestingly enough this allergy doesn't seem to have any affect on his asthma. Eye drops make a huge difference but he hates them so I have to make deals with him..... usually it involves me playing video games with him. 

His asthma is well controlled right now. We will see how he makes it through all the colds and such over winter.

Art

These are some of the examples of artwork Maggie did during our few months of homeschooling last year. She was very proud of them and showed them off as her talent when she tranferred into the elementary school here so I thought I would let them live forever in digital land. She doesn't have a dedicated art class in the school so she really misses it. I loved the variety and lessons that were taught through the homeschooling program....... it would be nice if more elementary schools could cater to the interests of the kids a little more. There is so much focus on academics that the individual interests tend to get lost. Someday I will find the perfect answer to education - 

Webelos

When Jackson turned 10 in March he moved on to Webelos in the Cub Scouting program. Since it's now October..... we are over halfway through this year of scouts. It has been my favorite year :) He has had excellent scout leaders that do a great job entertaining and teaching the boys - that takes a lot of responsibility off of me!! He's growing up to be a pretty awesome young man.

Easter 2014

We had a lot of fun decorating eggs. It always involves a lot of mess and an intense hour for me as I try to help everyone at once but they love it. We went to the Easter egg hunt that the city puts on. They really liked that too. It's funny how events like that showcase their personalities. Caleb is pretty happy to listen and obey when things make sense :) He went to the farther eggs and picked up his allotment and was good to go. Maggie is the same way. Jackson and Hailey on the other hand....... Hailey would pick up one or two and run to a different area, pick up one or two and run around again (Jackson was exactly the same at the same age), Jackson now just ran up, picked up his amount and came running back to us, bag flapping, eggs bouncing out everywhere...... It's so much fun to try to guess what they will be like as teenagers, as adults... I'm a little scared, a little sad, and very excited.

Park play April 2014

I love that all 4 will still play and have fun together at a playground. Sometimes it's hard to watch them grow up when I love who they are right now...... but I also love every new stage that comes. I miss 5 year old Jackson but I definitely love 10 year old Jackson :) I guess that's why pictures, videos and journals are so important. Every once in awhile you can take a step back in time and visit the kiddos at different ages

They are also very good sports when it comes to picture taking! I need to keep taking advantage of it.

Jackson was a little annoyed that he couldn't do a trick on the zipline thing that the younger ones could so he thought he would try to build more muscle right then and there. Hailey thought it was a great idea too. It didn't Jackson long to learn that it was more about technique than strength :)

4 Kites Up

Ahhh, kite flying. So relaxing...... completely misleading idea when you are trying to get 4 kites in the air that are held by the 10 and under set.

We get the girls kites up fairly easily. Then I help Caleb get his up. Matt is working with Jackson on his..... I tell Caleb to hold on tight ..... a minute later his kite it flying away string dangling. I chase it down and bring it back only to hear Matt yell - Maggie, that's too close! Jackson go that way!
Jackson obeys so well - he goes far enough to tangle his kite in a tree..... I start to head over to help Matt untangle it when I hear more yelling. This time from  Hailey and Caleb who also got too close to one another and now their kites were wrapping around each other in midair. Once we got everything untangled we successfully had all the kites up and flying. We had been there all of 15 min by this point and Matt and I were a little frazzled and worn out :) The kids have been asking to go again - Matt and I might need a nap first......

Caleb was acting out some superhero moves for me while some of the others were winding in their kite strings.

Dining room table

We have been using a plastic folding table in our dining room since we moved out here last summer. It was much easier to get up into the apartment and we figured it would be useful for company later. I decided I wanted to build a table but I wanted it to have really chunky legs. I don't have a good way to make those myself so I thought we should just keep an eye out at the thrift store. After awhile we came across this table for $35 - the legs were great so we packed it up and brought it home. 

 I had only planned on reusing the legs but when we measured it - it was almost exactly the size I had planned on building so we decided to just refinish it and see how it fit. I sanded all the old varnish off the top and stained it darker. I also used some vinyl stencils to paint some arrows on it. I just wanted to add a little extra something :) I tend to do that a lot.

The legs got painted white. I added the word gather. Painted some small stripes around the edge where we realized it was not solid wood and sanding brought out some of the underlying partical board. Coated it with a food safe clear coat and here is where we ended up.  It works great for us for now. I think we might try to squeeze a little bigger table into our space later. We will just have to wait and see :) Now to hunt down some better chairs..........

Jackson is 10

So very hard to believe that we now have one in double digits. This kid gets the worst of us and the best of us as he trains us to be parents at each and every new milestone he hits. He handles it very well and is quite an awesome kiddo. He is still very creative - he loves to make stuff out of anything and everything he can find. He loves weapons of any kind, video games, riding bikes and playing with friends. We are lucky enough to have a boy his age right next door that he gets along very well with.

 One of the video games he loves is called Minecraft. You use different types of building blocks to make whatever you can think of. I found this cake idea online (I really should get better about taking note of the links to give credit where credit is due). It was pretty simple and looked cool. Those are my favorite kind :)

Jackson loved his cake. He also loved that we could invite family friends over. He is opening his electric scooter in the picture below. I thought he would love it since he goes all over the neighborhood to find friends to play with. He only uses it once in awhile.... but Caleb has become quite obsessed with it. Hmmm.

Helping hands......

 I don't think I have mentioned the salvage pile on here yet...... there is a wood salvage pile at our recycling center here that I have found all kinds of projects in..... The kids are helping me paint some beadboard picture frames. The beadboard came from the pile. Free stuff is so much fun to play with :) I was proud of myself for letting them help me paint..... it wasn't long before I started to regret it.

They got out their paints because 1. the white I was having them use was boring and 2. they wanted to make their own projects. I showed them how to put two different paints, one in each hand, then rub their hands together to make a new color. Apparently that alone is not exciting enough. Much more than their hands started to get painted.....

Just so you know - Human Torch is a superhero that turns into a flaming ball of fire as he flies around.

Caleb

So little and so big at the same time. This guy is growing up so fast. He still loves superhero costumes and active, wild play but every once in awhile now you can find him building with legos or looking at books quietly. The batman make-up mask is courtesy of Maggie, I think :)

Play-dough

Wow. I really have some catching up to do. I still haven't figured out my posting from Picasa problems which makes blogging slightly less convenient. 

A good dose of homemade play-dough usually puts the arguing to rest for a little while :) We had a pretty good stash of fun play-dough stuff that seems to have been lost in the move..... I've started to restock a little with cookie cutters. It's a quick and fun activity that we don't do often enough.

Colored snow

We put colored water in squirt bottles one day for them to use on the snow. It kept them busy for a very long time. The neon food coloring seemed to work really well. It made nice bright colors. It's so much fun to watch them when they really get in the zone learning, exploring and creating things. Imagination is a beautiful thing! :)

Christmas in Washington

At the last minute we decided to go up to Washington to spend Christmas with my family. I don't think we have been there for Christmas since I was pregnant with Jackson......  wow. It was a lot of fun and brought back a lot of memories :) We did a lot of sledding, movies and playing. Aunt Jamie made minion hats for each of them. They thought that was great. We also had a visit from the awesome Santa. That was a huge hit too.
We watched the weather and did the drive on the days that looked best. Our first two hours on the road were pretty bad but other than that it was almost clear the whole way.

Happy New Year

On New Year's Eve the kids really wanted to have a party with their friends - they started asking at about 8 or so that night....... I told them we would have to try to plan that for another year. So we did our own little family party. We played a game, had a snack, made party hats and watched the ball drop. They LOVED having a plan like that - it was funny and cute at the same time :) We did put Hailey and Caleb to bed around 10  (it's great to be back West so we can watch the ball drop at 10)

Christmas Lights

For some reason I have had a really hard time posting from Picasa - that means it's not quite as easy so I slacked off. Guess I shouldn't be so lazy :)

We went to a Christmas light show over the holidays. It's the same one we used to go to when we lived here before. Jackson remembered it. It was really foggy - so foggy that we almost turned around and went home because it was so hard to see when driving. It cleared off around the freeway though so we kept going but it settled back in once we are the lights. It was also really cold. Everyone was in their snow gear so we could go on the wagon ride. It was a lot of fun. Caleb threw a major fit about not getting to warm his hands by the fire. It took us awhile to figure out the problem since he was too upset to do anything but cry....... he never did get to do it since we were in the car and leaving by then.

Caleb's Christmas Show

This is how Caleb participated in his preschool Christmas show. If he makes the choice to ham it up and be the center of attention he doesn't mind at all. If it's a planned activity ...... he hates it :) He did start to warm up and participate towards the end. His teachers were funny when we came in and he refused to join the others. In class he's silly and really, really into the songs and actions so they thought he would be great for the show. This has happened a few times...... he refused to be in the costume parade too.
Jackson was the camera man. He loved it. He took some videos too. I will try t post one.

Parkour

We recently decided to let the kids try out some classes and Jackson chose Parkour (also called free running). I call it unstructured gymnastics for boys - there is lots of running, jumping, flipping and doing tricks off of things in your environment (like walls). He loves it.
He takes the class at a gymnastics center (Caleb also has preschool there but it's not gymnastics based). They put on a holiday show that Jackson was really excited to participate in eventhough he had only had three classes. The parkour boys were dressed as "lumps of coal" and they did a little obstacle course to show off their tricks. After watching all the perfomance, Hailey wants to do cheerleading and Maggie wants to do gymnastics :)

This is only picture we have of the kids with Santa this year. Hailey was kind of mad that she didn't get to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted :)

2013 Christmas card

Here is our Christmas card from this last year. I love that the kids are all still so cooperative in the photo studio. We have to enjoy that as it lasts :) It's been a busy year. If I didn't send you a card let me know and I will add you to the list.