tidbits

The boys had their Kindergarten Holiday Concert this afternoon. SO CUTE!!! Very enjoyable. I teared up: Isaac surprised us by singing a solo!

Today was a beautiful day for biking.

Danielle is all-the-way potty-trained. Except she can't turn the light on by herself. I'll take it!

Jeremiah can mostly sound out words. He was watching a word-less video John found him (on YouTube) and at the end of it, he said in his sweet little voice, "Clash of Fates." Yes, that is a little too random to be environmental print.

Isaac's imagination continues to amaze me. He loves lincoln logs. He builds the typical log houses of various sizes and shapes, as well as fences and catapults and cannons. Sometimes the lincoln logs become standing soldiers defending Danielle's princess castle. He barricaded the castle door closed with tall lincoln logs and told Jeremiah it was time to knock it down...which Jeremiah proceeded to do quite happily.

Jeremiah continues to destruct while the other children construct, in general.

Isaac's being assessed for a gifted program at school, and has individual reading time with the reading specialist rather than typical kindergarten s-a-t.

My children are very much not interested in the tasty, pretty scotcharoo wreath which my visiting teachee gave me this morning, and I'm happily consuming it.

Zero Christmas presents under the tree have been opened.

We have been doing our Christmas book tradition. Each night, one child chooses a book to unwrap from under our tree, and we read a Christmas related picture book together. We all love it. I love that John comes to see the pictures. :)

The kindergarten teacher sent home "copies" of letters the boys wrote yesterday to Santa, in case the parents wanted to know what their kids wrote and what Santa might be leaving when he visits Christmas Eve. I'll just say that they have both been looking forward to these presents for a long time (for a child). Now to find out what Danielle wants...

I'm certain there's more, but that's a little taste of what we have going on around here.

Oh yes! That!

John accepted a job at Viterbo, in La Crosse, Wisconsin! After one more hot summer, we're looking forward to a very long and cold winter!

Where the Wild Things Are

The night Jeremiah wore his wolf suit, he found a blue river in the bathroom and laid it out on the floor in the living room. He dragged out a blue boat from his room, made himself a flag, and climbed in, ready to adventure down the river and to the island...where the wild things are! His brother and sister came along, in separate boats, of course, with flags of their own designs. They all sailed through the evening and into bedtime, before they fell over and ran into their beds, where they found bedtime stories and pumpkin cookies waiting for them...and they were still warm.

Since kids don't like hot food. Sorry Maurice, but it's true. They like to taste their food. Not have it burn their mouths.

Halloween!!!

This week leading up to Halloween has been a blast! My mom came out to play with us, which added to the excitement. :) We made Jeremiah a wolf suit like Max, from Where the Wild Things Are, and created bat wings to go with Isaac's ninja costume (um, he decided he wanted to be a "bat-ninja"?--apparently they sneak up to people and pull down others' pants, but we vetoed that action), and decorated Danielle's turtle shell, for her "little bitty ninja turtle" costume. We carved pumpkins and turned them into jack-o-lanterns, for the first time! We've decorated pumpkins and painted them before, but not carved. The kids were ecstatic to look at their jack-o-lanterns at night, all lit up. The boys had a kindergarten Halloween party and costume parade on Friday, and we went trick-or-treating and had carnival games and dinner at our church tonight. We've had a lot of fun!

And now....for pictures!


Three sweet children looking longingly into the flames of their jack-o-lanterns...

Ninja-Bat with his creation.

Max, making a scary face like his SCARY jack-o-lantern. :)

And, a Little Bitty Ninja Turtle with her very happy pumpkin!


More, perhaps better, views of their cute costumes. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE that these kids like to play together??)


At our church's Halloween party, while waiting on Daddy to serve us dinner. (If you really think staying with three kids while the other parent is getting dinner is the better half of the deal, you might want to think again!)


Jeremiah with his Sunbeams teacher! She's so great!

Ooohh! A ScArY math test! Run away! (John has wanted to be a math test for Halloween for years. :) He finally got a chance!)


Supermom! Here to save the day!

Trip to Utah

We went on a road trip to Utah earlier this month. We ended up leaving several hours later than we had intended on somehow. One of our rest stop stops had Jeremiah in heaven with the rocks and sand to play with. And Isaac was thrilled with the viewing scopes. We were stopped (resting?) for a good 15 minutes, and those boys seemed perfectly happy to be there all day long.

While we were in Utah, we celebrated Bill's wedding!, played with cousins and visited with family, and I took the kids to BYU. It was a great weekend!

On the way home, we camped just outside of Zion National Park. It was beautiful. Enjoying my children enjoying nature is right up with teaching them to love books, two of my absolute favorite parts of my life.

The Button Bag

Jeremiah brought home the Button Bag. He sorted the buttons by color.


And then he took a picture of his buttons. :)

Jeremiah's Birthday!

Here are Jeremiah's birthday pictures, just a couple of months late. Though he HAS been trying to convince us that his birthday is on Halloween. :)



It's always a bit tricky to get him to cheese it up for the camera...especially when there are infinitely more interesting things to be doing, like:

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!!!

And, feeding Buzz the brown cake with brown frosting which was specifically requested and left uneaten by the birthday boy.


Opening his birthday presents! Very exciting. :)



And, lastly, blowing out his candles. Watch for the victory arms in the darkness.

Bed-Time

I think things are going to be changing around here. I get really cranky around 7:25, which makes our hopeful 8 o'clock bedtime...well, not the happiest time.

But, for some reason, our kids absolutely adore reading in their beds, which I discovered last night. So, if they can stay in their beds, they can read for a few minutes. I was originally thinking maybe for 10 minutes, at 8.

Now, though. Since they seem to like reading in their beds so much. (No other reason, of course!)

Maybe, if they wanted to read for say, half an hour, why not? They can go to their beds at 7:30, and then read for 30 minutes. I'm okay with that.

A good, solid way to encourage avid readers would be to let them stay up later with a book. Which is pretty much the same as going to bed earlier with a book, right?

I melt when I listen to little voices reading. And hearing three little voices at the same time? Priceless.

Important-Urgent

John was making and organizing his to-do list. I decided to use the old Covey method to help him. The 2x2 of important/not important, urgent/not urgent. 8 were in the important-urgent square, 1 was in the important-not urgent square. Hmm. Not so balanced here, I think.

He was so helpful, and just colored in the 2x2 for me. The things I do are either important-urgent, or not-important-not-urgent. :) Like decorating our blog...not-important-not-urgent. I'm not certain where cleaning, cooking, preparing, transporting, and such fall. Those are things that always can be done and should at some point, but dishes have more of a gray area between important and not, and urgent and not. I think my life sort of falls in a box around the intersection of the 2x2.

Yosemite!

I took the kids to Yosemite for an extended family camping trip (it's annual, but I haven't been able to go for almost 10 years, so the kids have never gone), and while we were there we went on two beautiful hikes. The first was to see the Big Trees. And boy, were they big.

Isaac went ahead with the faster majority of our group, and Alecia and my mom stayed with me, Jeremiah and Danielle. Everything fascinated them. Here's Jeremiah loving slowly walking across a wooden bridge.

Me and Jeremiah in front of the Fallen Tree.

Danielle pointing to show us how big the trees are!
Alecia "hiking" with Danielle.

Two cute kiddos "fishing" in a small stream.

Danielle asked her aunt if she could pick up the big pinecone. And if she asks so sweetly, of course the answer is going to be "Yes." But when she picked it up, it was covered with sap!

Jeremiah hiding inside a tree.

The Grizzly Giant.


Standing with the kids in the Tunnel Tree.


The boys sitting quietly with their sticks while we took a water break. (Prior to sitting quietly with sticks, I'll just say that they weren't sitting quietly with sticks and there were threats involved.)



The other hike we went on was to Lower Yosemite Falls, just me, my kids and my parents.


Upper and Lower Falls.

Holding hands with Grandpa.

Isaac an Grandpa kept getting ahead of us slow pokes, so they missed out on the very close and personal deer sighting. She was timidly grazing in the forest, and then suddenly leaped across the path. Stunning.
An up-close view of the Lower Falls.
Grandpa making Jeremiah crack up: It's getting me! Aaah!


A half-hearted attempt at a family picture.
Touching a huge rock that the path went around.
And Grandma, always at the end, with her princess. :)