We Love Co-op Preschool & Party!

The four boys practicing cutting with straws. They love it because the pieces pop everywhere. Ryan, Jaxon, Xander & Seth. Our girl, Teagan, wasn't there.

Our scavenger hunt nature walk with our toilet paper roll binoculars.

Yes, that's Anika too.

Our last day! Water party!

The water squirters and squirt guns. I drew in the fence with chalk to encourage them to squirt that instead of each other.

T-ball practice

Making Fairy Soup

(Jaxon's sister, Hailey, joined us)

And otter pops. 

It looks like I forgot a picture of the sensory with water beads.

Just Holding Hands

Apricots & Roly Poly

Such fun little bugs...

He said,"I got a roly poly who is always mischief. He runs fast. See?"

Seth was so excited about the free Cars backpack that came with the pull-ups (we use at night sometimes). He is wearing the backpack in the first two pictures.

Pits and seeds! He saves almost every last one he comes across because he wants to plant them in our yard/garden. He often does.

Here is still wearing the backpack and Checking out the garden.  Maybe he planted more pits and seeds!

Babysitting Bash

(Warning- random extra details)

On Friday we babysat for two of our friend families. 

It was crazy and loud but fun. And loud. Oh, and a big mess. Except Emmy. She is mellow and was very accommodating. She is so good it's like she cancels another kid for a net decrease in craziness.

There was a tired, and therefore stationary, tickle monster. Anika sacrificed herself.

Rex is a little fruit-hunter. He left some evidence. Look closely... Pretty skilled if you ask me.

Dinner!!!

We had a little chat about what you can do if someone doesn't want to play the same game, or if someone has a toy you want, etc. 

On the menu: 

Dinosaur chicken nuggets

Bunny Macaroni and cheese 

Cooked peas

Cooked carrots

Leftover lemonade from our yard fail... I mean sale.

Some bribery with krumkaker 

They all ate quite well, including veggies. But they all got hungry again so we had apples and bananas.

Uno

Seth invited me to play Uno.  

He gave me these cards (maybe I had played one already).

These were his cards. Somehow he ended up with all of the Dare cards (it's actually Uno Dare) and a bunch of skips and such.

It's inexplicable!

Lunch Date

Anika has been begging for me to come eat lunch with her again. I'm glad she wants me to, and I'm happy to do it.  Seth likes to go too.

I didn't think of taking a picture until her class was already mostly gone, so it was super rushed.

Nathaniel has been able to go eat lunch with her a couple of times this year as well. However, he gets to go by himself without extra buddies. 😊 This time I was smarter and basically ate lunch before I went so that I could focus on helping the kids.

Kids got yer phone?

My kids know how to get into the camera on my phone without having to unlock it. Every now and then I come across some surprise photos.  These were taken while I was attempting to take a 10-15 minute nap while the kids watched TV.  Easier said than done. 

I did finally get to sleep for about 10 minutes, but it took an hour!

There were many more photos that were not included on this post. I think they usually take a dozen or two for good measure.

Errands

We stopped at the bank to get change for our yard sale. Even though we went inside, Seth wanted to go through the drive-thru to get a sucker from the "shooter thing."

I'm such a nice mom... Well sometimes.

While in the bank he saw a coffee pot and asked,"Mom, do you want me to tell you what coffee is for?  If you cough a lot... then you drink coffee."

We went to Home Depot again; like we have most days for the past couple weeks.

Seth was holding this water supply-line so I could send a picture to Than and make sure it was the right thing.  Little Kari tried to swipe it just as I snapped the picture. 

Lest you think we usually have a jolly time running errands, I will say that Seth threw a huge fit (which is pretty common occurrence) so we went home instead of to Costco.

Taekwondo

We won some free classes through a drawing. The Dobok/uniform was included.

They had fun their first day. I really enjoyed watching them.

It was cute to see them trying so hard to be good listeners and sit and stand correctly. Seth was especially trying hard. (Anika has sort of mastered that already in kindergarten.)

Little kids. Little kicks.

I love that they teach respect and listening the first time (and responding), including at home. One of the requirements for earning the first belt is listening to mom and dad at home. I hope it helps!

In other news, Anika's class grew caterpillars into butterflies and then set them free in the school's bushes. (She is the lighter-haired and taller child in the bright blue shirt in the blurry background.)

And not to be outdone by her older siblings' learning martial arts, Kari has been demonstrating her own athleticism and skills.

Lost tooth, 100 Days and Sister Missionaries

Anika lost her 5th tooth after her friend, Zack, bumped into her.

Sister Pi (pronounced "Bee") came to say goodbye before going back to Taiwan. I gave her a puzzle of Temple Square. She served there for a few months during the peak season for Chinese tourists. They come by the bus loads and use the free restrooms. I guess they transfer many Chinese sisters there for it.  She was always teasing the kids, especially Seth.

Even though there are less than 20 days of school left, I finally got a picture of Anika with her 100 Days shirt and hat. 

I gave her some options/ideas of what we could put on her shirt. She chose felt hearts. The blog I found the idea on had back-stitched and cut the thread between sewing each heart. She had also traced all the hearts before cutting, but I just cut free-hand- Much quicker!  I also hoped that just sewing constantly (except when my bobbin ran out) would be faster and would hopefully look fun.

The Floor

Somehow we decided to re-do our floor. We got some click-lock bamboo. Hopefully it is as non-toxic and sustainable as they claim 😊

Here is a good "before" picture of our linoleum. Mostly it's fine, but has had several holes/gouges. We decided to NOT do a very expensive project we had been considering, so we did our floor instead...? We figured we would likely have to re-do the floor before moving, so we might as well enjoy it a bit (or a lot?) ourselves.

Here you can see the bamboo cross-hatch stacked behind the couch while it acclimates. It was like this for two weeks before we started laying it.

Stuff... I am excited for our house to be more live-able again!

Here was our slow start to removing the glued-down flooring. But Than found a tip online that suggested soaking it. So we did that and it helped! Our home teachers were really helpful. Brother Gallagher, who used to be a contractor, was fast at ripping up the floor. He has a lot of helpful tools he is lending to us as well!

We found mold and termites behind the molding that is across from the bottom of the stairs 😳😱😭. The mold will be checked tomorrow, but the termites are basically already taken care of. The termite guy said we caught them just in time. There wasn't damage yet! Hooray! And I hope he is right!!  In retrospect, finding these things before they got any worse is probably the unknown reason we agreed to do the floor- a blessing in disguise.

The dining room is done, and the kitchen is prepped. Nate Weir and Jason Ballash have also come to help.

Our other home teacher, Hao Vu, has been extremely helpful! He has come every day so far- 4 days! Not only that, but he has been very cheerful, optimistic, and fun for the kids. It's been a blessing that his family happens to be out of town without him right now so we aren't keeping him away from them. He also kind of knows my brother, Dave, from serving in the Anaheim Vietnamese-speaking mission.

Spring Fling

(I just started using the blogger app, so while I learn the ways and limitations of it, please bear with me. For example, this post has the beginning description appear in the middle of the post, and the pictures aren't grouped properly. I could fix it, but not easily or quickly.  My goal right now is not perfection, but getting pictures up with memories and details. Enjoy!)

The black bunny... You will notice a few pictures of Anika holding bunnies. She wanted to hold each color, AND have me take a picture. In the picture above, you can kind of see Anika's butterfly painted by her eye, and Seth's basketball on his hand.

Seth really wanted to catch the animals to hold.

I still love the squat!

 The kids got free cotton candy and popcorn!

Anika's teacher told the class that she would be doing the hair chalk station at 11:00, so Anika excitedly waited for her teacher to chalk her hair.

Seth wouldn't let anyone do his, so I asked if I could... tada!

The kids each got to punch and kick at this karate booth. They won a toy prize there, and I ended up winning second prize in the drawing. We are working out the details, but I think it will be that each kid gets a personal session.

Seth thought the whole thing was wonderful. He was just delighted to punch and kick. The instructor commented on how hard Seth could punch and kick.

Anika loved it too and was excited to be the first kid not fooled by his quick change to trick her into punching when it was time to kick.

Both kids wanted to do the dunk tank. As you can see, Seth got pretty close to hitting it with the ball. Close enough that they let him go push the button/trigger.

I love how happy he looks coming down the slide.

We attended this event at the school. It cost per kid to get in, but once you were in everything was included except lunch-type food. 

Bounce houses 

 Petting zoo

We found Anika's classmate Anna Kate, and got to hang out for a bit.