My birthday

These pictures are a little late, but I just wanted to remember.  I print my blog as a book since scrapbooking doesn't happen anymore.

I had a wonderful birthday.  We took the day off of school.  I took myself and the sweet girl to the big city for a day of shopping.  It was fun to go shopping.  Baby K tolerated it pretty well.  She demolished my purse and diaper bag while I tried on clothes.  That was the price we had to pay.

I returned home to the men folk cooking supper.  They grilled steaks.  It was delicious.  I had made myself a strawberry cake.  Not as good as my mom's, but a good substitute.  Last year, the boys were disappointed in my choice of strawberry cake, but they liked it this year.  

(We are all chocoholics around here, but every so often I get the craving for a strawberry cake.  The boys think I am strange for wanting strawberry.)

My parents sent a dozen fancy chocolate covered strawberries.  I confess that I was not going to share until I read the box.  It said they were best consumed within 24 hrs.  I knew I could not eat all these berries in that time, so everyone was able to enjoy the good stuff.  They were delicious.  

I got some wonderful gifts, but I got a surprising and special one from my oldest boy.  He spent the whole day making me a bracelet.  I was amazed!  He didn't have help at all.  In fact, my husband didn't know he was working in the garage.

He used the band saw to make these charms.  There are hearts and flowers.  Then he hand colored them.  

I am going to get a chain for them as the cord is too small for my wrist and I think it will last longer.  What a sweet boy that I am blessed to have in my life.  

One thing I never thought I would do...

There are times in my life when I sit back and am I awe about where I am or what I am doing.  There are just some things that I never would have planned or picked.  

One of those things is happening right now.  I am teaching a Lego Simple Machines class at our homeschool co-op.  

While my children LOVE legos, I merely am interested because I love my kids.  The husband is the engineer.  He should be teaching.  I was a biology major.  We didn't learn about gear assemblies.

But here I am teaching 2 classes of 12 students each, weekly lessons about gears, wheels and axles, pulleys, and levers.

In my defense, Lego Education is awesome.  They put together kits especially for educational purposes.  We are using their "Simple Machines Kit".  

It has all the pieces you need, directions for the kids to assemble the prescribed builds, and an abundance of teacher's materials.  They also have great handouts.  They spent a lot of time and money on this.  (Plus I have my tutor, dear husband, who coaches me each week.)

We have completed 2 weeks and things are going well.  The kids are excited just to play with the legos, but they also seem to be learning the basic principles.  To be honest, I am learning a lot too.  I had no idea what a gear ratio is or the importance of a gearing up design, but now I do.   

It's amazing the things we will do for those cute little blessings in our lives!

There's no stopping her now

She is really crawling all over the house.  She can make it from end to the other.  

Somewhere in our home's history, the back porch was enclosed.  We have decided to make that a lego room.  All legos must reside in there.

Baby K's favorite new activity is to crawl to the door of the playroom and bang on it. I am not sure if she does it to get their attention or to demand entrance.  It's probably a little of both.  

She would really love to go in there and chew on some legos.

She also doubles as a great dust mop.  We have hard floors throughout the house and she daily reminds with  her dirty knees that my floor is not that clean.  

Spring Forward

I do enjoy daylight savings time.  The kids love the extra time outdoors.  However, I hate the time change.  I almost wish that they just left the time alone.  It's just not little kid friendly, which makes it not mom friendly.

We did make it to church on time.  She looked pretty cute in spite of a helter skelter morning.

Here's the dress with the shrug.  The husband jokingly refuses to dress her on Sundays, because he says he can't handle all her accessories.  The tights scare him.  She does have quite a few accessories.  Thanks Aunt Janice for the outfit.

Here's us before church.

I spent the morning in the nursery.  It was enjoyable minus all the spit up.  There has been a baby boom at our church so there are a lot of babies.  I spent most of my time with a baby in each arm.  

Baby girl has been moved up to the toddler room to make room for the little babies.  (She was starting to "attack" the little infants lying on the floor.)  She seems to be doing well even though she is just crawling.  Most of those kids are walking in that room.  She has claimed her favorite worker and only wants Miss Elva to hold her.  She likes the extra activity in that room.  

Here's hoping we all go to bed early tonight.  Mama is tired!

Happy 10th Birthday to my first born!

We celebrated J's 10th birthday!  I can hardly believe my first born is now in double digits.  We gathered up some friends, cousins, and brothers and headed to the big city for some boy fun.  We rode some bumper boats, played mini golf, and played lots of arcade games.

Here's a good shot of all the boys.  It's at this moment that I realized I was in another town in public with 8 little boys.  What was I thinking.  They all did a great job.  

Everyone had fun on the bumper boats.  Poor husband was soaking wet by the time we were done.  Some of the boys decided to gang up on him.

S was able to steer very well, and got a little stranded.  The nice worker helped retrieve him.

All the kids had fun playing mini golf.  The weather was just lovely that day.

We finished up eating dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  J loves their bar-b-q chicken pizza.  This is his "Hobbit" birthday cake.  A friend made it.  This is a hobbit hole with Bilbo standing in front of it.  The boy liked his cake.

Little Missy was quite the trooper.  She hung out with all these boys all day long.

We made it home in one piece and crawled into bed.  It was a fun day!  I can't believe how big he is.

Gran Prix

The boys have spent weeks working on their cars for the AWANA Gran Prix.  

S, of course, had to have a horse car.  He wanted a golden horse.

He named it horse power.

W did most of his design work all by himself.  He is really good at using the band saw all by himself.  He is quite the axle polisher.

 J designed, cut, and painted his car all by himself.  He did a great job on his paint job.

Dad once again was the start guy.  He also spent countless hours helping other families make their cars.  He selflessly shared his gift with others.

Here's poor W.  His car did not do as well as he would hoped.  He kept telling me, "I am fine", but the red eyes gave him away.  He was really disappointed.  I think he learned something about aerodynamic design this year.  He picked a design that is not very aerodynamic.  He has something to work with next year.

S placed first in his age bracket.  J was knocked out pretty early.  He discovered later, that one of his axles was not straight due to a drill error.  He handled it quite well.  He did place for his design work.  

They are already talking about next year.

A lazy day

We had plans this Saturday and then they were all cancelled and or re-scheduled.  It was nice to have a day of nothing.  Since our plans were scattered, I didn't have a dinner plan and I was tired.  

I made a decision to let everyone make whatever they wanted for themselves.  It was quite interesting to see them in action.  

J decided he wanted Bagel Bites (mini pizzas on bagels) with sausage, as in a breakfast sausage patty.  

W decided on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with sausage.

S had chicken nuggets with sausage.  

I see a theme developing here.  I had no idea they liked sausage so much.  I did make them eat some apples and carrots with the sausage.  

We followed the smorgasbord dinner with our first family game of Monopoly.  We have had the game for awhile but had not played with the kids. 

The boys caught on pretty fast and really enjoyed themselves.  They are getting this whole capitalism concept quite nicely.  They gloated every time they were able to collect some rent.

After an hour, it was bed time.  Husband determined that S won, because he had the most houses.  He was thrilled.  He loves being the winner.  Of course, J was ticked that we couldn't finish the game.  I am not sure you are ever finished with Monopoly.  

I see more monopoly matches in our future.